Balancing sensitivity and helpfulness: how power shapes compassionate communication at work

Leaders are well positioned to respond compassionately to employees’ personal suffering. Not only do leaders shape organizational norms around compassion, they often have instrumental access to resources that help alleviate suffering. But how do leaders know their compassionate efforts alleviate employee suffering as intended given the power dynamics inherent to the relationship? Drawing on communicative approaches to compassion and leadership, the present study investigates this question by examining what compassion recipients perceive as compassionate communication from leaders at work. Based on 31 qualitative interviews, recipients reported that leaders enacted compassion through the divergent messaging dimensions of sensitivity and helpfulness across three key moments in initial compassion conversations. Interestingly, these messaging dimensions are potentially related within compassion conversations between providers and recipients, highlighting the complex nature of communicating compassion at work when power dynamics are present. Our findings advance compassion theory by offering compassion recipients’ perspective of workplace compassion with leaders.