Healthy Leaders, Healthy Teams — Episode 2: Why you need Calm AND Compassion
In this episode, Ruth picks up the thread from Episode 1 with a closer look at two of the 6Cs — Calm and Compassion — and why they only really work together.
She opens with a story from leading an organisation through uncertainty which became a turning point in how she thinks about what calm leadership actually requires.
She unpacks what calm really means — not the absence of emotion, but emotion sufficiently processed that a leader can be present for others.
Unfortunately, not all of us grew up in environments that modelled healthy emotion regulation. In fact, only 35% of Americans say that, as children, they knew a compassionate, nonjudgmental adult.
The good news, however, is that this can be learned — and learning it starts with understanding calm's essential partner: compassion.
Ruth draws a clear line between compassion and empathy, and explains why calm without compassion can land as cold or judgemental — especially to someone who isn't expecting it.
The episode closes with a practical pathway: how the 6Cs offer a sequence for navigating strong emotions in the moment — calm, compassion, curiosity, clarity, connection and courage — so that leaders can hold space for others without losing themselves in the process.
Reflection — for your journal or a quiet moment:
In what situations do you most need to cultivate more calm?
Where does compassion — for yourself or for others — need more space?
What support or practice will you put in place to help you navigate your emotions when it counts?
There is no right answer. The invitation is simply to notice.
Take it further — Join Ruth’s free 90-minute mid-year guided reflection on Friday 26th June 2026
It's a chance to pause, take stock of the first half of the year, and step into the second half with more clarity. Online, free, and open to all.
Register here and choose your slot (8am or 12pm CET) to receive details of how to join.
yourpathtosuccess.ch/events
About Ruth
Ruth Kearns Wollmann is an ICF-accredited executive and leadership coach and facilitator.
Over the past decade she has worked with senior leaders and their teams across a wide range of organisations, helping them do the deeper inner work that creates lasting change — not just better behaviours, but a more integrated, grounded and courageous way of leading.
Her path to this work has been anything but linear — but there's always been a thread. She started as a cognitive psychology researcher, fascinated by how people think, learn and change. That curiosity took her into the corporate world, where she spent 14 years at Procter & Gamble as a business executive — and where she discovered that the determining factor in her own success wasn't strategy or insight, but the ability to lead herself and others. That realisation never left her. It led her into a leadership role in the non-profit sector, and eventually into launching her independent coaching practice — bringing research, lived experience and over a decade of practice together in one place.
She believes healthy leaders create healthy teams. And the world's biggest challenges need leaders operating from their truest, most integrated selves.
Book a curiosity call: yourpathtosuccess.ch/book-appointment
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