10 Benefits Of Building Compassion As A Manager & How To Build It

According to recent studies, managers who have high levels of compassion in their relationships with employees are better at leading and motivating them. This means that managers who use compassion as a tool can help build their teams and make them more productive. Therefore, it is highly important to build compassion in yourself while working as a manager. This blog will enlighten you with the benefits of being a compassionate manager and how to build compassion. But before that, you should know what exactly is compassion. So let’s figure that out first.

What is compassion?

Compassion is the quality of having positive intentions and real concern for others. It is an effective management style that improves collaboration, increases levels of trust, and increases loyalty. Compassion is a virtue or quality of human kindness. It’s an act of goodwill and hospitality to another person.

It is not dependent upon a relationship, whether that be friendship, family, or co-worker-ship but direct giving of oneself to another. Compassion is a non-interfering act, which does not try to change or manipulate the other person or situation to achieve our own needs. It instead works towards their wellbeing and well-being.

This compassion extends beyond colleagues and friends into any situation where there may be contact with those less fortunate than ourselves. Like- children at school, old people begging on street corners, mother and baby at the hospital, a victim of crime to whom we bear witness, etc.

Compassion is the ability to relate positively with another, even under challenging situations or when feelings are raw. Assistance and service to others such as giving a cheerful smile, reaching out with friendship or sympathy is Compassion. To refrain from causing harm to another person or limiting their ability to live a fulfilled life is Compassion.

Compassion at workplace

This may be particularly critical in the workplace where they are dealing with people, where problems are abundant and conflicts are inevitable. This factor helps them empathize & communicate effectively. They can observe their colleagues in their interaction with others. They can then step in if necessary. Managers can then prevent conflict by providing direction & mutual understanding.

Compassionate management is an approach that takes empathy to the next level. It involves controlling your own emotions. It also involves stepping into someone else’s shoes and understanding their emotions, stresses, weaknesses, and strengths so that you are better prepared to take action accordingly. Compassionate managers always put others’ needs before their own, and they create a tuning with others’ thoughts and feelings to encourage healthy relationships and ensure a more empathetic work environment.

Leaders may show compassion, and being compassionate means you are not only supporting your organization and your followers, but you are also assisting yourself. A high degree of empathy facilitates interpersonal relationships, communication and fosters collaboration. With compassion comes feelings such as caring towards others, kindness, and love which are highly important for effective management.

To further understand the importance of compassion in managers and the positive impact of it, we will further present the 10 benefits of being a compassionate manager at the workplace.

10 Benefits of building compassion as a manager

There is a lot of scope in the skill of compassion to add to any business. Every employee of a business from the CEO to the manager to the lowest job in the hierarchy should have the skill of compassion Especially when you are a manager, these are the benefits that having compassion as a core value can bring to the business.

1. Better communication with your team members

Compassionate leaders are greater communicators than those that do not show compassion, which leads to better relationships. Having a compassionate leader should lead to good communication on your team and with the company you work for. It can reflect in a simple email or company-wide meetings, that when a manager has excellence in showing compassion, there won’t be any hindrances to effective communication.

These improvements in communication help leaders to further improve productivity and by which they can create a safe working environment for their employees. Compassionate leaders are capable of having better communication with their employees. They clearly understand what working conditions can be improved to ensure greater work and communication efficiency. It also has a positive effect on employee engagement.

2. Compassion improves motivation of employees

Studies have shown that employees who are not compensated fairly, or feel like they don’t contribute anything significant enough when there aren’t opportunities available everywhere in the workplace always leave their job elsewhere regardless of their professional strengths. Compassionate leaders use empathy to connect with their employees on a deeper level and bring out their best work while also elevating their morale.

Compassionate managers understand the needs and feelings of all employees, which results in improved employee motivation. Feeling valued by an organization can help keep employees motivated while they are earning a livable wage or working with similar goals. You would like them to work toward themselves as well as help set expectations for performance along the way.

3. Compassion Improves job satisfaction of employees

Compassionate leadership can create greater job satisfaction and motivation in subordinates by their management style. This leads to better employees who will strive for something bigger within the company that they are employed on. The presence of compassion leads to feelings of satisfaction, relief, and trust. Showing positive emotions towards your employees can bring out positive outcomes from them.

Managers who show compassion to subordinates nearly always improve workers’ performance. According to studies, employees under compassionate managers have higher job satisfaction and less stress than employees without compassionate managers. Compassionate management can also effectively prevent employee burnout and reduce employee turnover.

4. Resolve conflicts effectively

Compassionate leaders resolve conflicts in all forms quickly and decisively. They avoid office disagreements to minimize the chance of conflicts or tension within an organization. A compassionate leader is the first to take action and resolve conflicts instead of waiting for colleagues, keeping key employees working and performing at an optimal level.

Compassion is critical for conflict resolution, and it entails putting the other party’s feet into the situation and seeing their view of the conflict situation through their eyes, rather than through your eyes. When you allow the free-flowing process of shared thoughts to take place, compassion allows you to hear the other person’s perspective and feelings to understand where they’re coming from. That can help managers in resolving conflicts in a manner that caters to everyone’s thoughts, ideas, perspectives, and needs. This can’t be any lesser effective than any other way of resolving conflicts.

5. Committed to encouraging creativity and innovation

Compassionate leadership encourages innovative thinkers in their work environment by defining roles that allow for flexibility within a company. They ensure their positions have been defined before they are hired. These managers also work with them while they create new ideas. They allow room on the job site so employees can make decisions without having to ask someone from upper management.

Compassionate managers support creative thinking among workers rather than restricting it as fast as possible so that their organizations are not caught off guard. Managers can successfully encourage organizational creativity and innovation. They do it by designing the organization to create an environment that is favorable for creativity to flourish. This can be accomplished by compassionate management.

6. Better working relationship between managers and employees

Compassionate management is concerned with what makes a good working relationship between leader and worker. Compassionate managers are actively involved in the organization’s culture and its workings. That involves building friendly and inclusive working conditions for the organization’s members. This method of management also involves being involved in life at work.

This is a requirement for establishing good workplace relationships. It manifests itself physically by being open about personal life with other workers. It can also reflect in working extra hours when needed to ensure that employees receive all assistance possible during their work endeavor schedule.

Compassionate managers do this by inviting coworkers to engage personally with them. This is done when the leader replies to emails on time or speaks reasonably within an organization setting. They value the time and effort of their employees and plan things accordingly. Compassionate management ensures a work-life balance for their employees.

Compassionate leaders always show emotional intelligence and put others’ needs before their own. They create a tuning with others’ thoughts and feelings to encourage healthy relationships and ensure a more empathetic work environment. Leaders and managers who follow compassionate approaches at work have highly reciprocating relationships. These result in more positive relationships at the workplace.

7. Compassion Increases Productivity

Compassionate management implies that the organization and its members strive to encourage both productivity and happy workplace relationships. This in turn leads to increased work satisfaction. Compassionate managers actively participate in their coworkers’ lives at work. It’s done by addressing any criticisms they offer as a means of creating positive closer bonds with them over time. Compassion is highly valued in organizational research, with significant implications for leadership, well-being, and productivity.

Research has found that just certain aspects such as compassion promote more productive groups of people. So compassionate leadership helps employees become highly productive. Compassionate leaders recognize an employee’s different power in the workplace and attend to their needs as individuals over critical mass. While there are other ways of increasing productivity as a manager, lack of compassion can surely decrease productivity in your team.

8. Compassion builds greater trust within managers and employees

Compassionate leaders establish trust within themselves and others at the work, which results in greater employee loyalty. In turn, this makes compassion easier to promote among managers, who are now able to focus resources on employees’ work instead of their specifications.

Employees are particularly sensitive to signs of trustworthiness in our leaders, and compassion increases our willingness to trust. Their brains respond more positively to managers who express compassion, which in turn improves performance. Compassion promotes an interest in the well-being of colleagues and loyalty towards the organization.

The company suffers if an employee doesn’t trust their manager, which can result in more minds seeking more solutions to problems or something else entirely. Therefore building trust within managers and employees is necessary. It can be easily done by adding compassion to your leadership skills.

9. Compassion builds mutual respect between team members

Compassionate leaders nurture interpersonal relationships and good teamwork among employees. Compassion encourages mutual respect and gratitude between colleagues who desire to be treated fairly at work and those that communicate in kindness with others. A compassionate leader fosters a sense of dignity which is not easy to attain and promotes good teamwork within many diverse organizational relationships. This in turn builds self-confidence for the team members and hence decreases team inter dependence.

The compassionate leader is resourceful when resolving conflict between employees through open communication that fosters trust rather than creating distrust which often exists within an institutionalized relationship based on fear following disagreements.

Leaders and managers who follow compassionate approaches at work have a high level of engagement among employees and leaders. A compassionate workplace created by managers encourages their employees to build mutual respect.

10. Overall a healthy workplace

Compassionate leadership promotes a healthy workplace through appreciation and affection for their employees. They show respect towards colleagues and clients, strengthen leadership effectiveness. Businesses with compassionate managers help cultivate feelings of trust between employees that reduce conflict in the workplace.

They foster loyal team members while also cultivating good teamwork under interpersonal relationships based on mutual respect amongst professionals who strive to work together optimally towards company goals.

The compassionate leader will create healthy cultures that set up successful businesses.

How to build compassion as a manager

There are many ways to build compassion as a manager. The most tested and efficient ones are as follows:

– Try and understand your employees’ points of view

This can help you identify any areas of conflict or disagreement that may be arising. You can then work to resolve them constructively. Compassionate leadership entails having a deep understanding of the needs of another person’s situation and acting with compassion. Compassionate leaders always put others’ needs before their own, and they create a tuning with others’ thoughts and feelings to encourage healthy relationships and ensure a more empathetic work environment.

– Be actively present and creatively sensitive to those who have difficulties

Some employees may not feel like you are listening to them. It can happen if they do not know how to show their unhappiness over being overlooked. Let them enjoy a bit of an audience for themselves. Listen to them before turning away from worrying about others or business as usual. This will help build your team and will simultaneously increase trust and grow your organization by cultivating more trust.

– Show appreciation frequently and positively

reinforce desired behaviors instead of pointing out the negative aspects others may be engaging in. People are more likely to exhibit positive behaviors when they feel acknowledged and appreciated. Similarly, criticism harms their emotions.

As a compassionate business manager, you should let employees know that what’s most important about them is their skills and abilities. Your need for things done ‘perfectly’ or compliance with duties, hours worked every day, etc. can be secondary. So be very cordial well have this compassion towards employees making aware how valuable they are to your company.

– Discuss the inherent biases

These may be present in every system, individual, or organization you interact with. It many reflect by being passive and only listening attentively to others when required such as ‘when this negative thing happened’. It can’t be resolved by saying I am sorry but by explaining what was happening during a conversation at that time and why it did happen at all in the first place. By doing this your people will feel like they have someone on their side if trouble arises.

If a difficult situation arises which is regarding the individual that makes you uncomfortable or is critical towards them, feel okay to let others know in a very healthy project-wise way and they would be grateful to have your support.

– Encourage opportunities

Managers should encourage opportunities, especially for people whose performance shows solid improvement over time by offering promotions, increasing wages, providing additional training, etc. This helps build objective evidence of growth and can reduce anxiety as well as decrease other stressors with no negative impacts if done positively.

– Listen and respond accordingly

be empathetic, during bad times listen, and also with positivity as you can understand the situation better. Don’t take action, just wait for others to talk when there is a need for it to save the face of both parties. Many occasions exist where leaders should stand and speak out of the grey area so people don’t feel there is no support at all.

– Finally, you can make sure that you are always compassionate towards others

Treating others with respect and exhibiting empathy can go a long way in creating a healthy workplace. Noticing when colleagues are in pain or are undergoing some personal stressors, and trying to make them feel secure, is one way we can express compassion in the workplace. Managers should bring professionalism to their workplace to bring the best out of compassion.

Conclusion

Compassion is the ability to feel and express empathy for another person. It’s not about pity or sympathy. It’s about having an understanding of another person’s point of view, where they are coming from, and what their needs are. Empathy is a big part of being compassionate, but it’s not enough on its own. We’ve written about some simple ways you can build compassion as a manager, but there are many more benefits that come with this trait. Stay tuned for more relevant information.