What a Special Forces Commander Taught Me About Compassionate Leadership
How great leaders find the balance between competence and compassion.
I didn’t expect the topic of compassion and empathy to come up in my conversation with Chris.
Chris was a Green Beret and a combat commander — he was in the Army for decades. He’s literally advised presidents of countries and led special operations units across three continents (that I know of). And here he is telling me why compassion is a critical element of leadership.
I was in the military for 15 years myself. I was in combat and led teams across three continents, too. I was never in the types of elite units that Chris was, but I did work with a lot of them. And the word “compassion” never crossed my mind.
How does Chris, an SF operator, define and describe this side of leadership? What is the connection between being empathetic and being directive? How do we bridge this gap and how do we know where to strike a balance?
Competence / Compassion Model
The leadership concept that Chris introduced me to was the spectrum of competence and compassion. In how he described it to me, every leader needs to have both competence and compassion as cornerstones. These are…
