Compassion Research & Literature

Academic & Practitioner Data

COMPASSIONATE LEADERSHIP

The Business Case for Compassion:

Compassionate Leadership: How to Do Hard Things in a Human Way (Harvard Business Review, 2022) Compassionate Leadership increased job satisfaction by over 50%, commitment to the organization by 30%, and decreased burnout by 40%
Power Can Corrupt Leaders, Compassion Can Save Them (Harvard Business Review, 2018) Compassion supports strategic advantage in innovation, service quality, collaboration, retaining talented people, employee and customer engagement, and adaptability to change
Awakening Compassion at Work: The Quiet Power that Elevates People and Organizations (Monica C. Worline and Jane E. Dutton, 2017). Compassion positively impacts productivity, employee and customer retention, profitability, and financial performance
Leading with Compassion Has Research-Backed Benefits (Harvard Business Review, 2023)

Managerial Effectiveness: Global Leadership Forecast (DDI, 2021)

92% of employees rate leaders' compassion as a key factor in their effectiveness.

Inclusive Leadership: What Makes an Inclusive Leader (Harvard Business Review, 2023)

Inclusive organizations are 73% more likely to gain innovation revenue and 70% more likely to gain new markets. They are also up to 50% more likely to make better decisions and up to 36% more likely to have above-average profitability

Compassionate and Resilience: The Neuroscience of Empathy - And Why Compassion is Better (Forbes, 2024). Empathy can lead to fatigue, compassion can increase our resilience and improve our approach to stressful situations.

PURPOSE & MEANINGFUL WORK

Creating Meaning and Purpose at Work (The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of the Psychology of Positivity and Strengths-Based Approaches at Work, 2016, pp.60-81)

Meaning & Purpose at Work: An Overview (BetterUp, 2023)

Across age groups, workers want meaningful work badly enough that they’re willing to pay for it: 9 of 10 employees are willing to trade a percentage of their lifetime earnings for greater meaning at work.
Employees who place a higher value on meaningful work occupy more senior, skilled positions, and stay longer.
Raises and promotions are more common for employees who have meaningful work. Employees who find their jobs highly meaningful are more likely to have received a raise in the past year, and are also more likely to have received a promotion in the past six months

What Makes Work Meaningful (Harvard Business Review, 2023)

WORK, LIFE SATISFACTION, AND WELLBEING

Work and Life Satisfaction: Revisiting the link between job satisfaction and life satisfaction: The role of basic psychological needs (Frontiers in Psychology, 2017).

Work and the Effect on Children: How Our Careers Affect our Children. (Harvard Business Review, 2018).

Job Satisfaction, Anxiety and Depression: The Relationship between Job Satisfaction and Health: A Meta Analysis. (Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 2005)

“Employees with low levels of job satisfaction are most likely to experience emotional burn-out, to have reduced levels of self-esteem, and to have raised levels of both anxiety and depression...."

Job Satisfaction, Stress and Burnout: Work Stress as a Risk Factor for Cardiovascular Disease. (Current Cardiology Reports, 2015)

Work-related stress had the same impact as smoking or a sedentary lifestyle
Regardless of age, gender and socioeconomic status, men and women who experience job strain and long working hours are 10-40% more likely to experience heart disease and stroke compared to people without those same work stressors

Poor Quality Work, Stress and Disease: Re-employment, job quality, health and allostatic load biomarkers: prospective evidence from the UK Household Longitudinal Study. (International Journal of Epidemiology, 2018)

Adults with poor quality work - as measured by low pay, low job satisfaction, low job control and high job anxiety - had higher levels of chronic stress and biomarkers of cardiovascular and metabolic disease than adults who remained unemployed

ENGAGEMENT RETENTION & BURNOUT

Burnout Causes and Cures (Gallup, 2023): 67% of employees say they are sometimes, very often or always burned out at work

The State of Talent Optimization (Predictive Index, 2023): 1 in 4 organizations report that psychological safety is the top driver of employee retention

World Happiness Report (Gallup, 2024)

Trust & Engagement: The Neuroscience of Trust - Management Behaviors that Foster Employee Engagement (Harvard Business Review, 2017)

Compared with people at low-trust companies, people at high-trust companies report 74% less stress, 106% more energy at work, 50% higher productivity, 13% fewer sick days, 76% more engagement, 29% more satisfaction with their lives, and 40% less burnout

US Engagement - a 10-year low (Gallup, 2025): Only 31% of employees are engaged

K-12 Research

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT & LIFE SATISFACTION

A study reported that teenagers who participated in leadership development programs experienced a 22% increase in life satisfaction and a 15% decrease in anxiety compared to non-participants.

(The Journal of Positive Psychology, 2021 Leadership Development Programs and Their Impact on Adolescents' Life Satisfaction and Mental Health)

SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Research published in The Journal of Adolescent Research showed that teens involved in leadership roles reported a 20% higher level of emotional intelligence and a 17% increase in social connectedness compared to their peers.

(The Journal of Adolescent Research, 2021 The Role of Leadership in Enhancing Emotional Intelligence and Social Connectedness in Adolescents.)

DEVELOPMENT OF CIVIC RESPONSIBILITY & LEADERSHIP

According to research teenagers involved in community-building and leadership activities were 35% more likely to participate in civic activities as adults and were 28% more likely to take on leadership roles in their communities.

(Youth & Society, 2022 The Long-Term Impact of Adolescent Leadership and Community Engagement on Civic Responsibility.)

LONG-TERM BENEFITS OF ADOLESCENT LEADERSHIP

A longitudinal study in The Leadership Quarterly found that students who held leadership roles in high school were 25% more likely to hold leadership positions in their careers and had a 20% higher earning potential.

(The Leadership Quarterly, 2022 Long-Term Benefits of Leadership Roles in High School: Career and Economic Outcomes.)