Compassionate Leadership — Leading with my Heart and Head
By Chantel Mandel, Director, U.S. R&D Pharmaceutical Communications
One of the most powerful things I learned from working with the Women’s Leadership Initiative at Bayer is to be confident in who I am and how I lead — which is from the heart. It’s amazing that in our desire to grow and develop, we so easily assume that we must adopt the characteristics of those we see around and above us. Over the years I have certainly grown to be more assertive, decisive and direct. But I have also learned to embrace and leverage my own heart-centered leadership style that brings a compassionate lens to how decisions are made — especially when they involve people.
The organization that I help lead is undergoing significant change. We recently launched a new operational structure to enable us to be more efficient and ultimately, more competitive. It has not been an easy transition. We had to say goodbye to a number of our employees. We moved people into new roles, and now we’re refining how we work to ensure that we truly enable the most essential activities. What we do is important. There are patients and families who count on us to produce and deliver life-changing medicines. We don’t take this responsibility lightly, and so any kind of change in our work environment is hard.
Change guru John Kotter said in his book The Heart of Change that, “Although most organizations believe that change happens by making people think differently, the key lies more in making them feel differently.” Much of the work that my team and I lead is centered in this concept. As communicators, we start with a premise that our role is to engage and educate. But it’s so much deeper than that — especially when we are driving change. It begins with defining what we want people to know and think about a particular topic, but action comes when we focus on what we want them to feel and do. Most of us want to be connected to our work. We need to believe that it has purpose and adds value. And we want to feel valued and appreciated — in big and small ways. This is what makes a culture strong.
I am energized every day when I walk onto our campus in Berkeley, California and am greeted with smiles and hellos. Years ago I worked for a large hotel chain, and we were taught to make eye contact with an approaching guest or colleague at 10 feet and then to say hello at 5 feet. It was called the 10 and 5 Rule, and I never stopped doing it. My kids laugh at me as I greet fellow customers in the parking lot of the grocery store. So I suppose, those morning smiles and hellos on campus may actually be in response to my own behavior each day. Wherever it comes from, I just know that that simple gesture sets the tone for my day.
Compassionate leadership is not a soft skill. It’s an essential competency that we must embrace if we want to inspire and motivate people to bring their best selves to work. Jeff Weiner, CEO at LinkedIn, gave an inspirational graduation speech at Wharton last May that focused on the importance of compassion and how it can build better companies. One of his stories explains that by investing in a compassionate ethos inside LinkedIn — especially within his leadership team — they were more innovative and decisive simply because of the increased level of trust that existed within the team.
I’ve been told that I wear my heart on my sleeve, and I have no doubt that is true. What I am learning to do, however, is to lead confidently with my heart, knowing that a compassionate voice and lens may be the difference that sparks and inspires trust, fosters collaboration and ultimately drives new innovation in an organization that must transform to succeed.
