In case you haven’t already signed up to Harvard Business Review’s Morning Advantage, here’s another sign they have come up trumps again – a link to an article on the role played by compassion by leaders in boosting productivity and business results.  Morning Advantage puts it this way:

What separates great companies from the rest of herd is the compassion of its leaders, according to one new study detailed by Knowledge@Australian School of Business.  Many of us will readily agree that the best managers tend to be great motivators and promoters of success. But compassion may have a bigger impact than we think. In the 77 organizations studied, researchers saw a direct relationship between compassion and productivity — and profits. 

But being compassionate doesn’t mean avoiding difficult situations. As leadership expert Geoff Aigner found in his own research, the biggest road block managers must overcome is their reluctance to engage in tough conversations for fear of being unkind. This is a common mistake, confusing compassion with kindness, says Aigner. Leaders who truly care about the development and growth of their employees are able to push through the awkwardness, and tell it straight. 

I was surprised by the definitions of compassion offered by two thought leaders in the area and still, it does not surprise me that research supports the idea that compassion boosts productivity.  As a student of Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent (or Compassionate) Communication my own experience is that compassion is an essential ingredient in forging strong relationships and provides a basis for some of the essentials of leadership, including effective coaching and the kind of ‘tough’ conversations to which Morning Adantage refers.  For this reason, I regularly reference Rosenberg’s teachings here on my blog.

But back to the article I mentioned above, do read it – whether you have doubts about such a claim or want to learn more.

There is one claim made in the article which challenges my thinking – it certainly merits further investigation.  The writer says:

A surprising outcome of Boedker’s research is the finding that, out of four levels of leadership from the executive level through middle management to frontline managers, it’s the lowest level of leaders that drives a company’s profitability. Perhaps, Boedker surmises, this is because frontline managers are more customer-facing than others and therefore have a lot more impact.

I wonder, what’s the truth of this assertion…