Episode Details

When things inevitably go wrong, it's far better to treat yourself like your best friend rather than your worst critic. A little self-compassion goes a long way.

Hello and welcome to episode 86 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we tackle one of today's biggest leadership challenges. This week we look at the importance of self-compassion when we're faced with setbacks and disappointments.

It was early in my career and it had been a crazy week. We had a client event coming up and needed to get physical invitations out to people as soon as possible. I put my hand up to organise the invitations and get them out the door the same day. After some quick design work and a proof read by a colleague, the invitations were on their way to clients. As the team sat together on the Friday morning that same week, a few printed invites were handed around. I received a few congratulations for having the invitations out so quickly. It was at that point that one of the Directors said "we have a problem here". I thought he was joking, but the look on his face said otherwise. It turned out that in my haste I had put the wrong street name on the invitation, automatically inserting the street from my previous workplace. At that point, the person who had proof read the invitation and given it the all clear helpfully pointed out that they hadn't proof read the invitations "for the details". I was well and truly thrown under the bus. Over 20 years later I can still remember the feeling of embarrassment, disappointment and frustration.

We've all had moments like that when we feel like we've let others down. They can really play havoc on our well-being and productivity. So how do we best respond in those moments? Research demonstrates that a little self-compassion goes a long way.

Researcher Zessin and colleagues describe self-compassion as "a positive and caring attitude of a person toward her- or himself in the face of failures and individual shortcomings". Self-compassion is about remaining positive about ourselves, and also treating ourselves in a kind way. Their analysis, combining 79 research papers, found that self-compassion is crucial for well-being. That if we are positive and caring towards ourselves, we are going to be far better off when things inevitably go wrong. We can then maintain our composure and be able to perform more effectively.

Research demonstrates that, when we mess things up, it's natural to experience negative emotions, reduced self-esteem, and even to feel excluded from the group. Self-compassion appears to buffer individuals from these adverse impacts, helping people to experience fewer negative emotions while still feeling a part of the group that they let down.

Other research shows that those with greater self-compassion feel less stressed when they end up procrastinating. So even if it is just ourselves that we're letting down, having self-compassion can help a lot.

I was eventually able to see my invitation error as a mistake that anyone could have made, and to draw out learnings from the situation. But it took weeks, not moments, to get to that point. So how do we move to acceptance faster? How do we boost our self-compassion?

To answer those questions, it's helpful to explore the different elements of self-compassion that researchers focus on. Self-compassion is often divided into three components: self-kindness, mindfulness and common humanity. Each provides an insight into how to build our levels of self-compassion:

1. Self-kindness - here we acknowledge the pain, but are then kind to ourselves. A helpful approach can be to consider how you would respond to a friend in the same situation. We're often far more compassionate to others than to ourselves. T