A Self-Awareness

Leaders who possess self-awareness are able to build compassionate workplaces because they have the ability to manage their own emotions, thoughts, and behaviors and treat others with kindness and empathy.

You don’t often hear the word compassion and work in the same breath because, at some point, some brilliant leader decided that work should be constraining and repetitive instead of uplifting and fulfilling. This is the same genius who decided that people are just there to help make money and that it doesn’t matter what kind of hardships they have to endure or how unpleasant the work is as long as they’re making the machine run.

The practice of using people solely as robots creates all kinds of tension and disease in the workplace. I’ve found that leaders get much better results when they use compassion to create healthy workplaces. Compassion simply means treating people as if you deeply care about them and understand their experience. It’s a powerful tool to create an environment where employees are valued and understood. Think about what would happen in your workplace if you applied what these smart people say about the subject.

• Compassion is more important than intellect in calling forth the love that the work of peace needs, and intuition can often be a far more powerful searchlight than cold reason. Betty Williams.

• If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded. Maya Angelou.

• Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around. Leo Buscaglia.

• We are already one. But we imagine that we are not.  And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are. Thomas Merton.

• The greatest degree of inner tranquility comes from the development of love and compassion. The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater is our own sense of well-being. Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama.

• The act of compassion begins with full attention, just as rapport does. You have to really see the person. If you see the person, then naturally, empathy arises. If you tune into the other person, you feel with them. If empathy arises, and if that person is in dire need, then empathic concern can come. You want to help them, and then that begins a compassionate act. So I’d say that compassion begins with attention. Daniel Goleman.

When I talk with leaders about self-awareness and compassion in the workplace, I get the distinct sense that many don’t yet understand why you would want to care for people at a deeper level because, after all, they’re there to do a job. It is precisely this kind of thinking that keeps their organizations stuck in the cycle of dealing with unhappy and unfulfilled employees.

Leaders who lack self-awareness spend so much time attending to the problems that arise from toxic workplaces that compassion is a welcome alternative. Compassionate workplaces get rid of the negative garbage that comes from not caring for people and replaces it with results from people who feel valued.

Leaders can start doing this at any time they choose but it takes conscious effort and focus on the well-being of their employees. What will you do to increase self-awareness and build a more compassionate workplace?

Cheers,

Guy