Self-Compassion – The Doorway to Wise Leadership

Co-authored by Gregory Stebbins

Dr. Stebbins has over three decades of experience coaching emerging and senior executives in the development of wise social intelligence skills, which is an integration of an individual’s head (intellect), heart (courage) and hunch (intuition). The wisdom development process helps leaders examine their inner dynamics, which drive how they act in an organizational environment. Leadership effectiveness means being accountable which requires awareness of and taking ownership of moment-to-moment beliefs, fears, hopes, desires, defenses and impulses.

Leaders then integrate their knowledge and experience and transform it into social intelligence that can be applied to guide an organization’s success. Team effectiveness with senior leaders requires a high level of collaborative dialogue to ensure that they are mutually accountable to the purpose and outcomes of the organization.

Dr. Stebbins is a colleague at Insight Institute and the co-designer of its flagship Letting Wisdom Lead program. Over the last 25 years he has created or co-created five companies. His senior business leadership experience is combined with his in-depth understanding of interpersonal dynamics. Dr. Stebbins is a member of the Consulting Psychologist division of the American Psychological Association.

His former clients include many Fortune 1000 and Mid Cap companies, including: Abbott Laboratories, Amgen, CBRE, Dole Food Company, Fluor Corporation, IBM, RCA, 3M, and Sodexho.

Dr. Stebbins has an MBA in Finance from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles and an Ed.D. from Pepperdine University’s school of education and psychology. He has lectured at University of Southern California, and the MBA program at University of California at Los Angeles. Greg has been listed in Marquis Who’s Who in the World for more than two decades. Greg has an active and ongoing meditation practice stretching over more than four decades.

Self-Compassion – The Doorway to Wise Leadership

In Western corporations, there is a deeply ingrained cultural belief that high-performance requires “suffering”. In other words, many people believe that distress, discomfort, and pressure ignites performance. This belief and associated behaviors are toxic in nature, ineffective, unsustainable and lead to burnout and career derailment (Gallup, 2013; Kilburg, 2000).

The primary focus of leaders in a VUCA (a.k.a. Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguious) environment is to deliver results as the only valid measurement of success. Given the preponderance of command and control leadership style in the business environment, executives have few resources to manage the heavy self-criticism that occurs when falling short of the desired performance. When making mistakes, many executives seem unable to compassionately manage shame, blame, and self-criticism. Instead, executives display acute self-criticism, self-condemnation, and negative, harsh self-talk. People do this hoping that the self-inflicted punishment and “suffering” will prevent them from making the same mistake again in the future and gain the sympathy of those around them.

In the safety of coaching environments, many executives secretly admit being harsh on themselves, and/or on other people, just because they believe “being kind” will make them or others complacent and weak. We condition ourselves by what we tell ourselves. We can undermine or encourage ourselves and others. Moreover, we can continue to be blind to the fact that we are in charge of the internal and external environments we create.

The troubling question to ponder is: Has being cruel or harsh increased engagement, innovation, and empowerment in corporations? It seems not, according to Gallup’s(2013) staggering poll results which indicated only 13% of employees reported being engaged. In other words, 87% of talented people either are disengaged or actively disengaged. Is this the best we can do? How long will it take us to let go of habitual leadership strategies that only foster disengagement, disempowerment, and burnout? Is there a need to wise up?

Much of our professional life as academics, consultants, trainers, facilitators, and leadership coaches has afforded us the opportunity to study various approaches to leadership transformation. A great deal of the current syllabus continues to emphasize the use of the head/brain to analyze and solve complex problems to understand what works and why. However, logic alone seems insufficient to find the wisest solutions to the pressing problems.

The Wisdom Economy and Compassionate Capitalism

Information has become a commodity. Transformation has become a necessity. We can access more information than we can currently digest. Still, most of this does not help begin to tap into what it means to be human. The emerging wisdom economy will be more focused on bringing forward the unique gifts of each person. Compassionate Capitalism is about sharing those talents for the highest good of the community. Like the healthy cells in a body that work in harmony with other cells in the body, individuals are called forward to share the best of themselves to shift and uplift the community. No cell in the body accumulates 99% of the nutrients, leaving the rest of the cells starving to death. Shockingly 1% of the population today accumulates 99% of the global wealth. If a body cannot function properly with only 1% of its cells healthy; can a society work correctly when 1% of its population enjoys unparalleled wealth while the other 99% are trying to survive? Can we develop High-Quality Connections without Empathy and Compassion? We claim that cruelty generates more cruelty, whereas Compassion stops the cycle of self-destruction that cruelty begets.

The world is in rapid transition. Moreover, so is the way we understand doing business. Over the years, many approaches to leadership have emerged. For instance, purpose was articulated by Victor Frankl, and the theory of servant leadership by Greenleaf. Furthermore, Fairholm introduced spiritual leadership, Covey the principle-centered leadership, Senge the learning organization, and Barrett the importance of value-based transformational leadership. Today the world needs 21st century leaders who develop cultures that embrace a higher consciousness.

If a healthy body is the result of cells interacting with other cells through loving, humans might have to learn how to interact lovingly. Moreover, its starts with just one. Look what happens in a body when just one single cell decides to kill other healthy cells. We call this dis-ease Cancer. This same process operates in society and in organizations; they become destructive.

Professor Dutton and her team of researchers at the University of Michigan emphasized the importance of developing High Quality Connections as a stepping stone in creating a healthy organization in which people can flourish. When the cells of our body communicate with one another in harmony, the cells are at ease with each other and health results. The body is nothing less than a very efficient society of billions of cells aligned in harmony to keep the body healthy. It is when one cell goes out of balance that the relationship goes out of balance and negative emotions emerge leading to dis-ease and ultimately death. Similarly, organizations suffer today from silo thinking, misalignment between departments, team distrust, and individual conflicting priorities. Organization is indeed suffering and contracting and can eventually disappear.