More Than Just A Value: Making Compassion Operational
“Compassion is so much more than an ethical stance or value. It’s infrastructure. When compassion is embedded across an organisation—through leadership, policy, and governance—it reduces burnout, enhances collaboration, and creates environments conducive to more sustainable decision-making."
— Gabriela Jones
This conversation is part of the YCompassion Leadership Programme Reflective Series, featuring reflections from programme participants and peers on practicing compassionate, human-centred leadership in the social impact sector.
What drew you to explore compassion practices?
Contemplative practices like meditation have always helped me through tough times—like when my family moved back to Uruguay while I remained in Sweden—and exploring Hinduism and Buddhism at university ultimately guided me to become a psychologist.
When I first encountered compassion-focused therapy, it felt like coming home.
Combining elements of the two disciplines that shaped my career—psychology and Buddhism—this integrative, evidence-based approach has naturally influenced my work with leaders, employees, and organisations as an occupational and organisational specialist.
What compassionate tool do you wish more people knew about and used?
There are many helpful tools available, and it is rarely a lack of tools that limits us; instead, our failure to apply them is often the issue.
I believe that understanding how our nervous system works, recognising our triggers, and knowing when we are outside our window of resilience are the most important aspects of self-regulation.
In a world that presents us with daily challenges, it would be impossible to establish a threshold or boundary that could always protect us from stress, fear, and uncertainty.
That’s why I am drawn to compassionate resilience, an adaptive tool that allows us to hold our fears lightly, listen without judgment—both to ourselves and others—and use our personal and collective resources sustainably to face challenges.
As the person responsible for guiding the process in a room, a leader’s ability to listen attentively to and negotiate the conflicting needs and realities of those around them, while also safeguarding their own capacity, is crucial for facilitating collaborative solutions. It is compassion in action.
From your perspective, why is compassion vital for the future of our sector?
Compassion is so much more than an ethical stance or organisational value; it’s infrastructure.
When compassion is embedded across an organisation—through leadership, policy, and governance—it reduces burnout, enhances collaboration, and creates environments conducive to more sustainable decision-making, in which long-term impacts are prioritised over short-term efficiency.
Without compassion, innovation becomes exploitative; with it, change becomes sustainable.
What resources would you recommend to a friend or colleague who is interested in compassionate approaches?
I’d recommend starting with a mix of reflective and practical resources. Exploring research on psychological safety, trauma-informed practice, compassionate and climate-aware leadership is a good starting point.
Communities of practice are just as important as formal learning. Joining spaces where people share case studies, challenges, and lived experiences, or simply listening to podcasts, can help you develop your relational skills and turn theory into practice.
A couple of resources I recommend:
Youtube channel: Compassion in a T-shirt by Dr Stan Steindl
Podcat: Compassionate Cultures by Rebbecca Hemmings
Podcast: Leading with Hearts and Minds by the National Clinical Leadership Centre for Nursing and Midwifery
What ideas are you interested in exploring that bring compassionate ways of working into practice?
I’m particularly interested in how compassion can be operationalised - rather than treating it as an abstract value. This includes designing meeting structures that prioritise inclusion, building feedback systems rooted in dignity, and integrating reflective pauses into project cycles.
Within my climate leadership work, I’m exploring how compassionate practices can help people face ecological uncertainty without becoming overwhelmed — creating spaces where grief, hope, and action can coexist.
Ultimately, I want to explore models in which compassion is used as a design principle, shaping how decisions are made, how success is defined, and how people experience their work.
About Gabriela
Gabriela Jones is a licensed psychologist specialising in organisational and work psychology and an accredited teacher in Compassion-Focused Leadership. She is the co-author of "Compassion-Focused Leadership – A Guide to the Humane Workplace" (Liber) and "Climate Leadership - Hope, Responsibility & Agency" (Natur & Kultur).
Gabriela supports individual transformation through compassionate therapy and mindfulness, and organisational transformation through leadership development and compassion initiatives.
Gabriela was in the second cohort of the YCompassion Leadership Programme.
This conversation reflects Gabriela's personal views and not those of any organisation she has worked for or currently works for.
