Does Compassion Matter in Leadership? A Two‐Stage Sequential Equal Status Mixed Method Exploratory Study of Compassionate Leader Behavior and Connections to Performance in Human Resource Development

• Author: Denise Cumberland,Meera Alagaraja,Brad Shuck,Maryanne Honeycutt‐Elliott,Jason Immekus
• Date: 01 December 2019
• Published date: 01 December 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrdq.21369

MIXED METHODS STUDY

Does Compassion Matter in Leadership?

A Two-Stage Sequential Equal Status Mixed

Method Exploratory Study of Compassionate

Leader Behavior and Connections to Performance

in Human Resource Development

Brad Shuck

1

| Meera Alagaraja

1

| Jason Immekus

1

|

Denise Cumberland

1

| Maryanne Honeycutt-Elliott

2

1

Educational Leadership, Evaluation, and Organizational Development, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky

2

Executive Leadership Program, George Washington University, Washington, District of Columbia

Correspondence

Brad Shuck, College of Education and Human

Development, University of Louisville,

Suite#346, 1905 S 1st St, Louisville, KY

40208.

Email: brad.shuck@louisville.edu

Abstract

The transformative power of compassion is critical to leader

performance and has garnered increasing interest in business

settings. Despite substantive contributions toward the con-

ceptual understanding of compassion, prior empirical work

on the relationship between compassion and leader perfor-

mance is relatively limited. This article presents compassion-

ate leader behavior as a conceptualization of a new

leadership construct. A two-stage, sequential, and equal sta-

tus mixed method research design was utilized to develop

and validate a measure of compassionate leadership. Study

1 used a phenomenological approach to understand how

leaders engage with compassion and how their experiences

and behaviors associated with compassion affect perfor-

mance within the context of their leadership. Findings

The Compassionate Leader Behavior Index (CBLI) is permitted for broad use in noncommercial settings, including but not limited to academically focused

research to include dissertations and theses and original works of scholarship and grant activity within the limitations of the publication copyright, so long

as this work is appropriately and correctly cited. To use the instrument in a commercial and/or for-profit setting, or for questions regarding permission of

use, please contact the corresponding author. Additional materials including the questions contained within the Compassionate Leader Behavior Index are

available upon request.

DOI: 10.1002/hrdq.21369

© 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Human Resource Development Quarterly. 2019;30:537–564. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hrdq 537

indicated that when leaders focused on compassionate

behaviors during routine andfocal events in the organization,

six distinctive themes—integrity, empathy, accountability,

authenticity, presence, and dignity—emerged as individual-

level building blocks of compassionate leadership behavior.

In Study 2, we developed and validated a Compassionate

Leader Behavior Index (CLBI) based on the six emergent

behaviors and found general support for compassionate

leadership for both practice and research. Implications of

study findings and directions for future research in human

resource development (HRD) are discussed.

KEYWORDS

compassion, compassionate leadership, human resource

development, mixed methods

1|INTRODUCTION

Compassion is a human experience defined broadly as an individual response to personal suffering (Lilius, Worline,

Dutton, Kanov, & Maitlis, 2011). Compassion can be both given and received by an individual or as a collective, at

any time, with little regard to formal boundaries. The workplace is no exception to the reach of compassion and

leaders play an important role in legitimizing the influence of compassion in a work setting (Frost, Dutton, Worline, &

Wilson, 2000; Lilius et al., 2008). Through their behavior, leaders influence organizational norms that others experi-

ence, respond to, and replicate (Lilius et al., 2011). For example, leaders can help employees see the positive side of

challenging events or frame difficult problems as learning opportunities, and thus, influence outcomes even when

teams might be in the midst of difficult circumstances. Certainly, these challenges as well as a host of other emerging

opportunities for human resource development (HRD) scholars and practitioners represent the ways in which our

field could influence the context and future of human interaction in work.

The specific function of compassion related to leader behavior in a work setting remains an underexamined topic

across the HRD field as well as in related fields, such asmanagement and organizationdevelopment. More, the poten-

tial for compassion to engender beneficial individual and organizational resources is not yet explored, applied, or fully

developed (Dutton & Workman, 2011; Rynes, Bartunek, Dutton, & Margolis, 2012). Beyond a limited number of

pioneering articles (c.f., Lilius et al., 2008), very little work can empirically comment on how compassion—a behavior

that a leader mightmodel—could influence performance withinany setting, including throughoutthe field of HRD.

The purpose of our research was to examine why compassionate leader behavior could matter in the workplace,

how it might be operationalized, and to identify the potential influence of compassionate leader behavior on

performance-related outcomes. Two broad questions guided our work: (a) is there a distinctive subset of leader

behaviors related to the experience of compassion (i.e., compassionate leadership) and if such behaviors existed and

could be documented, (b) what influence might compassionate leader behavior have on performance within the

framework of HRD? Consistent with Dutton and Workman (2011), we believed that the ripple effects of compas-

sion, enacted through a person's behavior—and in our specific case, a leader's behavior—should be documentable

through live experience by way of a potentially novel operationalization. This offered a new approach for conceptu-

alizing and operationalizing something we called compassionate leader behavior.

538 SHUCK ET AL.