Compassion

This blog series (Don’t be a Cock, be a CHICKEN) is about how we create the kind of leadership values which enable teams to thrive and organisations to flourish, whist providing brilliant care. So far we’ve looked at Curiosity, Humility and Inclusivity. Now we turn our attention to Compassion.

Compassion literally means ‘to suffer with’. To be with someone in their own pain/difficulty/circumstance. To lead with compassion means that we need to be present and take a keen interest in how other people are doing. Compassion doesn’t happen at pace. It requires time and presence.

We need compassion in our public services more than ever. At a time when our services feel overwhelmed, it’s so easy for us to suffer with compassion fatigue. We need compassion towards those we serve and we need to create compassionate teams. I recently wrote a blog for the brilliant Clinical Leaders Network about what it takes to cultivate compassionate leadership. So, in this blog, I’m going to focus on what it means to live with compassion towards those we serve in our communities, day-in, day-out. And this requires us to re-examine our values and who or what we value and why.

Someone asked me recently what three things I want my kids to know. I wrote about it in my book, Sick Society. For me, it’s pretty straightforward. I want my kids to know:

  • I love you unconditionally
  • I see you for who you are
  • You are always welcome in our home (or in other words – you belong here)

I think this is the basis of all good care. And so, I want my patients to know that I love them. Yes! And for the record, I don’t think that’s unprofessional. I think it’s the foundation of any positive, human relationship.

Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama put it this way:

“Love and Compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.”

To choose the way of compassion is to accept people for who they are. To be their friend, not their judge. And therefore compassion allows me to see people as they are. I see the whole of them, not just the the issue they are dealing with. I see their journey and their trauma. I can’t walk in their shoes, but I can draw alongside them and listen deeply, with kind and fascinated eyes. And I can be with them in their own story and situation. And so they know, when they are with me, they are welcome in the shared space we inhabit, for the time we have together. Compassion helps us to recognise that we belong to each other and with each other. Compassion enables me to see their innate worth and power, so that I don’t trespass over their sacred ground.

Thomas Merton examines this through a lens of interconnectedness:

“The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another.”

As a clinician, compassion means that I’m not there to take over. Compassion allows me to be with. To find out what really matters to the person in front of me. To help them explore a range of possibilities and to facilitate the space for them to make empowered choices. Compassion creates space for personalised care. But compassion also moves me to action.

Wolfgang von Goethe shows that compassion is not just a feeling:

“Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.”

In other words, compassion is love in action.

Henri J.M Nouwen says:

“Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.”

But how do we create compassionate cultures, especially in our fast-paced, over busy health and care systems and other public services?

Again, Nouwen is honest about how complex this is:

“Let us not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to places where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering, by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it.”

To do this, we need to create compassion for ourselves. In the midst of our tiredness, busyness and often sense of overwhelm, being compassionate towards ourselves is vital. We don’t always bring the best of ourselves into every situation. Giving ourselves time and space, being conscious of and caring for our own needs, allows us to keep our compassion for others switched on. Having the humility to receive compassion and care from others is also important. Letting other people see and be attentive to our own wounds and needs is vital. We can’t continually be compassionate towards others if we don’t also receive the compassion of others. When we treat ourselves with compassion and receive the compassion of others, it resources us to be compassionate towards others and with others. And this enables us to create more compassionate teams, who together make a more compassionate world. Me with you. You with me. Together we wade through the pain and complexity of life and find joy in the mess.

Compassion means that we cross the dividing line to sit with our ‘other’ and to be changed by them in the process. This takes, curiosity, humility and the desire to be radically inclusive. To be compassionate people, we must be determined to build friendship across difference in solidarity and celebration.

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Inclusivity

This mini blog series is about what makes a good leader – particularly in health and care/public sector organisations.

So far, we’ve explored curiosity and humility. This time it’s inclusivity.

The best kind of leaders of teams are inclusive. Inclusive in 3 ways.

Firstly, because they are empowering and nourishing, the best leaders want to include people in the learning and decision-making process. So, for example in shaping the vision and values of an organisation they want people across their team, from all backgrounds and roles to be able to participate and contribute to the process. This is because inclusion creates ownership. It’s amazing when we look at problems from different angles, perspectives, and backgrounds, how frequently solutions come from surprising people. This is because they see things which others cannot. The more inclusive we are, the more welcoming we can be to fresh perspectives.

Secondly, because they are kind and compassionate, the best leaders want to ensure that teams don’t become cliquey or exclusive. Inclusive leaders value the notion of belonging. When team members feel like they belong, they have more skin in the game. Relationships are strong and every contribution matters. This leads to great accountability and agency – because each team member knows that who they are and what they do really matters. Even more importantly, inclusive teams are diverse and celebrate this, because it makes them more effective. When leaders value difference it means there is more equality and diversity, better representation and therefore wiser, kinder decisions are made.

Thirdly, because they are curious and humble, the best leaders listen to, involve and include local communities in co-creating solutions to complex issues. They understand when it comes to finding solutions to wicked problems, the importance of addressing both intrinsic and extrinsic gaze. Intrinsic gaze focuses on recognising what is strong about a community, rather than what is wrong – that there is innate goodness and power within communities and incredible assets that needs to be built on. Extrinsic gaze focuses on how leaders and their teams can join with communities to highlight the systems of injustice which hold communities in places of disempowerment and disadvantage. This kind of inclusivity ensures that people get to be involved in challenging and changing these structures, dismantling and reforming them to bring about meaningful change. The work of inclusivity in communities breaks down our dividing lines, heals our fractures and welcomes everyone around the table. It creates the interstitial spaces necessary for our society to be made new, in which human relationships can really flourish.

So, if you’re a leader – don’t be a cock! Be a chicken!

C – Curiosity

H – Humility

I – Inclusivity

C – Compassion

K – Kindness

E – Encouragement

N – Nourishment

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Humility

In typical style, I started a series and then got distracted!

Had some stuff to finish on the book (out soon) and then life happened… work was full on… but now I’m back!

The series I started was on the hallmarks of good leadership, comparing COCKS to CHICKENS!

As a reminder:

Chickens are values-led leaders who create the kind of cultures in which everyone gets to become their best self. Chickens create an environment where everyone keeps learning. I think these are the core values of CHICKEN leaders:

C – Curiosity

H – Humility

I – Inclusivity

C – Compassion

K – Kindness

E – Empowerment

N – Nourishment

We looked at Curiosity in the last blog, and so this time, we turn our attention to humility.

Humility is not insecurity. Humility is not weakness… Humility is a choice and one which I don’t make nearly often enough…

I often hear leaders described as having a ‘God Complex’ (a label given to megalomaniacal, narcissistic bosses – usually men). It means they are a bit of a Cock! But what if having a God-complex is not about wanting to rule over people but is instead about washing the feet of lepers and being the friend of the most ostracised in society? What does this mean for how we have historically understood and now understand leadership?

Humility is the recognition that who you are as a human being makes you no better and no worse than any other person. Rather, every other human being is your brother or your sister, never someone to be dehumanised, but rather innately valuable and worthy of love. You therefore do not view yourself more highly than you ought to, with haughty eyes which look down on others. You do not feel the need to constantly compare yourself with others or compete with those around you. You have no need to do or talk other people down to make yourself look or feel better. You have no need to use positional power to dominate others. You have no cause to puff yourself up to make others look and feel small.

To be humble is to listen deeply, to keep learning, to accept failure and see it as gift, to know you still have inner work to do, to be able to say sorry, to be able to forgive, to be willing to change, to keep growing. To be humble is to prefer others and make space for them to thrive, to keep serving, to be misunderstood and have no need to promote yourself.

Humility is, I believe, one of the most important but least celebrated qualities of good leadership. Why? Because humility provides the conditions in which we can take stock of where we are and be willing to unlearn and let go of what got us here in order to get to where we need to be.

In his excellent book, Theory U, Otto Scharmer explores how the most ‘successful’ companies in the world are good at recognising that when they reach a certain point, they cannot get to where they want to be without embracing humility and deep listening.

I believe we are at such a point in the NHS and wider public sector, here in the UK. We have reached something of a precipice. There are insufficient funds, staffing shortages (due to retention and recruitment issues), a widening health inequity gap, a lack of preventative services, low staff morale, high burnout rates, major infrastructure problems, growing patient waiting times, public dissatisfaction and huge gaps in social care provision. And so, we cannot simply build a bridge across the deep ravine before us.

No. Humility accepts the reality of where we are and is willing to do some deep listening. We must listen to the painful truths of how many people in our communities are living. We must recognise the dual challenges of climate change and social injustice. And we must sit in the pain of this reality long enough for us to embrace the truth that our ‘go to’ methods of how to fix things are no longer able to cut it. We can’t stick hundreds of improvement projects onto the cracks and hope that it will be enough. Slashing services and rearranging our current models into ever more lean and joyless ‘models of care’ will never create the kind of wellbeing we long for together.

Instead, we must listen to what actually matters to our communities. We must learn to recognise the power and potential they hold. And together with them, we must co-create a future which enables our communities to thrive and our ecology to regenerate. It is the only way to tackle our financial deficit whilst also changing the inequities in our society.

People of humility know that this is only possible through radical participative communities, in which everyone gets to contribute and play their part. Where radical relationships across lines of difference allow us to embrace new solutions together. What humility does is to allow the heroes to stop trying to lead people up the next mountain, and instead to recognise that the mountains and the valleys need levelling out into a fair playing field for everyone. Humility gives birth to hope that there really might be a future for us that is altogether more beautiful than our current divisive hell… but that requires the ability to become like little children… because they are the ones who know the way… but only the humble will listen to them and let them show us.

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Curiosity killed the Kat?

This is a blog mini series on leadership and culture.

In the introductory post, I explained why I think cocks make terrible leaders but CHICKENs make great leaders! To refresh your memory, CHICKENs are leaders who outwork the values of:

Curiosity

Humility

Inclusivity

Compassion

Kindness

Empowerment

Nourishment

My wife, Kat, is hands down the best person I know. A total CHICKEN.

One of her best qualities and one of the reasons I love her, is her incredible and insatiable curiosity.

When she was training as a therapist, her mentor was always saying to her, ‘stay curious!’

And she does. She is. Curious. Not as in strange or unusual. But as in, she is genuinely interested to learn and know more about people. She has this incredible ability, to lock eyes with someone, let them know she deeply cares about them, tilt her head to the side and create a beautifully safe space in which her curiosity helps unlock healing for people. Amazing. And it’s never killed her – not even once.

Curiosity is such an important quality and for me now a core value, in life generally, but especially in leadership. Perhaps it is far too unusual as a quality valued in leadership.

Curiosity allows us to suspend our judgments. It stops us from thinking that we know it all. It allows us to be surprised, to ask better questions, to dig a little deeper. Curiosity prevents us from assuming we know the answer before we have really heard and seen what is emerging. It allows us to celebrate difference, recognise uniqueness and opens up new possibilities. It is open handed and tender hearted. It holds complexity and is not afraid to feel insecure in the ‘not-knowing’.

We all know what happens when we are not curious. We keep on trying to answer the questions in front of us with the same old mechanistic answers. And then we wonder why we don’t see the changes we need.

Curiosity allows you to look at data about a group of people and then go and sit with them to find out whether or not that is, in fact, their lived experience. Curiosity enables you to explore why things might not be working and to discover creative ways of engaging with the issue at hand. Curiosity is deeply joyful because it can open up new paths, fresh perspectives and exciting new potentials.

One of the best leaders I have met is Ellie McNeil, Chief Executive of YMCA Together. There’s a good reason why it is considered to be the best charity in the UK to work for!

Image from YMCA Together Website

One of the things Ellie has done so well as a leader is to instil curiosity in all of her team and volunteers.

She uses Cognitive Analytical Therapy (CAT) as a means to developing compassionate leadership throughout the organisation. In other words, she encourages everyone to be actively curious about why they might treat one person differently to another, or why they might have a particular reaction in a given situation. It allows people to be kind, to ask better questions of themselves and others and be honest about what is going on inside themselves in any interaction.

In my team, we’ve recently had some difficult conversations about finance. I found it so interesting that when we introduced the topic of conversation, every persons body language changed. Having learned from Ellie, I simply asked them to notice this, to reflect on it, to be curious about what changes in them when we start to talk about money. Then we postponed the conversation and brought it back next time with people being more self-aware about what was happening in them and for them.

If we’re going to develop truly caring organisations in the NHS and social care, we need to develop genuine curiosity. What’s going on in me? I wonder what’s going on in you? What’s really happening here?

In every consultation I have with a patient, I’m asking myself these questions: What’s your story? What matters to you? What do we know? What do we not know? What do we need to know? How can we find out? What are we going to do with the information when we make those discoveries? What choices will you make about your own care, once we know the options?

Curiosity never killed anyone in health and social care. On the contrary, it literally saves thousands of lives. It is a lack of it that is dangerous.

So…..Don’t be a cock. Be a CHICKEN – it starts with being curious.

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Don’t be a COCK! Be a CHICKEN!

I’ve not been blogging for a while…… because I’ve been writing my first book. Whoop!

“Your first BOOK?!” you say.

That’s right, people! – It’s called ‘Sick Society: Reimaging How we Live Well Together’ – it’ll be out in the Autumn and I’m pretty excited about it! I’ll let you know when you can pre-order, but they’ll be a book launch and everything…..not long now…..

In the mean time, I’ve been thinking quite a lot about leadership and culture. I’ve written on here before about how we create a culture of joy and what it takes to do so. I’ve also blogged about how to build a culture of kindness which is something I believe lies at the heart of all good health and social care (something that evidence supports hugely – including better outcomes in cancer).

Everyone knows a COCK when they see one. Am I right?! If I asked you to describe the behaviour of a cock, I imagine you’d come up with a list like this:

Strutting – Cocks have a particular kind of walk – you know the kind of walk I mean

Crowing – Cocks love to brag about their accomplishments but fail to honour their team

Puffing – Cocks puff their chest out to make themselves seem bigger than they are

Dominating – Cocks have an over developed sense of self-importance and dominate spaces rather than making room for others

Bullying – Cocks are often real bullies and don’t know how to apologise

But Cocks don’t actually make good leaders. They don’t develop the kind of cultures in which everyone can thrive. Rather, it is they who want to be noticed and fussed over. They like to be known to be in charge. They don’t listen well. They don’t include others. In the end, it is all about them – the top of the pyramid.

But chickens….chickens are where it’s at! Chickens are values-led leaders who create the kind of cultures in which everyone gets to become their best self. Chickens create an environment where everyone keeps learning. I think these are the core values of CHICKEN leaders:

C – Curiosity

H – Humility

I – Inclusivity

C – Compassion

K – Kindness

E – Empowerment

N – Nourishment

Each leadership value deserves its own post to unpack it a little more. But in the mean time, if you are leading, don’t be a cock. Be a CHICKEN.

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