An entire generation learned about leadership from a principal whose school we never attended. On Saved by the Bell, Mr. Belding was often the person standing between his students and whatever they wanted to do. He was also someone they could turn to when they needed help. Even when they drove him crazy, his affection for them was obvious. He cared deeply about his students and made difficult decisions with their best interests in mind. His example captures a challenge at the center of compassionate leadership: caring about people while making decisions they may not like.
For anyone responsible for a team, compassionate leadership becomes more demanding when an employee you care about is struggling. You know how hard they’re trying, you understand some of what they’re dealing with, and you don’t want to make their day worse. But their unfinished work may be creating more work for colleagues, and the issue may be limiting their own opportunities. You have to decide whether to address it or let your concern for their immediate feelings postpone a conversation they need. Before you speak, you also need to understand whether you’ve given them clear expectations and reasonable support. Caring about someone requires taking their circumstances and the consequences of their work seriously enough to examine both.
Compassionate leadership combines care with accountability
The very best leaders lead with love on one hand and accountability on the other. They care deeply about the people they lead while holding them to high standards and pushing them to become better. Mr. Belding’s students could be frustrated with a decision without that frustration erasing his concern for them. Managers face that tension when they turn down a request, challenge someone’s work, or insist that a commitment be honored. An employee’s disappointment deserves attention, but it can’t be the only consideration in a decision that affects other people. You have to remain interested in the person’s success even when the conversation becomes uncomfortable.
Donatos CEO Kevin King described how leading with love informs business decisions when we spoke about the company’s principles. He explained that it starts with pure intentions and refusing to take advantage of someone. Compassionate leadership begins with examining how your own decisions affect the people whose performance you’re evaluating. Have you been honest about what you need, fair in what you’ve asked, and willing to hear what you may have missed? An employee can be responsible for improving their work while you’re responsible for clarifying priorities or providing guidance you promised. Asking them to take responsibility becomes more credible when you’re willing to examine your own part in the situation.
Compassionate leadership requires understanding why an expectation was missed before deciding how to respond. Work can fall short because an employee needs more experience, because priorities conflict, or because they disregarded a commitment they understood. Each requires a different response from the leader. Treating all three as a lack of motivation can leave the real obstacle untouched. Excusing all three can leave reliable colleagues responsible for the unfinished work. Before deciding what happens next, identify what prevented the employee from meeting the expectation:
- When an employee lacks experience with an assignment, arrange guidance and review points before asking them to manage it independently. You can preserve the required quality while giving them a realistic opportunity to learn.
- When competing priorities make a deadline unworkable, decide which assignment takes precedence and communicate what will change. Asking the employee to work harder won’t resolve two commitments that can’t both be met.
- When someone repeatedly misses a clear commitment despite having the necessary support, address the pattern and explain the consequences. Passing their work to colleagues allows the issue to continue at other people’s expense.
In compassionate leadership, understanding the cause should inform the decision about what needs to change. An employee who needs instruction should receive instruction, and an employee who needs to honor a commitment should understand that obligation. Both should know what improvement looks like and when you’ll revisit it. Keeping your own commitments is part of building trust as a leader, including when progress takes longer than you hoped. If you promised time to review the work, make that time available. Your follow-through gives the employee evidence that you’re invested in the improvement you’re asking them to make.
Compassionate leadership requires honest feedback
We often describe caring leaders as nice people. But genuine care asks more of a leader than being pleasant. It can mean confronting a problem that would be easier to avoid, taking someone’s disappointment seriously, or giving an honest answer when reassurance would be easier. In a performance conversation, softening the message until the employee can’t identify the concern prevents them from acting on it. They may leave feeling reassured while you leave believing you’ve addressed the issue. By the time it affects a promotion or their continued employment, they may have lost an opportunity to improve that you could have helped them use.
Honest feedback is part of compassionate leadership when it helps an employee understand what happened and what they can do differently. Describing a missed commitment and its effect on the team gives you both something to discuss. Calling for a better attitude without identifying the behavior leaves them interpreting your frustration. Give them room to explain relevant circumstances, including an obstacle you didn’t know about or a request that conflicted with another priority. Their explanation may change your assessment or reveal a decision you need to make. The conversation should end with a clearer understanding of the work and what each of you will do next.
Gallup found that 80% of employees who reported receiving meaningful feedback in the past week were fully engaged. Meaningful feedback includes recognition and discussion of the work, so the finding shouldn’t be treated as a reason to spend more time criticizing people. It gives managers a reason to examine whether their conversations help employees understand how they’re doing. Waiting for a formal review to discuss recurring issues reduces the time available to address them before performance is assessed. Regular conversations allow you to recognize progress, clarify expectations, and adjust support while the work is underway. Compassionate leadership gives employees a chance to use your feedback before you evaluate whether they’ve improved.
Compassionate leadership considers the whole team
Mr. Belding was responsible for a school full of students, including those affected by someone else’s choices. Managers have a similar responsibility when they decide how much flexibility to give an employee. An extension may be reasonable, but the work still has to fit with commitments made to colleagues or customers. Before agreeing, determine what can wait, what can change, and who would have to take on more work. Discuss capacity with the people affected rather than assuming they can absorb another assignment. Compassionate leadership requires considering the people who bear the cost of the accommodation as well as the person requesting it.
Compassionate leadership also requires protecting reliable employees from becoming the default solution to someone else’s performance issues. They finish the overdue assignment, resolve the customer issue, or take responsibility for work that wasn’t theirs. A leader may appreciate that help while failing to recognize how often they’re asking for it. If you keep accepting the rescue without addressing the cause, you’re deciding whose time will compensate for the unresolved issue. Examine the workload, make temporary coverage explicit, and establish when you’ll reassess it. Someone’s willingness to help shouldn’t become an open-ended obligation to make up for another person’s missed commitments.
Compassionate leadership requires honesty about opportunities
A leader can make a sound decision and still leave someone disappointed. A promotion can go to another candidate, a proposed project can be declined, or a request for additional resources can be refused. Compassionate leadership requires listening to how the decision affects the person and explaining the reasons you can share. You also need to remain open to information that could change your assessment. If there’s no substantive reason to reverse the decision, discomfort alone shouldn’t determine the outcome. The employee deserves an honest explanation and a clear understanding of any options that remain.
Promotion conversations test compassionate leadership because reassurance can easily create false expectations. Telling someone their opportunity is coming soon may make the conversation easier, but it’s misleading if no position or timing has been established. Separate their readiness for a role from the availability of that role. Identify skills they can develop and assignments that let them demonstrate those skills without promising an outcome you can’t authorize. Be candid when opportunities within the organization are limited. Someone may decide to pursue their next step elsewhere, but they should be able to make that decision with accurate information.
In Pew Research Center’s survey of Americans who voluntarily left a job in 2021, 63% cited a lack of advancement opportunities and 57% cited feeling disrespected at work among their reasons for leaving. Those findings give leaders a reason to examine the opportunities and treatment employees actually experience. A friendly conversation can’t create an available promotion or correct an unfair workload by itself. Practicing compassionate leadership means deciding what you can change and being candid about what you can’t. An employee asking about their future is making decisions about their time, income, and professional growth. Praise shouldn’t take the place of information they need to make those decisions.
How compassionate leadership makes it easier to ask for help
Mr. Belding’s students knew he was someone they could turn to when they needed help. Employees need that confidence in their manager when work is going wrong or they’re unsure how to proceed. Amy Edmondson’s study of 51 work teams found that psychological safety was associated with learning behavior. For a leader, that finding supports examining your response when someone admits uncertainty or reports a mistake. Start by understanding the issue and deciding what needs attention, then determine responsibility and corrective action. Compassionate leadership allows an employee to remain accountable for their work while knowing that asking for help is an acceptable part of doing it.
Compassionate leadership recognizes the difference between reporting a risk early and concealing it until the team has few options left. Recognizing that difference doesn’t require excusing the underlying mistake. Address the immediate impact and examine whether the cause was an individual choice, an unclear handoff, or an unrealistic workload. If the process contributed to the issue, decide what needs to change in the process. If someone disregarded a clear requirement, address that choice directly. Your response should make it more likely that the next issue reaches you while there’s still time to act.
The standards we set tell people what we expect from them. The effort we put into their success tells them what they can expect from us. Employees learn about both when we discuss a difficult assignment, respond to a missed commitment, or make time for the guidance we promised. Compassionate leadership becomes credible through those decisions, which give people reasons to trust our concern even when we ask more of them. Mr. Belding was in his students’ corner even when he wasn’t on their side. That balance made him the principal we wished we had as kids. Finding that balance can make us the leaders we hope to be as adults.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you practice compassionate leadership when an employee is underperforming?
Identify the specific expectation the employee isn’t meeting and discuss what’s preventing them from meeting it. Listen for gaps in experience, conflicting priorities, or support you haven’t provided. Decide what needs to change without leaving the required result unclear. Agree on the employee’s next steps, your own commitments, and when you’ll review progress. They should leave knowing the issue matters and having a realistic opportunity to address it.
How does compassionate leadership shape difficult feedback?
Don’t assume your familiarity with each other makes an indirect message clear. Identify the behavior and explain how it affected the work. Give the employee a chance to respond and correct any assumptions you’ve made. Agree on what needs to happen next while avoiding reassurance that contradicts the concern you’re raising. A strong relationship should allow an honest discussion that helps the employee improve.
How do you apply compassionate leadership without overloading colleagues?
Before approving flexibility or reassigning work, identify which commitments will be affected. Decide what can wait, what can be reduced, and what needs temporary coverage. Discuss capacity with the people who would take on additional work. Establish when you’ll reassess the arrangement so the added responsibility doesn’t become indefinite. Supporting one person is more sustainable when you also consider the workload of the people helping them.
How does compassionate leadership address disagreement?
Listen for relevant information you may have overlooked. Explain the reasons for your decision and clarify which parts remain open for discussion. Change your assessment when the new information warrants it. If it doesn’t, acknowledge the disappointment and explain what happens next. The employee may continue to disagree, but they should understand the decision and what’s expected of them.
How do you maintain accountability when an employee asks for help?
First, understand the issue and determine whether the work needs immediate attention. Clarify what assistance the employee needs and what they remain responsible for doing. Recognize the value of raising a concern early while addressing any mistake that contributed to it. Agree on next steps and follow up on the commitments each of you makes. Employees should be able to ask for help without being relieved of every responsibility or punished for admitting they need guidance.
