Compassionate Leadership

Shortlisted in the Leadership category at the Business Book Awards in partnership with Pathway Group 2024

Longlisted for the CMI Management Publication of the Year 2024 Finalist in the Leadership – Think Differently category of the Goody Business Book Awards 2023 Experts increasingly recognise that our volatile, complex, and fragile world requires a new type of leadership. More than ever, we need leaders who understand how compassion connects them with their employees, stakeholders and wider communities. Yet compassion in organisations is often misunderstood, with many leaders reluctant to embrace it lest they appear weak. Compassionate Leadership draws on new and established research in psychology, behavioural science, neuropsychology and leadership theory to show that compassion, when correctly understood and applied is, in fact, a formidable and sustainable force for positive leadership. This book explores the common myths, pitfalls, and concerns about leading with a compassionate approach. It discusses the leadership, organisational and individual benefits of compassion and shows how leaders can design an organisation which establishes, then reinforces, a compassionate culture. A practical guide, this book provides evidence-based tools, appraisals, and frameworks which emphasise everyday applications that leaders, managers, and business students can adopt both individually and for their organisations. Compassionate Leadership presents a new model of compassion, an approach based on multidisciplinary research in a variety of organisational settings. It gives leaders a theoretical and practical underpinning they can use for deeper reflection and personal growth to turn their new-found knowledge into action.

Author Biography

Kirstie Drummond Papworth is a psychologist, Behavioural Change Executive Coach and compassion researcher. Her research includes an examination into the effects of self-compassion on stress, anxiety and depression in leaders, as well as research into the benefits of organisational compassion. Kirstie’s commercial background includes various roles in a FTSE50 organisation, commercial director for an independent wine importer, executive director at a leading global business school and running her own successful behavioural change consultancy, Tangerine Thistle.

Kirstie delivers leadership development interventions across many sectors including higher education, retail, software, engineering, healthcare and the armed forces. She also delivers regular webinars and workshops for the British Psychological Society. Kirstie has delivered keynote speaker events on compassionate leadership for conferences and professional development groups, including LeanIn, numerous NHS Trusts and BBC Radio. She is a TEDx speaker on her specialist subject of compassion, and is Chair of Trustees for the Dalai Lama Centre for Compassion, Oxford.