The Compassion Trap: Why Your Company's Core Values Might Be Sabotaging Your Culture

culture workplace well-being Jan 13, 2025

Compassion fuels a healthy, high-performing culture. It's the foundation that drives engagement and accelerates team performance. But is listing compassion as a core value good enough?

Compassion is an action word; it's a verb. If your business publicly notes compassion as one of its core values, everyone will expect all leaders to show compassion in everything they do. If leaders don't, your business has created a breeding ground for frustration, anger, and disappointment, resulting in an unhealthy culture because employees won't trust their leader cares about them.

If your business values compassion, leaders at all levels need to be able to authentically show compassion. If leaders cannot match their actions to the value of compassion, people's desire to perform beyond the bare minimum to collect a paycheck diminishes. When the opportunity arises, people will jump at the chance to leave the business and work somewhere where leaders can show them compassion.

You may say, "Our company chose compassion as a value we aspire to attain. Compassion is our goal for how we want to live in the future." Here's the deal: That may be the intent, but if every leader can't live up to the values you've publicly stated, your business will find itself constantly battling culture and engagement issues.

It's great that so many businesses value compassion; every business should. The problem is not naming compassion as a core value; it's naming it as an aspirational value rather than a required behavior that every leader is responsible for living.

Want a healthy, high-performing culture? Make compassion a measurable leadership behavior rather than an aspirational goal.