“Compassion ceases to be merely a virtue. It becomes an operational competence that sustains the effectiveness and longevity of organisations.”
Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)
Pedro Marques-Quinteiro
Compassion means identifying minors and other vulnerable people, providing care, communicating with dignity and also supporting professionals exposed to the emotional pressure of the response. It does not replace rules; it improves the way they are applied.
At the height of the rural fire season, firefighters and civil protection professionals work under extreme heat, fatigue, shortages of resources and decisions made within seconds. The humanitarian crisis in Ceuta exposes security forces, emergency teams, volunteers and communities to another form of pressure: protecting, organising and making decisions when thousands of people arrive in highly vulnerable circumstances.[1]
These contexts function as natural laboratories. When time is short, resources are insufficient and mistakes can cost lives, the behaviours that sustain or destroy a team’s operational effectiveness become visible.
One of these is compassion. In organisational research, compassion does not mean pity, sympathy or a lack of high standards. It means recognising another person’s suffering or need, feeling concern and taking action to respond to it.[2] Without action, there may be empathy; there is not yet compassion.
Among firefighters, this action takes discreet forms: noticing that a colleague is losing capacity, replacing them before they collapse, adjusting communication, redistributing workload or stopping unsafe behaviour. Compassion does not diminish operational readiness. It protects it. When one person’s exhaustion is ignored, an individual vulnerability can become a collective error.
I observed similar processes in scientific teams in Antarctica. In isolation, with limited resources and help far away, noticing another person’s condition and acting in a timely manner was not incidental. It was part of the infrastructure that enabled the team to continue functioning and recover in the face of adverse events.[3]
Ceuta reminds us that this logic does not end at the boundaries of the team. Controlling a border, preserving security and complying with the law are not incompatible with recognising human suffering. Compassion means identifying minors and other vulnerable people, providing care, communicating with dignity and also supporting professionals exposed to the emotional pressure of the response. It does not replace rules; it improves the way they are applied.
Organisations can learn from these contexts. They should recruit people capable of noticing others, train teams to offer and ask for help, monitor workload and recognise those who prevent failures through care. It is not enough to celebrate the “heroes” after the crisis. Systems must be designed to recognise human limits before they turn into tragedy.
When everything is burning, whether it is a forest, a border or a team’s emotional capacity, compassion ceases to be merely a virtue. It becomes an operational competence that sustains the effectiveness and longevity of organisations.
References
[1] Reuters, report on the Ceuta border crisis, 5 August 2026.
[2] J. M. Kanov et al., “Compassion in Organizational Life”, American Behavioral Scientist, 47(6), 2004, 808–827.
[3] P. Marques-Quinteiro et al., “A Process Model of Team Effectiveness in Extreme Environments”, Applied Psychology, 74(5), 2025, e70037.
Pedro Marques-Quinteiro
Associate Professor, Director of the Applied Master’s Degree in Advanced Human Resources Management. Executive Director, Intrepid Lab-CETRAD
Source: Jornal SOL
