Tag: soul at work

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Be Informed: Embracing Compassion Requires Understanding It

You must not hate those who do wrong or harmful things; but with compassion, you must do what you can to stop them.

— Dalai Lama XIV

Compassion heals the compassionate soul and creates a world in which we can come together across our differences. How can we increase our personal capacity for compassion and make it a fundamental virtue in love and work?

Understanding its meaning and purpose is a first step: common misconceptions will get in our way.

Compassion does not mean feeling sorry for people, nor does it ask us to invite the world’s suffering into our living room. Compassion is attunement to others with the hope that through our intentional interactions with them, their suffering lessens.[I]

Compassion at its core is inviting others into our circle of life: offering to understand them and working to be open and generous in spirit even when we disagree with what they do or believe. Ah, there’s the rub: maintaining a kind and open heart is a challenge for the best of us in the face of hurtful or egregious actions. Anger is easier when we feel vulnerable, hurt, or powerless. Anger, however, has its costs.

In our book, Engagement: Transforming Difficult Relationships at Work, Lee Bolman and I assert that compassion is a pillar of successful engagement in the world and required for the kind of interactions that resolve complex social problems. We add the adjective “informed” to underscore that compassion is not denial, collusion, or even forgiveness – horrific or criminal acts may be difficult or even impossible to ever forgive.

Informed compassion is an authentic expression of human connection, a willingness to walk in another’s shoes if only a few steps, and an unyielding belief that all can learn. That learning only happens through willing engagement.

The Dalai Lama, the world’s symbol of compassion, sees compassion as self-serving with added benefits to others and society at large:

Compassion is what makes our lives meaningful. It is the source of all lasting happiness and joy. And it is the foundation of a good heart, the heart of one who acts out of a desire to help others. Through kindness, through affection, through honesty, through truth and justice toward others we ensure our own benefit. This is not a matter for complicated theorizing. It is a matter of common sense. There is no denying that our happiness is inextricable bound up with the happiness of others. There is no denying that if society suffers we ourselves suffer. Nor is there any denying that the more our hearts and minds are afflicted with ill-will, the more miserable we become.[ii]

Neuroscience and the study of human physiology also confirm that compassion for others is good medicine for us. It interrupts cycles of thought that hard-wire our brains for needless pain and anger. It can release destructive emotions and stress that predispose us to a host of health issues – from anxiety, depression, disturbed sleep, and an increased risk of heart attack to adverse physiological changes in our chromosomes that signal cell aging and death.[iii] Medically speaking, embracing compassion is high-level self-care – the best “unselfish selfishness”[iv] around.

Practicing compassion takes, well, practice! Research shows that compassion can be learned. We can train ourselves to be realistic yet non-judgmental and to see what’s happening yet assume the best until consistent data confirms otherwise – and even then, we can train ourselves to respond first by changing how we relate to others so as to try another way to bring out their best.

Practicing compassion may also require learning to say no with grace and yes more often. That may seem counter-intuitive. It is not. No is the word we use to protect ourselves and to stand up for all that matters to us. It can anger others and destroy relationships, so we often say yes when we really want to say no, say no poorly, or say nothing at all. Strategies for delivering a positive no, according to negotiating guru William Ury[v], attend to both clear and authentic communication and relationship maintenance.

The comedy world of improvisation reminds us that yes, and[vi] is a way to validate and build on what others have initiated and a way to explore new alternatives – foundational strengths in problem-solving and teamwork.

As when learning any skilled behavior, we will need instruction in how to if we ever plan to improve our game and a commitment to practice.  The same is true with compassion.

Compassion includes four basic steps: (1) recognize suffering in others, (2) acknowledge it, (3) set an intention to do something, and (4) take an action. Which step is most challenging for you? Start there.

Angela Duckworth’s research in her path-breaking book, Grit, reminds us that skill building comes from “deliberate practice” of the identified component of skilled performance with which we struggle most. Honest feedback from others on how we are doing helps, too.

Dr. Amit Sood outlines nine practices to strengthen compassion skills.[vii] It might be easier for you to begin your study by choosing one from his list:

1. Recognize that difficult behaviors in others may be a call for help. Respond with kindness and assess what difference it makes.

2. Delay snap and negative judgments: try to walk in others’ shoes and acknowledge the urgency driving some important unmet need for them.

3. Remember that no one chooses to suffer or behave ineffectively. Work to resolve the puzzle of what’s happening for the other.

4. Be grateful for your good fortune and all you have – and let your gratitude fuel your problem solving capacities.

5. See yourself in others’ mistakes: the journey they travel today is one you may have traveled before or will in the future.

6. Pay it forward: perform acts of kindness – and if you can, forgiveness; do something good and forget it!

7. Act with humility: act to help, not wow! Act to engage and understand, not control!

8. Recognize the difference between fear and caution: caution is rational, fear shackles.

9. Move toward others: lean-in in simple ways counter to your desire to move away.

Set out to deliberately practice it over a determined period of time, and then assess how well your efforts are improving the quality of life for you and others. Go slow to avoid compassion fatigue[viii]! You must gradually build up your capacities to stand with, but not take in, others’ emotions.

Onward! I have confidence you’ll soar.

[I] Amit Sood (2013).The Mayo Clinic Guide to Stress-free Living. Boston, MA: DaCapo Press, Chapters 12, 13, 14.

[ii] His Holiness the Dalai Lama (1999). Ethics for the New Millennium. New York: Riverhead Books/Penguin Putnam.

[iii] Amit Sood (2013). Ibid, p. 216

[iv] Amit Sood (2013). Ibid, Chapters 13, 22.

[v] William Ury (2007). The Power of a Positive No: Save the Deal, Save the Relationship, and Still Say NO. New York: Bantam.

[vi] Kelly Leonard and Tom Yorton (2015). Yes, And: Lessons from The Second City. New York: Harper Collins.

[vii] Amit Sood (2013). Ibid, pp. 133-145.

[viii] William A. Kahn (2005). Holding Fast: The Struggle to Create Resilient Caregiving Organizations. New York: Brunner-Routledge.

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Feed the Soul with Small Surprises: Sunrise on Corey Hill

I woke earlier than I wanted, and rolled over hoping for another few hours of sleep. It wasn’t going to happen, and I began to think about a thorny project that needed something new for forward movement. I got out of bed feeling tired, stuck, and annoyed.

I went to sleep the night before thinking about the issue, and asked my unconscious to work on fresh insights while I slept. That often works. Not today – and recognition of it was probably what woke me so completely in the early morning dark. I headed downstairs – and with an attitude – to feed the dog.

Instead, at the base of the stairs I impulsively grabbed boots, a coat long enough to cover my pajamas, and car keys. I leashed up the now-confused and still-sleepy old dog and headed to Corey Hill – the highest spot in the neighborhood – to watch the sun rise.

I expected solitude and a beautiful place to feel sorry for my tired and not-currently creative self. And then the surprises began.

I arrived at the small, hillside park in the urban core to find more than fifty runners in brightly-colored gear, depositing backpacks on the summit (probably containing dress clothes for subsequent jogs to work or school) and warmly greeting each other on a frigid winter morning. A few brought dogs and were letting them socialize in the off-leash park at the base of the hill. People were talking, laughing, digging out warmer hats or gloves for themselves or others, and stretching together. All-in-all it was a marvelous pre-dawn party.

As the sky turned a pinkish grey, the runners self-organized and small groups began to run together down the east side of the hill into the intensifying sunrise.

I walked to the center of the park and enjoyed the runners taking off into the emerging morning colors, the crescent moon still bright in the clear dawn sky, the gorgeous sun rising behind the tall Boston buildings in the distance, and the widening glow of pink that grew out of the sun sphere and surprisingly spread out and across the entire horizon surrounding me as if in a 360 degree hot pink embrace.

It was a big, spectacular sunrise. And it was made even more beautiful by happenings on the ground and reminders that we are never alone even in our darkest hours.

The world may seem cold, but it is always filled with warm communities of shared interest, the energy of accomplishment, new hills to navigate, the vitality of youth – many were runners in their 20’s and 30’s, love and friendship, and the ability of the human spirit to conquer the cold and dark with a smile, a buddy, and a stride forward. We just have to find what we need – and if we let ourselves, we may even find it by happenstance.

I found unexpected beauty on Corey Hill – but I was cold. I forgot gloves. So, I drove slowly down the hill, as the runners were heading back up, and stopped at a coffee shop. Alone in the shop with the barista, we talked. He told me about walking to work in the dark and how bright the stars and moon were – the clear skies probably why it was so darn cold. He had just moved into the neighborhood, as have I, from my former neighborhood – and we spoke about that. I told him about Corey Park, and he responded: “Oh, I’m stuck here in the mornings. Tell me all about the sunrise there.” And over my cappuccino with cinnamon and ricotta cheese cake, I passed along descriptions of the sunrise, the runners and dogs, and small surprises – and we were both fueled in new ways to better embrace our days.

Leadership is demanding business, and successful leaders have strategies to sustain vitality and resolve. They feed body and soul.

In a book that I co-authored[i], we propose strategies to nourish and strengthen leaders. One set of recommendations is to give deliberate attention to five key areas – we call them the 5 B’s:

1. Managing boundaries between self and others, between your life and your work

2. Attending to your body in ways that maintain basic good health

3. Bringing balance among work, friends and family, and leisure

4. Finding activities that feed the soul, like the beauty and recuperative power of the arts and nature

5. Increasing the odds that you’ll bounce back from stress and challenge through resilience training.

How can you bring more of the 5 B’s into your life? What greatness could you accomplish with a little extra clarity, strength, vigor, and bounce?

[i] Lee G. Bolman and Joan V. Gallos (2011). Reframing Academic Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass/Wiley, Chapters 8-13.

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Creating a Truly Great Workplace

Tony Schwartz posted a piece on the Harvard Business Review Blog Network worth the read: The Twelve Attributes of a Truly Great Place to Work.

It’s important, Tony tells us, because more than 100 research studies have found that the most engaged employees are significantly more productive, drive higher customer satisfaction, and outperform the less engaged. The kicker: only 20 per cent of employees around the world say they’re fully engaged at work.

Tony’s meta-advice: employers need to shift their focus from trying to get more out of people to investing more in them. They do that by addressing four core human needs — physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. His twelve suggestions for creating truly great workplaces are offered below.

My two cents: the first six are structural interventions that take special funding, policies, and time to get in place. The last six are things we can implement right now. They make a huge difference and enable people to bring their best to work.

I don’t know about you, but respect, appreciation, autonomy, clarity, meaningful contribution, and capacity to learn and grow go a long way for me. Which on the list speak most powerfully to you?  

  1. 1.  Pay everyone a living wage. We know the gap between CEO compensation and pay to those at the bottom of the organizational heap. No more need be said.
  1. 2.  Give employees a stake in the company’s success. Profit sharing plans, stock options, or bonuses tied to performance let everyone share the fruits of their labor. 
  1. 3.  Design safe, comfortable and appealing work environments with space for privacy, for collaboration, and for community building.
  1. 4.  Provide healthy, high-quality food, at the lowest possible prices – even in the vending machines.
  1. 5.  Create places for rest and renew during the day and encourage breaks. Naps can fuel higher productivity.
  1. 6.  Offer a gym, encourage employees to stay fit, and provide incentives to use the facilities during the work day for renewal.
  1. 7.  Define clear expectations for success, and give employees autonomy to do their jobs.
  1. 8.  Introduce “two-way performance reviews” where employees receive feedback and provide it to their supervisors without fear of retribution.
  1. 9.  Hold managers accountable for treating all employees with respect and care and for acknowledging their positive contributions.
  1. 10.  Enable employees to focus without interruption on their most important priorities and to think more strategically and creatively,
  2. ideally on projects that fuel their passions.
  1. 11.  Provide ongoing opportunities and incentives to learn and grow in job-specific skills and in softer interpersonal, leadership, and life skills.
  1. 12. Stand for something beyond profits: products and services that add value in the world and enable people to feel good about their companies.

 

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The Soul of Principled Leadership: The Road to Success and Significance

I spent a day earlier this week reading and providing feedback to a colleague on a book manuscript dealing with leadership and spirituality issues. In the academic world, that’s what professors do for one another. It’s always a plus when we learn something important from the collegial support.

The book basically asks readers to think about the inner growth needed to drive principled, high-impact leadership. I’m not doing justice to the complexity of the work because it triggered a number of profound questions that have stayed with me all week.

What are the leadership contributions that I hope to make over the course of my lifetime – the things that I want to accomplish so as to have made a real difference by the time destiny comes calling? How do my hopes fit my true leadership gifts? What do I need to do to stay focused and balanced as I steer through these uncharted waters?

These are not simple questions, and we can never answer them fully. But grappling with the larger life issues implicit in them gives us the best shot at designing and managing a career that we can be proud of and that is both successful and significant.

We live at a time that predisposes us to gloss over the need for this kind of deep reflection. There is growing research on the long-term decline in happiness in increasingly affluent and democratic societies where people are misled by a materialist culture to put money and possessions at the center of our lives. They equate success with big paychecks and ignore the growing evidence that those who focus their lives on tangible goods grow demonstrably more miserable over time than those who set out to make other, deeper contributions – and profit from the success of their energizing efforts.

If you have ever felt the golden handcuffs of a well-paying job that drained a little bit of your soul everyday – made going to work as exciting as pushing heavy rocks uphill – you know exactly what I am talking about.

Striving to make a difference feeds the soul, and nothing is more energizing. Successful business leaders confirm that inner growth matters.[1]

So, what are the contributions you want to be remembered for? What are your gifts and talents – the things you do well and really enjoy? How can you fashion your life and work to stayed focused on all that?

Answer those questions, and you are well on the road to a career of success and significance.

[1] See Andre Delbecq, Nourishing the Soul of the Leader: Inner Growth Matters, in J. Gallos (2008). Business Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.