Heal to Lead

19How We Respond Matters

IT'S NO SURPRISE that organizations led by compassionate leaders thrive in the long term compared to those with low-conscious leaders at the helm. Recall the list of historical and present-day examples in Chapter 7. That is due in part to a shift in employee mindset and consumer behavior when leaders respond to internal or external situations from a place of support—versus indifference or intolerance. This behavioral change, sometimes seen in either unprecedented sales or a boycott, is the extrinsic evidence of the power of compassion—or the lack thereof.

How we respond matters. Compassion matters. We see this in four key areas, although there are certainly many other ways in which the difference is made obvious: Stakeholder Experience, Competition, Brand Perception, and Reaction to Social Issues. The direct experience that our stakeholders have with our organization, as well as how we talk about and respond to our competitors, influences organizational culture and impacts our external brand perception. How we respond matters most when social issues arise, and the last few years have provided more evidence of that than any prior time in history.

Do you recall how organizations responded to the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement? How sharply that changed course in the few years since, especially as DEI programs were defunded at some state universities and government agencies. When funds in places like Florida, North and South ...