If we agree that compassionate leadership is a ‘good’ thing,
and I suspect we do, who is responsible for making it happen?
It’s easy to complain about the
organisations we work in. We all do it. It might even be productive sometimes,
but there is something interesting about complaining about our workplaces. Usually,
when we are complaining, we are delegating responsibility for changing things
for the better to others. Usually, in our view, we delegate responsibility for
changing things to others who are managing us and who, as far as we can see, seem
incapable of grasping obvious solutions. Complaining is easy but I wonder if it
often has to do with our own view of what it means to be a manager and a
leader.
Now, the science of management is
an interesting field. I’ve spent some
time over a long career in the NHS thinking about management, being managed,
managing large teams, and teaching management theory. I’ve also spent some time
thinking about leadership. Here is some of what I’ve learned.
There are over a thousand definitions of
management. These definitions depend on theoretical perspectives with
economists considering management as a resource, bureaucrats viewing management
as a system of authority to achieve goals, and sociologists thinking of
managers as the social elite. There is
some agreement that management can be defined across functions: planning,
organizing, actuating and controlling. However, whatever the theoretical slant,
traditional conceptualisations of management tend to view the ‘functions’ of
management and the ‘role’ of management in much the same way. A designated
individual (or, perhaps, groups of individuals) in an organisation undertake certain
functions to control and deliver desired goals for that organisation with a
workforce. In this traditional position, the role of ‘manager’ and ‘leader’ are
seen as the same thing: managers lead, usually exclusively.
Contemporary theorists have begun
to separate the concepts of management and leadership. Unlike management, which
is a designated function, contemporary thinkers suggest that leadership has
nothing to do with seniority or hierarchal position in an organisation. Leadership and a pay grade are not necessarily
the same thing. Further, the capacity to offer leadership to an organisation is
not dependent on a formal title. Increasingly, theorists in management science
are beginning to suggest that leadership is a process associated with social
influence, which can maximize the efforts of other people toward a shared goal.
Understanding leadership in this way has to do with recognising that every
member of the team has skills and experiences that are not necessarily common
to all and that these individual skills and experiences can be of major benefit
to the team.
From this definition, leadership
has to do with our influence on others and not authority or power, and although
this view of leadership indicates that leaders need others to lead, those
‘others’ do not necessarily need to be direct reports. There are many roads to
effective leadership and this definition argues that maximizing the efforts of
others toward a goal is crucial. From this perspective, any member of a team
can be a leader, and over time, in effective teams, leadership can be shared
among team members, depending on particular interests and strengths. Pushed to
a logical conclusion, this kind of shared leadership responsibility leads to
the development of self-managed teams. Managers need to co-ordinate these
leadership skills but they do not hold a monopoly on leadership.
So, what does this mean? It means
that each of us has a responsibility in a team to work effectively toward
whatever the team goal is. Importantly, though, each of us has a potential
leadership function. Any one of us, can, depending on circumstances, offer
leadership to the team. If we look at compassion as a desired value, all of us
have a potential leadership role to play in ensuring that value is enacted in
our team. How do I treat clients? How do I treat colleagues? Am I compassionate
in my behaviours and am I leading others toward maximizing their own
compassionate selves? Can I lead by
example? We have all worked with someone who was inspiring, not necessarily in
what they had to say, but in what they did. Any one of us can be that person,
that leader.
If we agree that compassionate leadership is a ‘good’ thing,
who is responsible for making it happen? All of us, I guess.
Rev Dr Michael Killoran Ross
Chaplain - SAS
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