Leading with Wise Compassion: Building High-Performing, Values-Driven Teams in Education

25 Jul

To navigate complexity and change, Leadership is becoming more and more centred around connection, but this is often more difficult in practice than in theory.

When individuals' leaders work with can vary so widely in their values, beliefs, approaches, behaviours and personalities on top of an ever increasing demand something has to change in how leaders have been typically ‘trained’. Among the most under-leveraged and misunderstood leadership capacities is one that research now elevates as both strategic and humanistic: wise compassion. It is a leadership quality that often goes unnamed but is deeply felt.

At the executive level, where systemic decisions ripple across schools, staff, and students, wise compassion is a leadership necessity. When embedded in the relational fabric of educational leadership, it fosters psychological safety, enhances performance, strengthens culture, and drives values-aligned change.

What Is Wise Compassion? The Nexus of Clarity and Care

Wise compassion, as defined by Dutton & Worline (2017), is:

“the intelligent integration of compassion and wisdom to respond skillfully to suffering, complexity, and challenge.”

It goes beyond kindness or empathy. It is discernment with care, the ability to act with heart and head, especially in times of pressure or uncertainty. Could this quality ever be more important with education facing crucial ethical choices as to how it must move forward?

Wise compassion enables leaders to:

Hold high expectations while remaining attuned to people’s emotional needs.

Make difficult decisions while preserving dignity and connection.

Build relational trust even while addressing underperformance.

In this way, it aligns with adaptive leadership (Heifetz et al., 2009), which requires navigating competing values and difficult trade-offs, staying emotionally present and purpose-driven.

Why Relationships Are Not "Soft" Strategy, They are at the Strategic Core

The notion that relational leadership is “soft” or secondary is being dismantled by decades of leadership research an empirical evidence. High-impact studies across sectors, including education, affirm that relational trust is a foundational element of organizational effectiveness.

Bryk and Schneider (2002), in their seminal work on school reform, showed that relational trust among school leaders, teachers, and communities was the key differentiator between successful and stalled improvement efforts. Trust was not a vague concept- it was built on four discernible behaviours: respect, competence, personal regard, and integrity. All of these are core expressions of wise compassion.

Further research by Leithwood et al. (2020) on leadership during times of crisis (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic) emphasised that supportive and empathetic relationships with staff were strongly correlated with teacher resilience, morale, and commitment to school goals. This goes hand in hand with Amy Edmonson’s concept of psychological safety (see next section!)

In short: relationships aren’t a luxury. They’re infrastructure. And yet how present have they been in the training you have completed?

The Role of Psychological Safety: A Compassionate Climate for High Performance

Amy Edmondson’s (1999, 2019) research on psychological safety (a shared belief that interpersonal risk-taking is safe) has entered mainstream leadership dialogue for good reason. In psychologically safe teams, people:

Speak up when they see a problem,

Share ideas without fear of humiliation, judgement or retribution

Admit mistakes early (and learn from them).

But psychological safety doesn’t emerge from protocols or policies, it flows from wise compassionate leadership. When leaders consistently demonstrate care with accountability, people feel emotionally secure and cognitively engaged. These are the conditions for innovation and change, addressing the fear-based culture that the narrative of education currently faces and often reinforces. A 2020 McKinsey report reinforces this, finding that teams with high psychological safety outperform others on innovation, adaptability, and retention (all vital in the education sector).

Wise Compassion Meets Values-Based Leadership: A Schwartz Lens

Leadership grounded in shared values is both more resilient and more meaningful. Here, Schwartz’s Theory of Basic Human Values (1992; 2012) offers a robust framework. His universal value dimensions can help education leaders understand what motivates team members at a deeper level.

Wise compassionate leaders use this insight to see beneath the behaviour allowing nuance to:

Navigate value tensions (e.g., innovation vs. tradition),

Understand different staff drivers (e.g., equity vs. efficiency),

Make sense of different approaches to education

Align strategic decisions with the moral purpose of education.

For instance, a teacher struggling with a new initiative may be reacting not out of resistance, but from a deep value of security or tradition. Compassionate discernment allows the leader to address the person (not just their performance or their reaction) thus unlocking collaboration rather than compliance. Equally, the high attrition rate of teachers is often based on the system not aligning with their people-based values or suppressing their openness to change.

Wise Compassion in Action: Leadership Practices for Executive Teams

Wise compassion can be cultivated and systematised at the executive level. Here are five evidence-informed practices:

1. Model Vulnerability and Emotional Transparency

As Brené Brown (2018) argues, vulnerability is a cornerstone of courageous leadership. Sharing uncertainty or emotion as a senior leader signals psychological safety and disrupts cultures of perfectionism.

“Vulnerability is not weakness. It is the most accurate measure of courage.” – Brené Brown

2. Establish Relational Rituals, Not Just Strategic Routines

Build regular spaces for personal check-ins, storytelling, or gratitude within executive and school-level meetings. As noted by Kegan & Lahey (2016), developmental organizations embed reflection into the fabric of their culture.

3. Practice Compassionate Accountability

Use frameworks like Kim Scott’s “Radical Candor” or Dutton’s “Compassion Cycles” to give feedback that is direct and caring. This elevates expectations without eroding trust and normalises challenge.

4. Diagnose Values Misalignment, Not Just Performance Gaps

Leverage Schwartz’s model in team development or coaching to explore hidden sources of conflict or disengagement. What values are being threatened, ignored, or misread?

5. Protect the Emotional Well-Being of the System

Recognise that executive decisions have cascading emotional impacts. Before policy rollouts or restructuring, pause to ask: What human experiences are we holding or disrupting here? Who have we included in the decision making? What is really being said?

Conclusion: Wise Compassion as the Future of Educational Leadership

In the post-pandemic landscape, where change fatigue, moral injury, and burnout are widespread among educators, wise compassion is the leadership differentiator.

When executive leaders embed wise compassion into their relationships, decision-making, and strategic culture, they don’t just lead more effectively. They lead in a way that honours the human mission of education itself: the flourishing of others.

In cultivating psychological safety, honouring core values, and strengthening relationships, wise compassionate leadership offers what every educational community needs now: clarity without coldness, courage without cruelty, and care without compromise.