Self-Compassion For Leaders and Teams
Recover Faster, Build Better Habits, and Lead Under Pressure
When I was struggling with a personal relationship in my mid-20s, my manager showed me a side of herself I’d never seen before. Her compassion and empathy shone through as she helped me take time to deal with my challenges and find personal balance again.
Chances are, you’re already pretty good at being compassionate. At least for someone else.
You’ll easily coach a team member. You’ll support and guide someone after they make a mistake. You’ll give someone the benefit of the doubt when they’re overwhelmed. You’ll be the first to reach out to someone who’s having a rough time.
But when you mess up, your own inner critic overwhelms you:
“I should know better.”
“That was sloppy.”
“I’ve let everyone down.”
It’s quite common. Many people are highly compassionate externally and relentlessly self-critical internally.
When you’re in self-critical mode, it switches on your threat system, increases stress, narrows your thinking, and makes it harder to recover, adapt, or change your behaviour. This works against what you’re probably looking to achieve: to be calm, clear, logical, and level-headed.
What Is Self-Compassion?
With it’s roots in ancient Buddhism and other contemplative practices, self-compassion has been studied in psychology for the last few decades. The work of Kristin Neff has brought self-compassion into the modern vernacular and opened up conversations in the workplace on what self-compassion is, and how it can help to improve relationships, increase resilience and create more psychologically safe and connected workplaces.
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At it’s core, to have self compassion relies on three main tenets.
1. Mindfulness - becoming aware of suffering
2. Common Humanity - understanding that suffering is part of the human experience
3. Self Kindness - treating yourself with the compassion and care that you would give a friend.
With these three points considered, self-compassion is the key to a positive and connected relationship with the self and with others.
Why Self-Compassion matters
Research shows that self-compassion is associated with:
Lower anxiety and depression
Less rumination
Greater emotional regulation
Higher life satisfaction and optimism
Increased motivation after failure
(Neff, K., 2017).
Large-scale meta-analyses (studies of studies) show that self-compassion interventions lead to meaningful reductions in stress and burnout, and also lead to improvements in resilience and healthy coping. This is important because in our daily lives, not everything goes to plan. Sometimes, a project fails, you get some tough feedback, or you’re trying to change your habits to become healthier, and it can be very easy to fall into self-criticism.
Self-compassion doesn’t remove the need for accountability. It removes the shame that often accompanies a failure.
Defensive vs Positive Emotions
Think about the last time something went wrong at work. Typically a situation like this feels like a threat and your nervous system reacts.
Criticism, mistakes, setbacks and uncertainty activate the sympathetic nervous system, your fight, flight or freeze response.
It’s a fast, defensive response that is accompanied by a negative inner narrative, such as:
“Don’t make another mistake.”
“You need to fix this immediately.”
“People will think you’re a loser.”
Biologically, this response is designed to protect you.
The threat system:
Increases cortisol
Narrows your thinking
Increases self-criticism
Reduces flexibility and creativity
Makes it harder to engage constructively with others
Self-Compassion During Challenge
Self-compassion helps the body to move out of the threat response and into the parasympathetic nervous system, for calm, regulation, and social engagement.
Higher levels of self-compassion have been linked with:
Healthier cortisol patterns
Improved heart rate variability (a marker of emotional flexibility)
Faster recovery after stress
Lower emotional reactivity under pressure
This is the biological difference between reacting defensively and responding intentionally. Self-awareness can help you to notice when you’re moving into the threat response and, using self-compassion, can help you move into the parasympathetic nervous system.
My story
As a public speaker and workshop facilitator, there have been plenty of times where things didn’t go to plan in my work. Whether it was technical problems, forgetting lines, mixing up activities, or making a mistake that feels catastrophic, I’ve been through most of them.
When I was younger, I used to take these mistakes on in a very personal way. My harsh inner critic would step in and I’d chastise myself for any mistake I made. When my threat response was activated it caused me to spiral downwards, feeling worse and worse, until all I wanted to was to get out of the room as quickly as possible.
Over time I learned the art of self-compassion and started to see that the mistakes I made in my job were just a normal part of being a human. I started to speak to myself more kindly and relax more when mistakes did happen. The knock-on effect of that was that I stayed calm and relaxed when things didn’t go to plan, and I was able to think more creatively and continue to relate to my class during the struggle, meaning everyone had a better time as a result.
The Habit Loop: Why Self-Criticism Undermines Healthy Change
Self-compassion is also critical when thinking about behaviour change. The person who is able to be more self-compassionate when trying to make changes to their health and wellbeing are more likely to be resilient and able to stay on task for their goals.
Many people are looking to improve their health and wellbeing in ways such as:
Sleep more consistently
Exercise regularly
Eat better
Set boundaries
Reduce alcohol or caffeine
Take breaks
Log off earlier
But goals like this can fall apart after a bad day if you’re a self-critical type.
An all-or-nothing shame and blame approach means one missed gym session sets back the whole week’s plan.
Self-criticism after a lapse increases shame and avoidance, which reduces motivation and persistence. You’re less likely to try again tomorrow because the behaviour is now associated with failure.
Self-compassion, on the other hand:
Reduces shame
Increases willingness to try again
Promotes adaptive coping
Supports values-based behaviour rather than avoidance
Studies have found that people higher in self-compassion are more likely to:
Maintain health goals
Return to habits after setbacks
Persist with behaviour change
Engage in preventative health behaviours
Self-compassion helps you to develop consistency when self-criticism threatens to pull you off track.
Looking to support your team to build self-compassion for more connected leadership? Contact Sunrise Well today to book a call.
My Story
I had my second child via an emergency C-section a few years ago. Suddenly my plan to bounce back into my morning yoga routine was not possible. I had an unplanned 12-week recovery ahead of me and in reality I needed years to rebuild my strength. There were many mornings in those first months where I didn’t have the strength to do even the most basic yoga poses that I’d enjoyed before. Often I struggled with the motivation to even get started after feeling physically and emotionally distanced from my original health goals.
Bringing self-compassion into my self-talk was an essential part of my recovery, and it allowed me to weather the setback and not get caught up in the sense of poor performance I was experiencing. I was able to put it into the bigger picture, take each day at a time, building slowly, while enjoying my new baby at the same time.
Self-Compassion At Work
Self-compassion is a critical skill in modern employment. It is even more critical for those who are looking to advance their career. People with low self-compassion don’t give themselves the opportunity to grow in their role.
Self-critical people at work tend to:
Avoid difficult conversations
Become defensive during feedback
Over-correct after mistakes
Struggle to recover after setbacks
Burn out while trying to maintain standards
Leading with self-compassion means you’re more likely to:
Take responsibility without shame
Learn from failure
Deliver feedback constructively
Maintain perspective under pressure
Create psychological safety
Self-compassion improves how you relate to yourself and how you relate to others.
Practice: 60-Second Self-Compassion Reset
Next time something goes wrong:
Notice
“This is stressful”, “I’m a failure”, or “I’m feeling embarrassed.”Normalise
“This happens to people all the time. It’s a natural part of being human”Respond Kindly
“What do I need right now to help me through this?”
This supportive inner narrative and internal inquiry can help you shift from threat mode to self-regulation.
From this position you’re viewing your problem with clarity, not defensiveness, from action, not avoidance.
Your self-compassion reflection
When you make a mistake at work, how do you respond?
If you’d like to learn more about building sustainable leadership habits and reducing burnout through evidence-based practices, contact Sunrise Well to learn about workshops on compassionate leadership and vitality at work.
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References:
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