You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. Compassion is located near responsibility in the geography of leadership. The converse is that we tend to feel compassion towards people we are already responsible for. Compassion as an element of leadership has a bad reputation today. Social conservatives believe that compassion, inappropriately exercised, turns people into children, granting them benefits while requiring nothing in return.
Compassion leads to the welfare state.
Certainly, compassion in any organizational setting must be tempered by fairness. One of its dangers is that we will tolerate behavior from people to whom we feel attached that is prejudicial or demotivating to the rest of the group. Compassion is either a reminder, or the product, of the fact that the people in the organization are not property. Looked at this way, it is hard to fashion a definition of leadership which excludes compassion. One does not lead one's house or one's bank account.