Awakening Compassion at Work: The Quiet Power That Elevates People and Organizations - Softcover

Worline, Monica C.; Dutton, Jane E.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1626564450 ISBN 13: 9781626564459

Verlag: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

Caring Is a Competitive Advantage

Suffering in the workplace can rob our colleagues and coworkers of humanity, dignity, and motivation and is an unrecognized and costly drain on organizational potential. Marshaling evidence from two decades of field research, scholars and consultants Monica Worline and Jane Dutton show that alleviating such suffering confers measurable competitive advantages in areas like innovation, collaboration, service quality, and talent attraction and retention. They outline four steps for meeting suffering with compassion and show how to build a capacity for compassion into the structures and practices of an organization—because ultimately, as they write, “Compassion is an irreplaceable dimension of excellence for any organization that wants to make the most of its human capabilities.”

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Monica C. Worline, PhD, is CEO of EnlivenWork. She is a research scientist at Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education and Executive Director of CompassionLab.

Jane E. Dutton, PhD, is the Robert L. Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Business Administration and Psychology and cofounder of the Center for Positive Organizations at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business; she is also a founding member of CompassionLab.

Foreword author Raj Sisodia is a professor at Babson College and the co-founder of Conscious Capitalism, Inc.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Awakening Compassion at Work

The Quiet Power that Elevates People and Organizations

By Monica C. Worline, JANE E. DUTTON

Barrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

Copyright © 2017 Monica C. Worline and Jane E. Dutton
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-62656-445-9

Contents

Foreword, ix, 
PART ONE: An Introduction to Suffering, Compassion, and Work, 1, 
1 What Is Compassion at Work?, 3, 
2 Does Compassion at Work Really Matter?, 13, 
PART TWO: Awakening Compassion in Our Work Lives, 31, 
3 Noticing: The Portai to Awakening Compassion, 33, 
4 Interpreting: The Key to Responding with Compassion 43, 
5 Feeling: The Bridge to Compassionate Action, 59, 
6 Acting: The Moves That Alleviate Suffering at Work 75, 
PART THREE: Awakening Compassion Competence in Organizations, 93, 
7 Envisioning Compassion Competence, 95, 
8 Understanding Compassion Competence, 113, 
9 Designing for Compassion Competence, 133, 
10 Leading for Compassion Competence, 165, 
PART FOUR: Blueprints for Awakening Compassion at Work, 189, 
11 Your Personal Blueprint for Compassion at Work, 191, 
12 Your Organization's Blueprint for Competence, 195, 
13 Overcoming Obstacles to Compassion at Work, 207, 
EPILOGUE: A Call to Awaken, 221, 
Notes, 225, 
Acknowledgments, 240, 
Index, 243, 
About the Authors, 251, 

CHAPTER 1

WHAT IS COMPASSION AT WORK?

SUFFERING NEVER REALLY CROSSED ANDY'S mind, especially not as a hidden cost to his organization. But one day as he was running a meeting, a standout employee on his engineering team was unusually quiet and distant. Not knowing how to interpret this, Andy stood next to Xian as he was getting coffee during a break. He asked if everything was OK. Shocking Andy with the intensity of his grief, Xian told him that his sister, who lived in China and had planned to come to the United States to study, had been killed in a tragic accident. Feeling that there was nothing he could do at home, and drawn to be with his colleagues, Xian had chosen to come to work. Xian told Andy that sinking into the technical details of the meeting provided a kind of relief from the tide of memories that otherwise washed over him.

Facing this news, Andy needed to make a choice as a manager — one that his MBA curriculum and leadership development training hadn't prepared him to make. Was he going to regard Xian's life outside of work as a valid and important part of the ongoing situation he was managing, or was he going to treat Xian's life, and the loss of his sister, as if they were outside work bounds?

Death has a way of making these considerations starker. Andy invited Xian to take time off if he needed it, to talk with him at any time, and even to come to Andy's own home and spend time with his family. Not all managers would have made the same decision. The depth and quality of relationships at work are part of the complex landscape of suffering and compassion that we will explore together in this book. Andy's choice to pay attention to Xian's grief, to understand it as relevant to the work of managing, to connect with empathy and concern, and to act on those feelings offers a lived example that is like thousands of other examples we have gathered and analyzed in our research over the past fifteen years. What may seem like small interpersonal moves on Andy's part were actually potent for alleviating suffering.

But what if Xian had not been a star performer? What if the loss of his sister hadn't seemed so obviously relevant? What if the grief had diminished Xian's capacity to contribute to the team? Would Andy's calculus as a manager have been different? What if Xian had mentioned to Andy on the coffee break that his sister had suffered from a mental breakdown? Or that she had a gambling addiction and had thrown the family into bankruptcy? The forms that suffering takes matter for compassion. How suffering resonates with cultural and organizational values is also part of the complex landscape of compassion at work. We don't aim to provide easy answers, but we do draw on two decades of work in this field to deepen your capacity to think about complicated human dilemmas and how to handle them.

Most managers like Andy worry — separate from their personal feelings of empathy and concern toward their employees — about critical questions related to compassion in the workplace. Will employees who are treated with compassion take advantage of their managers or their organizations? Will compassion toward one member of the team, like Xian, set a precedent that locks the manager or organization into a costly pattern of action in the future? Will Andy be able to be fair to others if he opens his heart to Xian's suffering? Will he look weak to the leaders who evaluate him if he offers flexibility to his staff? Addressing and overcoming these concerns is a fundamental aim of this book.

WHAT IS COMPASSION?

As organizational scholars, we study compassion from a social scientific point of view. Compassion is more than an emotion; it is a felt and enacted desire to alleviate suffering. We define it as a four-part process that involves: (1) noticing that suffering is present in an organization, (2) making meaning of suffering in a way that contributes to a desire to alleviate it, (3) feeling empathic concern for the people suffering, and (4) taking action to alleviate suffering in some manner. This definition highlights the fact that compassion is a multipart process. We will explore in Part Two: Awakening Compassion in Our Work Lives how each aspect is affected by both human and organizational factors.

It's also notable that compassion always unfolds in relation to suffering. This differentiates compassion from other positive interpersonal concepts such as kindness, gratitude, and happiness. Kindness, for example, is a desire to voluntarily and proactively support another person's flourishing, while happiness is a personal sense of well-being. Gratitude involves feeling and expressing appreciation for a life experience. Experiences of happiness, gratitude, and kindness are important to developing a positive side of work. They are central concepts in the study of positive psychology, and research supports their role in cultivating mental, emotional, and physical health. Compassion contrasts with these in that it is explicitly linked to the shadow or darker side of life; compassion goes hand-in-hand with suffering. But it isn't all dark. Because it deeply bonds us with others, compassion is wired into our brains and bodies in ways that motivate and reward us for responding to suffering. Compassion is central to human well-being, for those who provide it as well as for those who receive it. But because it encompasses both negative and positive, the dark and light sides of life, it isn't always simple.

COMPASSION IN ORGANIZATIONS

Organizations matter in two ways when we want to understand compassion at work. First, workplaces provide a context that shapes what we notice, think, feel, and do as individuals. Second, workplaces are filled with people and resources that can be coordinated more or less competently to alleviate suffering. We look closely at both the individual and the organizational levels in this book.

One way to understand the powerful role of organizations in awakening compassion is to engage in a thought experiment about a specific instance of suffering, such as when members lose their homes in a fire. We have studied responses to the same kind of loss in different...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2017
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1626564450
• ISBN 13: 9781626564459
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 272
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: eucomply OÜ; hello@eucompliancepartner.com; ; Pärnu mnt. 139b - 14; Tallinn; 11317; Estland