The superb Leading with Fierce Compassion by clinical psychologist and executive coach, Dr Mary Miller, offers leaders practical, evidence-based tools to blend courage and kindness.
The book emerged from years spent in session with “high-performing leaders” – people the world praised, but who were quietly falling apart.
“Existing leadership frameworks often focus on productivity or goal-based outcomes,” Mary tells Verve. “While these approaches can be useful, what they often miss is the internal experience of the leader, their relationships and the systems that shape how they function.”
She witnessed leaders who were “thriving and suffering at the same time”. Mary believes that tension between “perfectionism and self-criticism” is one of the most under-examined costs of modern leadership: “We may perceive these traits as helpful, and society may reward us for the results. But the costs remain hidden.”
The research is stark: both traits are linked to poorer mental and physical health, reduced performance, damaged relationships, and higher risk of burnout.
For New Zealand leaders navigating the layered pressures often described as ‘polycrisis’ – the compounding upheaval across economy, society and environment – the experience is shared but not identical.
“It is like we are all sailing in the same storm, but how we experience it depends on what boat we happened to be in when it hit,” Mary adds.
But embedding compassion-based leadership isn’t simple. “Systems with high levels of competition, aggressive behaviour, time pressure and fear of risk make it harder for individuals to act or feel compassionate,” Miller notes.
Mary pushes back when asked whether society is failing to produce compassionate humans in the first place: “I don’t think I would say that society is failing. Society doesn’t create compassionate humans, or uncompassionate ones, in isolation.
We co-create the conditions we live in, which means we also have the capacity to shift them.”
Modelling rest, connection and self-compassion, she says, is slow but compounding cultural work, but we are all “part of the foundations”.
Perhaps her most counterintuitive idea is that the urge to “work harder” can be a signal to do the opposite. Mary acknowledges it often takes a crisis – often burnout – before people are willing to examine it. Her approach starts with self-compassion (“to understand why we have become overly reliant on that particular coping strategy”) followed by curiosity (“when is working hard genuinely helpful, and when is it not?”).
Self-compassion, she suggests, is often harder to access than compassion for others, and culture plays a large role. “We absorb messages about what self-compassion means, and while some of those messages may be helpful, others end up blocking our capacity for it,” she says.
Her practical suggestion: “Next time you’re stuck in self-criticism, try asking what you would say to a friend in the same situation.”
Writing the book, Mary admits, became its own test of her own philosophy. Forcing herself to sit at a screen for long stretches didn’t always work – but walking on the beach often did!
“Writing about my own experiences with compassion felt vulnerable, and I needed a lot of self-compassion to embrace my fear of sharing,” she says.
But sharing that vulnerability, she believes, is precisely the point, because “it connects us to each other’s humanity”.
Learn more about Mary and her book at drmarymiller.com
