How do you use compassionate management to drive results?

- At the end of the day, I think one of the most important drivers of long term value within an organization is the speed and quality of its decision making. And you'll look back on companies that have created outsize value and they're going to be able to count on one, two hands the number of decisions that changed the trajectory of that company. The challenge is that, that's retrospectively, that they can identify which decisions those were. When you cultivate trust, when you cultivate compassionate management you put yourself and your team in a position were you can be making high quality decisions faster. When you're not being compassionate, you're constantly thinking about why somebody has the intention and the motivation that they do. Why they disagree with you. Where they're coming from, what they're trying to accomplish at your expense. And you start to multiply that through an organization of hundreds if not thousands of people and you can do the math. It becomes prohibitively expensive in terms of the cycles that could otherwise be spent trying to fight against a competitor or trying to make a more informed decision, or a better decision, or revisit a decision, or learn and grow. So I think it just builds a very strong foundation regardless. Reed mentioned another really important point that's worth calling out. Which is this idea that compassion is a soft skill, or it's touchy-feely or it's an eye-roller, this new age concept. The strongest people I know are the most compassionate. True, unconditional compassion requires almost super-human strength. And self confidence. And a sense of who you are. And not allowing other people to get you to question that. And not falling prey to vulnerabilities or insecurities and those triggers, but rising above it and putting yourself in the other persons shoes. I'll give you another example of where it requires real strength. And one of the most common questions I get, is if you're managing compassionately how do you ever let anyone go? That's not a compassionate thing to do. It turns out when someone's struggling in their role, the least compassionate thing you can do is have them stay in the role. And for those of you that have ever worked at company, or been in business and you've seen someone struggle, it's actually a really difficult thing to watch. Because they lose their self confidence, they lose their sense of self and they start to become a shadow of who they used to be. And that energy builds on itself and they are taking that energy to their team, they become less effective. You become less effective by virtue of letting that person remain in that role. And they're taking that energy home to their families. And so by virtue of trying to turn the other way and allow that to persist, because you don't want to make a hard decision, you make it worse. And you increase that person's suffering. So in that particular instance, the most compassionate thing you can do A, you could try to help them learn the skills they need and provide the coaching they need to be effective in their role. But to the extent that's not possible you want to transition them out as gracefully and constructively and compassionately as possible. And for anyone that thinks that's a touchy-feely thing, or a soft skill, try it sometime. 'Cause it's one of the hardest things you'll ever do as a manager.