The Double Bottom Line

How Compassionate Leaders Captivate Hearts and Deliver Results

Donato Tramuto, Tami Booth Corwin

• Publisher: Fast Company Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781639080045
• eBook ISBN:
  9781639080052
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Strategy
• Index: Business

Compassionate leadership isn’t about being nice; when practiced effectively, it’s a strong leadership style that can elevate your spirits and profits.

Compassionate leaders are not weak. They are tough leaders who understand that they can be good to their people and deliver stronger results. In fact, taking care of your people actually leads to better results. In his new book, Donato Tramuto—recognized CEO, business leader, innovator, and philanthropist,—makes the case that compassion is a key leadership principle that 

• powerfully drives trust, success, and innovation;
• raises morale, builds stronger teams, and improves overall performance;
• creates sustainable commitment to an organization’s mission and values.

Tramuto interviewed nearly 40 successful leaders who practice compassionate leadership and reveals the best strategies from their playbooks. He then combined these interviews with his own insights, numerous studies, and original, qualitative research of 1,500 participants to unleash the measurable data and benefits of compassion in the workplace.

Most leaders have an innate desire to be compassionate, but many don't know how to put it into practice. This book shares inspiring stories and actionable examples of how proven leaders have accomplished this and how you can too. The bottom line on bottom lines: compassionate leadership is about better people and better business. 

Part I

Defining a New Model of Leadership

Chapter 1

It’s Time to Flip Traditional Leadership on Its Head

If I asked you what training to be a priest has in common with training to sell drugs, I’m pretty certain you’d say, “Nothing!” But, in 1980, I was doing both.

After years of training to be a priest, I was wavering on whether the priesthood was right for me. I decided to take a sabbatical from the seminary until I had more certainty. During that time, I worked as a hospital chaplain, taught a course in philosophy, and generally contemplated my future. One day, when I was reading the newspaper, I saw an ad for a pharmaceutical sales position with Marion Labs. On a whim, I decided to apply. That became my first job in the business world.

After years of preparing for a life of ministry, I wanted to find some kind of purpose or deeper meaning in this new job, something more than reaching sales goals. Years before, my sister-in-law Rosemary had died tragically during childbirth because of a simple and preventable medication error. I adored Rosemary and had trouble making sense of her loss. I tried to see this job as an opportunity to educate doctors, in the hope that I might help prevent future senseless deaths like Rosemary’s.

I started work at the beginning of what many have since referred to as the “decade of greed.” My boss Hank seemed to fit right in. A former college hockey player, he was still very competitive and wanted to win above all else. He made sure that his employees knew that his only focus was to make a lot of money. He was tough and far from compassionate. Hank was an example of the type of old-school manager who set aggressive goals and used toughness to push his employees to achieve those goals.

I was miserable. I lasted less than a year in that job and left it disillusioned about the workplace and still confused about my future. Hank showed me a business world with no heart. I wasn’t sure that world was right for someone who was more influenced by the seminary than by sales. The competitive life in a high-pressure sales job was a jarring change from the contemplative life of the seminary.

Despite this experience, I ultimately concluded that Hank’s way was not the only way. I also came to see that working for a for-profit company still allowed me to have an opportunity to help other people. I decided not to finish my seminary studies and to commit to a career in business instead. But the experience with Hank cemented a belief that still drives me: Leaders can be successful without sacrificing their values.

I entered an MBA program at the University of Buffalo. While pursuing an MBA, I went back to work again as a sales rep for a pharmaceutical company, this time for Boehringer Ingelheim. Fortunately, there I worked for a manager named Markus whose team leadership and goal achievement style was quite different from Hank’s. I thrived under this positive leadership; so did the whole team. We consistently exceeded our sales goals, and I quietly noticed that we all did it together and without misery!

My first two managers were a study in leadership contrasts. Hank, an aggressive, old-school, win-at-all-costs manager, and Markus, a positive, empowering, team-oriented leader. There were two lessons in this:

1. You can learn just as much from negative leadership examples as you can from positive ones. Hank proved that to me.

2. A positive manager can produce better results than a negative one. In fact, more often than not, positive leaders with skill and knowledge excel at producing positive results.

The Evolution of Leadership

In the 1980s, there was a tension between the human-centered and money/power-centered forces that are still competing in our workplaces and society today. On the human- or team-centered side, surely one of the most notable business leaders of the time was Lee Iacocca, the CEO of Chrysler. He got a lot of press; he was frequently interviewed, observed, and—though often critiqued—emulated.

Lee Iacocca was famous for saving Chrysler. In manufacturing, Chrysler was a monolithic, union worker–driven business. Charged with leading it, Iacocca took it from the brink of bankruptcy and transformed it into a successful and innovative company.

He was a transformational leader who focused on the concept of teamwork. Unlike many dictatorial, “the-CEO-knows-best” leaders before him, he believed that a CEO didn’t have to have all the answers. He described his leadership approach in this quote: “I hire people who are brighter than me, and then I get out of the way.”

Around that time, a more rank-and-file-empowering and less top-down-controlling management style started to take hold and unfold in business, and Lee Iacocca no doubt fit that mold. Certainly, the older, more traditional, top-down-controlling type of leadership persisted. In fact, we still see it today in all sorts and sizes of businesses.

The 1980s also produced plenty of win-at-all-costs leaders. In fact, that was probably still the dominant style. There were plenty of infamous examples on Wall Street who took the model to an extreme and ended in disaster, like Ken Lay, the founder of Enron; Dick Fuld, whose hubris was reportedly responsible for the collapse of one of the most prestigious banks at the time, Lehman Brothers; and Jordan Belfort, the real-life inspiration for the movie The Wolf of Wall Street.

I believe that the difference today—four decades later—is that the human-centered leadership approach is finally pulling ahead and taking hold as the better fit for the challenges and opportunities that lie before leaders. Its influence is strengthening, and its adoption is spreading in organizations big and small. I believe its momentum will allow it to become the standard.

As Victor Hugo said, “No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come.” I’m certain that compassionate leadership’s time has come.

Defining Compassionate Leadership

I see compassionate leadership as listening to others’ challenges, needs, or problems; having empathy for them; and then actually doing something about it. To me, empathy—the ability to think about and feel for another person’s problems, suffering, or experience—is a critical component. Compassion, on the other hand, usually starts with or coexists with empathy, but it adds the desire and action to relieve that person’s suffering, help them overcome a challenge, or otherwise better their situation.

Compassion shows that you have committed to the person. You’ve embraced the dignity of that individual. I’ve always loved the line from Man of La Mancha, “Be willing to march into hell for a heavenly cause,” and I think that’s also what compassion is sometimes: being willing to take that road less traveled and set yourself apart from what others might be afraid to do. In an organization, because it is only people who get results, I think it means that you invest your time in individuals, and that is how the organization prospers. In other words, people are your true focus.

As I mentioned in the introduction, I reached out to more than forty of the most compassionate leaders I knew to interview them in depth for this book. I chose leaders who had demonstrated success in their own arenas as well as exhibited a compassionate leadership style. These are leaders who have practiced and refined this approach and can speak to it from a place of wisdom and experience. The first question I asked every leader we interviewed for this book was how they defined compassionate leadership. Their words were different, but they all conveyed the same essence.

Jeff Arnold, founder and CEO of Sharecare, defined compassionate leadership in terms of how it can be practiced in an organization. I’ve known Jeff since he founded WebMD, and I’ve long admired his leadership. When asked about how he sees compassion in practice, he explained: “I’m very mission driven. I’ve been around digital health for a long time trying to solve the complicated problems of the health-care system and how to improve well-being. I think of compassion as how we put ourselves in the shoes of another person. Sometimes that person is a consumer; sometimes they are a patient, an employee, a health-plan member, or a friend. It’s trying to put myself in their shoes and know what they’re dealing with. It’s feeling that shared compassion and then trying to take action to work through solutions together.”

As a pioneer in digital health, Jeff is, among other things, data driven. He spoke about the importance of pairing empathy with action in that context: “Data is only as good as the insight, and the insight is only as good as the action. That’s our approach. Can I understand the situation? What insights can I get from that? Then what do I do about it?” In short, yes, Jeff is a data-driven leader. At the same time, he is a people-focused one. He sees getting outstanding bottom-line results not as separate from his leadership style but rather as a result of it.

Jeff Arnold is a great example of how compassionate leaders can be tough and compassionate, people-focused and very successful. He has been an ambitious entrepreneur, and anyone who has negotiated a deal with him knows he is a tough negotiator. After founding WebMD in the nineties, Jeff became a billionaire before the age of thirty and has gone on to continue his focus on how to help people by improving health care.

Top Down Is Out

The great leaders we interviewed for this book described this shift to compassionate leadership as a movement from head to heart. They described the place from which a leader leads as no longer from the top of an organization, dictating down. Instead, they lead from the center or bottom up. The focus moves from leader-centric to team- and customer-centric. The drive moves from profit-first to people-first and from shareholder value to stakeholder value. Practicing this form of leadership focuses on the actions a leader can take to operationalize empathy in a sincere and effective way to help the organization or the community reach goals and become better along the way.

Traditional leadership models have been hierarchical and top-down. This type of leadership is often about senior leaders thinking they need to have or do have all the answers, that they need to give all the direction and must supply the big ideas. The leader assumes the role of sole strategist. This often comes with dictatorial communication from the top down and, at its extreme, can be management by force, even bullying, which still happens in too many organizations.

This model is top heavy in terms of who is expected to contribute and who has power or a voice in an organization. If the ideas are coming from the top down, companies and organizations are missing ideas from the ranks. Given that the average CEO in America is fifty-nine years old, male, and white,¹ and the total workforce is younger and more diverse, it also suggests that companies with an old-school style are going to be missing ideas, innovations, and a deep understanding of their customer base that their more diverse, recently schooled, and digitally and globally savvy workforces can offer. In addition, if there isn’t a regular and true many-way communication that reaches all those within the organization, leaders will miss issues and, as a result, live with the consequences of not resolving them.

The new compassion-driven model is much more flexible, as the stories throughout this book demonstrate. The top-down model is literally being flipped on its head by unquestionably great leaders who practice a more modern leadership style. It’s more about bottom-up or center-out structures, in which the leader is the central facilitator of innovation and problem-solving, using the great ideas that come from all members of the team, regardless of where in the business they work, to serve the customers. Meanwhile, everyone participates in the innovations, changes, and successes, and thrives.

Great leaders who use this approach understand that people and profits are concerns that are not mutually exclusive but actually dovetail naturally. They see that infusing their leadership with a deep commitment to compassion is the accelerant that gives it added power.

Leading from the Center

I see the role of a leader as a facilitator of ideas, communication, and culture among employees, team members, and constituents. The leader is like an orchestra conductor who knows how to get the best from the unique contribution of each instrument while never playing the instrument in the musician’s place. The leader is an influencer who knows how to get the best work from staff and how to support them as they work together to create a beautiful and powerful result.

Stefano Lucchini, a great friend of mine from my second home in Italy, described the disparity between the old and new models of leadership well. I work with Stefano on initiatives with the RFK Foundation, where he is chairman of the RFK Human Rights Foundation of Italy and where I serve on the board and support him as cochairman. Stefano said: “Leadership could be narrowly constructed, focused on how to manage teams, stay on the top, plan, and direct for the next issue. I take a broader view of leadership and subscribe to the eastern philosophy of leaders not at the top of a hierarchy but at the center of a network of talents, connections, and issues. Leadership in this sense is about understanding the different positions and points of view at stake, acting as a servant leader with compassion and understanding for the people I work with, our clients, our competitors, and the many other important stakeholders with whom we interact while fulfilling our range of societal responsibilities.”

The culture has to be one in which the leader recognizes that their role is not to have all the answers. On the contrary, their role is to have all the questions, and then to listen to the individuals around them in a way that creates a sense of unity and a respect for dignity. As a leader, when you listen to the stories of others as they open up for perhaps the first time in a work environment, you become more vulnerable. Which, as you’ll learn, is a good thing.

You’re not cultivating a culture of similarities. Your business’s culture and how you harmoniously thrive and prosper together is the result of having built upon differences. And I think that’s what I have fostered the most: inclusion. The reality of culture is that nobody can get anything done in any role without other people.

In 2020, I had the honor of joining St. Joseph’s College in Maine as their first-ever Honorary Scholar-in-Residence. One of the great benefits of this role is spending time with their president, Jim Dlugos, a true compassionate leader. When he was appointed president, he was described as a collaborator who can forge a common vision among people. I asked him about this, since it is an important part of compassionate leadership.

He told me that he was asked by someone at Maine Public Radio about his vision before he started in the role. He recalled that when asked, he was down in New Jersey and said he didn’t have a vision for St. Joseph’s, as...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword: Kathleen Kennedy Townsend
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: Defining a New Model of Leadership
• Part II: Secrets of Successful Leaders Who Win Hearts and Deliver Results
• Part III. Cultivating More Compassionate People
• Tribute Pages
• Notes
• Additional Resources
• Index
• About the Authors