Compassion: You Do Not Have to Choose

Care for the person or hold the standard. The best leaders refuse that trade.

Most leaders think they have to choose. Care for the person, or hold the standard. Compassion is refusing the choice.

This is the third of the six elements of The Plate. If the diagnostic pointed you here, this is your work.

The behavior

See the person and hold the standard in the same conversation.

Compassion is not softness, and it is not lowering the bar. Research on compassionate leadership, led by Michael West, defines it as four actions. Attending, understanding, empathizing, and then helping.

The framework says it plainly. Clarity and firmness, with real respect for effort. Compassion is caring enough to hold the standard and human enough to hold the person, in the same breath.

Strong and weak

Strong: you address the person’s reality and the work’s requirement without dropping either.

Weak: you go soft and drop the standard, or go hard and ignore the person.

Both failures come from the same belief, that care and candor cannot share a conversation. They can. That is the behavior.