Compassionate Leadership: What We Carry. How We Carry One Another.
Three lessons about invisible burdens, circles of support and the kind of leadership people need.
Last night, I watched a 22-year-old woman walk onto a stage and tell a room full of strangers what it is like to live with multiple sclerosis.
She was diagnosed at 15.
She told us about the constant exhaustion. The headaches. The symptoms others cannot see and may never fully understand. She spoke lovingly about her Circles of Support: the family and friends who have surrounded her, encouraged her and helped carry her through seven years of uncertainty.
She was not a polished speaker. She did not need to be.
Something in the honesty of her story broke through every defense I had. As she spoke, I sat quietly at my table, a steady stream of tears running down my face.
By the end of the evening, Taste of Generosity Atlanta had raised $325,000 for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. An extraordinary number. But what stayed with me was not the total on the screen.
It was one young woman standing on a stage, telling the truth about what she carries and reminding me how rarely we know the full weight another person is holding.
I left with three lessons. They reach well beyond her experience with MS. They belong everywhere people gather, including the places where we work.
1. Compassionate Leadership Looks Beyond What We Can See
Exhaustion can look like disengagement. Pain can look like distraction. Anxiety can look like resistance. Grief can look like irritability.
A person struggling to concentrate may appear careless. Someone who turns down an invitation may seem antisocial. A colleague who needs more time, flexibility or reassurance may be labeled difficult.
We are quick to interpret what we can see without becoming curious about what we cannot.
Our workplaces often reward people for how successfully they conceal what they carry. Show up. Push through. Keep producing. Make it look easy.
But making it look easy does not mean it is.
Compassionate leadership asks us to pause before turning someone’s behavior into a judgment about their character. To replace “What is wrong with them?” with “What might be happening for them?” To remember that performance does not exist separately from the rest of a person’s life.
We do not need to know every detail. People have a right to privacy. But we can create enough trust that they do not have to pretend they are fine to remain valued.
Compassion does not eliminate accountability. It makes accountability human. This is compassionate leadership in practice.
2. Support works best in circles.
Circles of Support has a particular meaning within the MS community.
At Walk MS events, participants choose a colored circle that expresses their connection to MS. Orange represents people living with the disease. Green represents those who love or support someone living with MS. Yellow represents those who support the National MS Society’s mission.
Together, they make an invisible network visible.
At the center is the person living with MS. Around them are the people who know and love them. Beyond them are people who may never know their name but are giving, advocating, researching and working toward a cure.
Everyone has a place. Everyone has a role. No one person is expected to provide everything.
Imagine if support at work were built the same way.
At the center is a person carrying something we may or may not be able to see: a health condition, caregiving responsibilities, grief, financial strain, anxiety or simply a season when life has become heavier than usual.
The next circle is made up of the people closest to their daily experience. A manager who listens. A colleague who notices. A teammate who steps in. A friend who checks back after everyone else has moved on.
The wider circle is the organization itself. Benefits people can understand and use. Flexibility without shame. Reasonable workloads. Accessible workplaces. Employee communities. Policies that protect people when individual relationships fall short.
Every circle matters.
Personal resilience is not enough. A caring manager is not enough. A benefits package buried on an intranet is not enough.
People need human support and organizational support. Someone who notices and a system that responds.
Leaders can begin by asking: Who is at the center of this? What do they say they need? Who is close enough to notice and help? What can the organization provide that individuals cannot? Where might someone fall through the spaces between those circles?
Support is rarely one grand gesture. More often, it is a collection of small actions and dependable structures that say, “You do not have to carry this alone.”
3. Truth moves people more than polish.
She was not a polished speaker.
I keep returning to that because, particularly at work, we can mistake polish for power. We rehearse the message. Refine the slides. Sharpen the story. Coach the delivery. All of that can make communication clearer.
But polish was not what moved me. Truth did.
Her voice belonged to her. Her story had not been sanded smooth or reduced to talking points. She was not performing vulnerability. She was allowing us to witness something real.
Leaders often believe they need the perfect words before they speak. So, they retreat into carefully constructed messages that are technically correct and emotionally empty.
People do not need perfection from their leaders. They need something they can believe.
I do not know yet.
I got this wrong.
I see what this is costing you.
I want to understand.
Here is what I can do to help.
Polish may earn attention. Truth creates connection.
That young woman did more than tell us about multiple sclerosis. She helped us feel something of what it means to live with it. Once we felt it, remaining detached became much harder.
Perhaps that is one of the most important things a story can do. It can make another person’s burden real to us.
We all carry something.
Some burdens are visible. Many are not. Some are temporary. Others become lifelong companions. None of us will move through life, or work, without needing someone else to help carry the weight.
The question is not whether the people around us are carrying burdens.
They are.
The questions are whether we are curious enough to see beyond what is visible, whether we are building circles strong enough to hold one another and whether we are brave enough to tell the truth when our own load becomes too heavy.
Last night, one young woman stood at the center of a room and told us what she carries. For a few minutes, she drew the rest of us into her circle.
The challenge is to stay there.
Learn more about the National MS Society’s Circles of Support.
If this essay resonated with you, I'd be grateful if you'd share it with your friends and colleagues. And if it sparked a thought or reminded you of someone who helped shape your life, I'd love to hear about it in the comments below.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kevin Finke is a human-centered leadership practitioner, consultant, and founder of Experience Willow. Through his writing and work, he helps leaders create the conditions where people feel seen, valued, connected, and able to do their best work. He believes that when we get the human experience right, performance follows.
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