Compassion

Compassion

Give me the courage to lead with wise compassion.

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. Lamentations 3:22, NIV

The leader seeks a future of excellence for the whole organization, compassion for each individual member.

BECAUSE you love me so strongly, I want to become everything you had in mind when you made me. I want to become more and more like you. I want to excel in every aspect of maturity. I want to be the best possible leader, who helps everyone in the organization experience the thrill of making a key contribution to a great success. God, I know you want these same experiences for every one of us.

Because you love me so tenderly, I trust your consoling compassion for all my shortcomings, incapacities, and broken dreams. I feel secure with you even when I do not act as you want me to and when I fail to lead well or fail to lead at all. God, I know you want everyone in the organization to feel the same kind of security, but compassion has a high price in our competitive environment.

Lord, I am called to lead the whole organization forward, but I am also responsible for the welfare of each person along the way. The organization exists to help build great people by serving people’s real needs with excellence. For so many of us to labor together and serve so many, we need fair policies that express your compassion.

Yet sometimes what seems wise policy for everyone in general also seems to hurt someone in particular. What is the proper compassion for the individual who cannot contribute what we really need in order to reach our goals? If someone is not carrying his fair share of the load, it damages and discourages the others. What is the proper compassion for the individual whom we did not serve well? If I make a compassionate exception for one employee or one customer, I can easily force an unfair hardship on others.

Lord, I cannot always discern the genuine problems that we should try to alleviate from the imagined or even fraudulent ones. I need your light to ensure that in attempting to show compassion we aren’t simply being gullible.

Give me the right sense of compassion. I need keen judgment to balance the needs of each individual with the needs of the organization and those we exist to serve. Help me to remember that with you mercy always triumphs over judgment. You want us to become like you, but when we fall short, your banner over us is loving compassion. Help me to mirror that compassion, both in policies and in exceptions.

Give me the courage to lead with wise compassion.

Reflections

The most difficult expression of compassion is to tell someone that he cannot reasonably be expected to accomplish what the organization needs and should be removed from his position. I have had to deliver such messages to staff, administrators, and boards in my own organization and in others. It has never once been an easy form of compassion, but it is one of the most critical.

In the process I have come to understand Jesus’ compassion as not mainly about letting people off the hook but enabling them to see their situation more accurately, especially their potential. Jesus enabled the blind to see, the lame to walk, the demon-possessed to live in freedom, and frightened fishermen to lead a spiritual movement that affects the whole world.

It can be just as compassionate to remove a person from a job in which he cannot succeed as it is to cure someone’s blindness. Working where it is impossible to succeed destroys the inner person. But compassion also requires us to help people with any aspect of the transition that they cannot reasonably do for themselves.

In the end, requiring such changes also shows compassion for the organization, whose success depends on top performance in each position. Such actions are done well only with the spiritual wisdom and courage that come through prayer.