Compassionate Leadership – Daniel Stane (Trailer)

How can leaders balance relentless change with human-centric values? In this Beyond Deming trailer, James Lawther speaks with Daniel Stane, founder of Inclusion Partners, about the upcoming February event on compassionate leadership. Daniel challenges the notion that compassion is a “nice-to-have,” framing it as a critical tool for tough decisions, cultural transformation, and reducing organisational suffering.

The event will cover personal leadership qualities—such as presence and awareness—and a practical framework for embedding compassion into roles, networks, routines, and culture. Drawing on research from Awakening Compassion at Work, Daniel highlights how compassionate leadership fosters psychological safety, collaboration, and talent retention. Ideal for leaders facing pressure to deliver results while nurturing their teams, this session promises actionable tools for 2026.

Transcript

James: 0:14

Good afternoon and welcome to another edition of, beyond Demi, something slightly different today. Not a full blown podcast, but a little bit of a trailer for an event that we are gonna hold in February. so I'd like to introduce you to Daniel Stan, who is gonna come and talk to us with Janina Betterley. But before we go on, Daniel, probably be best if you introduce yourself.

Daniel: 0:33

Yeah. Thank you James. Yeah, so I am the founder and director of Inclusion Partners, which as the name says, does what it, says on the team. We work with leaders and organizations. We say to do the deeper work of inclusive and compassionate leadership, embedding it into not just leadership and into systems, cultures, into organizations, into the way that work is. And that's really the combination of about 25 years of consulting for major organizations, NGOs and the like. And prior to that I was on the frontline doing some of that myself in the, in the world of business working for big multinationals.

James: 1:13

So you're gonna come and talk to us about compassionate leadership.

Daniel: 1:16

We are absolutely. I'm aware in these times of, relentless change and, we speak to leaders all the time feeling really hard pressed at the moment, you know, not just the tensions of having to deliver, at pace, but also as I mentioned, relentless change and transformation. People are thinking, compassionate leadership, surely that's a, that's a nice to have or some kind of buzzword of these, of these times. Um, which. Where we're coming from. It certainly isn't what we're talking about here, is that human-centric, focus on leadership. In fact, it's often about doing the hard things, those tough conversations, those big decisions we have to make as leaders, huge consequential decisions about resource around how their organizations are going to are going to change, and how do we do that in a way. In a way that minimizes the suffering know compassion. If we take a really base definition is about, uh, how do we alleviate suffering? So as a leader, how can I be in service of the people in my organization, not just in my organization, clients, suppliers, the whole ecosystem, and uh, through how I lead, but also what I lead for that we make a big distinction between leading with or leading for compassion. Both are important. how do I create. A culture, an environment around me, uh, that does more of what I said, alleviate that, that suffering suffering's inevitable, isn't it? In a way. You know who, who likes change.

James: 2:45

It the organizations I've worked for. Yeah. So, is it worth me asking you what the core elements of compassionate leadership, is that a sensible question or

Daniel: 2:54

Yeah, absolutely. So this event we're running with the, the Demi alliance we're, we're going to be looking at in the morning very much at some of those personal leadership qualities that, that, won't be, uh, new to anyone, but actually in the context that I've just. Talked about, um, they're often hard one. We're talking about how you can be more present, more aware. How can you tap that, that, that wisdom? And often as leaders we're being pushed towards, you know, how do we manage resources, technology, ai, all of this kind of stuff, the technical piece of strategic piece, but the human piece often gets left. Um, so it's some of those, we call them qualities. They're practices that we can use, to expand them to, to grow them. So that's the first part. How do I, how do I show up as a compassionate leadership as someone who's human centric, And that, you know, that can take a lot of courage in organizations who don't talk about these things, who don't talk a lot about, the wellness element, who don't talk a lot about the human impact of certain decisions. And in the afternoon, uh, we're really gonna focus on a, on a framework. something I get very excited about. I think this is gold as far as leading for compassion, and just to attribute the people who've done the main research, Monica Wall Line, and Jane Dutton. So it's their framework. it comes from their book, awakening Compassion at Work. And it's about four things. It's about how do we use roles and set up roles for creating greater compassion? How do we utilize and leverage networks, to enhance compassion and, obviously block the things that, uh, that take away from it. We look at, routines. So these are the processes, the way that work gets done, even the way we do meetings, the way we, we run decisions. And then finally, culture. So how do we embed, all of the above, uh, many angles on it. Many ways to look at it. So, you know, when it comes, give you a simple example when it comes to how we recruit people, how we onboard people in this organization. what are those pain points? What are some of the things we could be doing, uh, that make that journey into an organization. smoother, less painful. So we're gonna go through those in quite an experiential way and not just, talking about them, but giving people an opportunity to think about, you know, where are some of the opportunities perhaps that we often just. fly by in our drive to create deliverables and results. and hopefully create some actionable steps from those,

James: 5:16

admit, So if I was to, um, play devil's advocate, I could argue, well, this is just a load of soft stuff. And really the power, the power's in all the hard stuff. Isn't it all about AI and technology and yada, yada, yada. They say, well, what would you say to me if I made that challenge?

Daniel: 5:33

Um, we're seeing in a lot of our organizations, There's, um, there's a lack of desire to look at some of these human elements. Unfortunately, those are also organizations we see that are losing their best people quite fast. Those are organizations that are often seem to be running out of the, the future fit ideas. They're not drawing, they're not tapping, um, that talent that they've, that they've brought in. They're not doing what leaders need to be doing with their people, which is. To cultivate collaboration, to cultivate that sense of psychological safety and belonging. That will ensure everyone can contribute. They're missing out on a lot of latent talent.

James: 6:09

sounds fascinating. So is there anything else you think people should know before they sign up for the event?

Daniel: 6:15

Uh, not really. Just to expect a lot of practical tools for the inner work and the systemic work, and an opportunity to perhaps build some leadership advantage for 2026.

James: 6:27

Lovely. So I look forward to seeing you and now Hill in Coventry on the, I believe, 5th of February. Um, and if anybody would like to find out more, the details are all on deming alliance.org. Thank you very much for your time.

Daniel: 6:40

Thank you, James.