Self-Compassion and 21st Century Leadership
by
Kristen Del Simone, Susan Hiestand, Nicole Hill,
Trisha Malone, Josh Singleton, and Jorge Zamora
M.A. in Leadership
Saint Mary’s College of California, 2014
Ken Otter, Ph.D., Project Advisor
This paper examines the work of six students in the Master of Arts in Leadership program at
Saint Mary’s College of California who conducted a Collaborative Inquiry to explore the
relationship between self-compassion and 21st Century Leadership. The purpose of our project
was to increase self-compassion in order to build the capacities for resiliency, vulnerability and
authenticity that we believe are integral to 21st Century Leadership. We met eight times over the
course of five months and explored how practicing self-compassion might help us bring our
fuller, authentic selves to our relationships and our leadership practice. Our work consisted of
individual action and journaling, meaningful group dialogue, presentational activities, and a selfcompassion
assessment. After four cycles of action and reflection we identified three key
findings: (1) self-compassion is an untapped resource for 21st Century Leadership that is
underutilized and often misunderstood; (2) when we practice self-compassion, we set a positive
the emotional tone of our lives and our leadership practice; and (3) when combined, selfcompassion
and 21st Century Leadership increases our capacity to practice self-care without
guilt. Through our participation in this CI, we also discovered that sharing our individual
knowledge, perspectives, and experiences with each other created greater connection, new
knowledge and understanding, and shared meaning amongst us. Through learning about others,
we learned more about ourselves. For some of us, the experience of practicing self-compassion
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was transformative and resulted in significant change. For all of us, our leadership practice was
enhanced and expanded.