Self-Compassion Makes a Better Leader
Effective executive leadership and corporate culture depend on mental clarity, emotional balance, and vision to navigate unpredictable challenges, especially in times of uncertainty and disruption. Do you know what else it requires? A fair dose of self TLC. HR leaders and executives work carefully to practice compassion for employees and build a strong company culture around respect, care, and compassion. But executives too often forget to practice compassion on themself. See how this Harvard Business Review article, Self-Compassion Will Make You a Better Leader, by Rich Fernandez and Steph Stern, explains how leaders cultivate this critical skill and why it’s critical now more than ever.
Here’s a snippet:
When times are tough and you’re faced with hard decisions, it’s easy to get paralyzed by self-doubt and fear. To move to clarity and action, leaders need self-compassion. Research shows that it increases your levels of emotional intelligence, resilience, integrity, and makes you more compassionate toward others, all of which improves your effectiveness as a leader. The authors offer several exercises for cultivating this skill, from short daily practices to tactics that help you shift your mindset.
It’s understandable for leaders to get caught up in fear, doubt, and criticism when facing critical business decisions that will have a major impact on lives and livelihoods. But what’s needed in times of uncertainty and disruption is mental clarity, emotional balance, fortitude, and vision. To move from self-doubt and paralysis to clarity and action, you need an often-misunderstood skill: self-compassion. Based on our experience training tens of thousands of leaders on the role of self-compassion in emotional intelligence and effective leadership, we’d like to share some key tips and techniques for cultivating this critical skill.
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