Compassionate leadership in Project Management
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” — Maya Angelou
A global pandemic, depression-level unemployment, civil and political unrest – it feels as if the world as we know is faltering. Economies are unwinding; jobs are disappearing. Through it all, our spirit is being tested. Now more than ever, it’s imperative for leaders to demonstrate compassion.
Compassion is the quality of having positive intentions and real concern for others. Compassion in leadership creates stronger connections between people. It improves collaboration, raises levels of trust, and enhances loyalty. In addition, studies find that compassionate leaders are perceived as stronger and more competent.
A project manager (PM) is typically defined as the person who is in charge of the planning and execution of a particular project. The reality is, as much as we are managing logistics, we are foremost collaborating with people.
Knowing how to create a project plan and proactively manage are essential. However, you can make more impact and when you lead with people in mind. Anthony Mersino, states in his book Emotional Intelligence for project managers:
To be truly effective you need to be able to implement projects and work well with your team. Emotional intelligence will help you do that.
Emotional Intelligence can be observed as a segway to a deeper definition, understanding, and reacting to the concerns and needs that underlie others’ emotional responses and reactions, according to Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence.
As a senior project manager, I’m passionate about planning and people. Throughout my career, I’ve found that there is a higher likelihood of project success when I bring people skills into the mix. And I have first-hand experienced the benefits of applying empathy in the workplace, it:
· Creates team understanding
· Builds team trust
· Creates a safe space where the team can get out of their comfort zones and take risks
· Leads to more innovation and creativity
· Encourages kindness and compassion, which fosters teamwork and leadership
· Reduces stress through minimized conflict
By applying these benefits to a project, it gives teams a higher chance to flourish, find more profound satisfaction in the work and a more impressive output with less stress.
Compassionate Leadership
Success in managing projects requires leadership skills. Leadership is defined as the process of getting a group of people in a direction, to pursue common objectives.
Leadership skills boil down to the ability to create a vision, motivate and influence followers to realize the vision, build teams, communicate, listen, negotiate. These skills are supported by mindfulness, compassion, and wisdom.
Let’s focus on compassion. Compassionate leaders motivate and influence their followers. A recent Harvard Business Review article suggests that “Compassion in leadership creates stronger connections between people. It improves collaboration, raises levels of trust, and enhances loyalty. In addition, studies find that compassionate leaders are perceived as stronger and more competent.”
Compassion can be defined as “the quality of having positive intentions and real concern for others.” According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, compassion is the “sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it.” Compassion is exhibited in helpful acts of kindness. The Dalai Lama has said that “Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.”
Compassion is a natural quality that arises when we recognize our interdependence with others and our common experience. We naturally want to help ourselves and others overcome suffering and achieve happiness.
However, our natural compassion may be covered over or distorted because of our upbringing and cultural influences. There are many ways to cultivate compassion, so that it is displayed skilfully:
Enhance our mindfulness, training our minds to objectively observe whatever is happening within and around us
Use our mindful awareness to increase our emotional intelligence – cultivating self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management
Practice self-compassion. Be kind to yourself. Self-compassion is the foundation for being compassionate with others
Directly confront issues that may take us out of our comfort zone – whether that is to overcome distorted compassion or to overcome insensitivity and non-caring
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, Empathy is defined as “The ability to share someone else’s feelings or experiences by imagining what it would be like to be in that person’s situation.”
Empathy is the quality of being aware of, understanding and/or experiencing the emotional feelings and thoughts of another without direct and explicit communication. In the context of project management and management in general, the power of empathy enables a person to be of greater service to sponsors, clients, peers, superiors, and subordinates. Since, in the end, project management is about serving the needs of stakeholders and satisfying their expectations, empathy is a critical success factor.
Empathy, compassion, kindness, and caring – they all seem so touchy-feely. Are project managers supposed to be kind and empathetic? Only if they want to be successful and happy. Studies and common sense tell us that workers are more productive and have lower turnover rates when they are less stressed with a sense that the people they work for and with care about them as people.
We all want to see successful projects: work that we can be proud of, a happy client, and a team that feels valued. We know that project management planning skills are important, but when paired with empathy, we have a recipe for more impact, more meaning, and less stress. A compassionate mindset is the most effective way to support people through these difficult times. We should all strive to do these hard things in a human way.