Compassionate Leadership - an interview with Yolanda Lee
Meet Yolanda Lee
Yolanda Lee, CEO of Uncommon, shares insights on compassionate leadership's impact, highlighting the development of policies such as maternity leave to foster inclusivity and community building within the organization. She emphasizes the importance of balancing assertiveness and decisiveness while maintaining compassion, fostering growth, and embracing self-compassion as foundational principles in leadership.
As the CEO of Uncommon, could you share a specific instance where practicing compassionate leadership has significantly impacted the culture and dynamics within your organisation?
I have really tried to build an organisation - and a community for that matter - that builds itself together with those who participate in the organisation. This can encompass various aspects, from remote work policies to maternity leave policies. Throughout my career, I had never had a team member go on maternity leave until our Head of Growth became pregnant with her second child. We worked together to create a policy designed with women as a feature, not a bug, in the workplace. This is something I continuously strive for with both employees and our community: consistently breaking paradigms and truly centring our members and team at the core of what we do.
How do you measure the effectiveness of compassionate leadership in terms of tangible outcomes such as productivity, employee retention, and overall client satisfaction within Uncommon?
Our first indicator is employee retention and their development. Compassionate leadership focuses on relationships, empathising with individuals, understanding their strengths and weaknesses, and embracing their imperfections. This lays the groundwork for how employees grow, push themselves, take on new tasks, and expand their realm of possibilities, ultimately leading to better retention. Compassionate leadership also positively impacts creativity and innovation by fostering an environment where everyone's voices and ideas matter, and where people feel valued. Such an environment encourages creativity and open sharing of ideas and opinions, creating a culture of innovation. As an organization, growth and improvement, being compassionate with ourselves and as leaders, acknowledging mistakes, learning from them, and striving to be better each day are crucial. In a startup, constant iteration, making mistakes, learning from them, and moving forward are essential.
How do you balance the need for assertiveness and decisiveness with the principles of compassionate leadership to drive both short-term results and long-term sustainability for Uncommon?
Some people mistake compassionate leadership for simply being a people pleaser and being nice. However, compassionate leadership sometimes involves having difficult conversations and addressing issues directly and clearly, albeit compassionately. For instance, compassionate leadership includes having conversations about why someone may not be achieving results and, in some instances, taking actions such as letting someone go if it's best for all parties involved. It's about considering the needs of the organization, the team, and the individual, and communicating effectively as a compassionate leader. It's important that no one is blindsided by decisions, maintaining a sense of value for the individual throughout the process.
From your perspective, what do you think is the key to compassionate leadership?
I believe, as a general philosophy, that our job as leaders is to unlock the light, the potential of those that we work with. The key lies in starting with yourself—how compassionate you are to yourself about the mistakes you make, the challenges you face, and the decisions you take. It's easy, especially as a startup founder, to focus on what didn't go right. Compassionate leadership involves having the humility to say, "Maybe I didn't get that right, and I own that," showing compassion for yourself. While it may not be a prerequisite, it's incredibly challenging to show compassion for your team, organization, and customers if you don't have it for yourself.
