Monica Worline and Jane Dutton || Awakening Compassion in the Workplace

listening and enjoy the podcast Today. I'm really excited to have Monica Wharlin and Jane Dunnan on the podcast, co authors of the new book Awakening Compassion at Work, The Quiet Power that Elevates people and organizations. Monica is CEO of Enlive and Work. She's a research scientist at Stanford University Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education and

executive director of Compassion Lab. Jane is the Robert Distinguished University Professor of Business Administration and Psychology and co founder of the Center for Positive Organizations at the University of Michigan's Raw School of Business. She's also a founding member of Compassion Lab. Thank you so much for being on the show today. Guys, thank you. We're thrilled to be here. I'm really thrilled too. Absolutely love your work and your book,

and I know we have lots could chat about. It seems like a central thread we're running through a lot of the work is how businesses have become dehumanized and impersonal. Is that right? Yes, that's right. One of the things that we seem as technology takes over more and more of our work spaces and as we get into work environments where there's an expectation that people will be always available and always on that that is driving out some of the human connection of work, and that's an important

dynamic that we want to pay attention to. Absolutely. And you know, this idea of infusing humanity into workplace seems like part of purcel to that is compassion, right, You really don't have humanity without compassion. And I was wondering if you could talk about how you define compassion and caring. Yeah, So I think we define it a little bit differently than most psychologists, where psychologists talk about compassion as an emotion, whereas we see it a little bit more as a process.

This comes from our background as organizational researchers, where we're interested in how the context affects a process. So we define the compassion as a process that involves noticing human suffering, making sense of human suffering, feeling human suffering, and responding to human suffering. Is that four things? Yes? So it's a four part human process. And if you just want

it in for words, we use noticing, interpreting, feeling, and acting. Okay, Well, would it be okay if we kind of unpacked each one a little bit more in depth? Great, let's start with noticing. What does that mean? Jane loves to talk about noticing, so I'll let her pick up on my thread. But that was very astute of you to notice that noticing relates to what psychologists would call the attentional mechanism of compassion. That we can only respond to and alleviate

suffering that we pay attention to. And this is really important in work organizations because so much of the professional norms and demanding culture of work organizations can drive out our capacity to notice the human state of other people. So a lot of compassion can be blocked in organizations simply by virtue of the fact that we try to hide our suffering or we don't disclose it for fear of not looking professional. So noticing suffering is actually a

huge part of awakening compassion and organizations. Is it a big impediment to that, the fact that we're always so distracted by our own internal needs and things that it just like distracts us from like working outward. Yeah, I think it's that we're distracted by our own internal needs, but we're also distracted by the fact that we're being

always asked to do more with less. So the increased amount of pressure to perform tasks again, as Monica suggested almost twenty four to seven, means we have very little resources attentional and otherwise to attend to other people's conditioned

let alone they're suffering. Do you think of even foundational social psychology studies like the Good Samaritan studies show that attentional load and busyness takes away our capacity to notice other people who might need our help or need our compassion. So if you layer onto that, really the workplace demands and the professional norms and the distractions of technology, which weren't even available when studies like the Good Samaritan study were being run, you can see how much load is

on our attention. I'll also add that two features of work these days make it really difficult for us to sense suffering of other people. One is the fact that so much of work is distributed, and it's really sometimes we don't have face to face contact with other people, and so so much of discerning suffering or sensing or noticing suffering comes from nonverbals, which are facial displays and those kinds of things that make it difficult for us

to sense suffering. Also the fact that more and more work is being done by teams that have relatively short lives, so you don't know people that well, you have to get together do work fastened, then the tea disbands. Oftentimes we notice suffering because people are acting differently than they normally act, and so that sort of sometimes invites people

to inquire how people are doing. But if we don't know people well and we're constantly being put into new situations with new work colleagues, that can also make noticing very difficult. Oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I see it intimately tied with interpreting, you know, kind of how we interpret things affect what we notice interprets what we're going to interpret. Obviously it's a cycle both of them. Yes, and definitely there's the reciprocal relationship.

There the what we notice we have to interpret somehow, And if we interpret what we notice as deserving of our empathy or a space where we want to connect and inquire more, then we're likely to ask questions or behave toward other people in a way that invites them

to disclose more of what's happening. So we can use our capacity to notice and make sense of what's going on with other people to actually heighten and amplify the attention that we're giving to them and how much people are feel safe and willing to disclose suffering in the work environment. And in fact, interpreting is so important that we see it as really in mutual relationship with every step of the process. Oh nice, it's like a thread, yes,

And I'll just say that. I'll add that interpreting doesn't happen in a vacuum. And workplaces with the kinds of cultures, differences in organizational cultures, and in particular the kinds of shared values or beliefs that an organization has can infuse our interpretations of another person's potential suffering, you know, with really different ways of labeling and understand it. So can

I give you an example, Oh, yeah, of course. So an example would be we did a study of actually faculty and when Hurricane Sandy hit New York, New Jersey several years ago. We're really interested in how faculty figured out if students were suffering or not and what they had to do. And in some universities, in response to this, you know, again, the same external event or a hurricane, they put faculty on alert to say something like watch out,

students may take advantage of this hurricane. Basically you better doubt whether or not students could be suffering. In other universities, the messages out from the deans were things like, give students totally the benefit of the doubt. We won't know what's happening with them or with their families, and you

should extend all possible resources to those students. So again, the cultural, the shared beliefs of the the school or the university, as communicated through the leaders, predisposed or primed faculty to have certain kinds of interpretations of the student circumstances, in one case making suffering kind of normal and expected and calling forth more compassionate responses, and the other cases making the student's first impression of a student asking for

time office one of well, maybe they're trying to take advantage of us. So that's an example of how the organizational conducts can shape interpretations of even the same kind of event that's potentially affecting the humans who are are in that organization. Wow, that was like the perfect example. Well,

it's kind of shocking, you know too. I mean yeah, we actually studied six different universities, and the variability and how the organizations were equipping faculty to prepare themselves for what unfold with the students and their colleagues suffering was

so starkly different. And even way back when we were first starting this line of research and we were studying organizational responses to the terrorist attacks of September eleventh, we saw real variability in the organization about the messages about whether this tragedy was relevant to the work environment or not, and whether it was legitimate to express compassion for the

suffering in the work environment or not. And that is another thing that drew our attention to how much conditions in the culture, the shared belief systems, and the leadership messages could change the whole environment for the expression of compassion. Do you want more examples? We could go on in

a world the thing. Let's save it for when we actually talk about the second part of your book, or I just want to get the definitions out of the way right now, and I feel like that'll be another discussion, as were the elements of organizations. But okay, let's talk about feeling. Why does it matter to feel? Spock would not agree with you. You'd say it gets in the way,

gets in the way, right. Well, what we know from a lot of the interpretation research actually is that the kinds of explanations or appraisals that we're making would tip us toward feeling more empathy for another person who is suffering, or for feeling indifferent or even taking some amount of pleasure in the fact that other people are in pain. And so like with the range of interpretations in an organization, there's also a range of emotional responses to other people

suffering in that organization. And when the feelings are feelings of empower concern, we know that that feeling triggers almost automatically, a desire to help, a desire to alleviate the suffering in some way, a desire to go toward the person who's in pain. But when the feelings are of indifference toward others who are suffering, then the action is likely to be null, right, very little movement toward the people who are suffering. There's very little that follows on noticing

that someone's in pain. And when our organizations are toxic, or maybe they're very highly competitive, and they set us up to really experience that if someone else is losing, it means that I have a capacity to win. Then when we notice that other people are suffering in those conditions, we may actually close in for the kill, right, We may exacerbate the suffering or take pleasure in the fact that someone else is doing badly because it gives us

the opportunity to step forward and shine. And so we really see that the feeling that follows from noticing and interpreting suffering is going to make a huge difference for the action repertoire that comes next. Oh, that's really interesting. I agree with a lot of that. I wonder is

movement always a good thing? What do you think of Paul Bloom's argument that empathy doesn't always really help the person the most what they really need, Although maybe you differentially like he different sihaps between empathy and compassion it sounds like you're defining compassion more than just effective empathy. Yeah. So I remember you're asking us to break our definition from four parts into the parts and talk about the parts. Yeah, and we definitely see that there's a role for empathic

concern as a part of the compassion process. But where you know, the big definition is of compassion. And the way I understand Paul's argument is that empathy is highly sensitive to cues in the outer environment. It's highly sensitive to our inner perceived capacity in the moment. Right. So if I notice that you don't look quite so well today, Scott,

but I don't feel that. If I notice that you look great today, but if I don't feel like I have the capacity to do anything for you, then I can close down my empathy really quickly based on that internal sense of my own capacity. Right. And so Paul's argument is that if we want to build a compassionate society and empathy is our only vehicle and it's so subject to all of these social and personal costs, then

it's not reliable enough to get us there. So we need to make a case for compassion where it's a certain kind of empathic concern that's a part of the compassion process, right, And that the other thing about empathy research that I find so interesting right now is that there's a really wonderful paper saying when we say empathy, we mean at least eight different things, Okay, And we should get to be more careful as researchers about what part of empathic something or other we're talking about in

order to explain what we're trying to explain. So we try to be careful to call on the empathic concern for another person as our feeling mechanism in our definition of compassion. And that's totally fair. So let's move on to acting. All this is well and good, but if you just daydream about wanting to help people, maybe that's not optimal. Yeah, I think that obviously the phase of acting is really important. And I think in our work, not all action is the same in terms of of

how effective or ineffective it is in alleviating suffering. And so I think one of the things we've tried to do is have a more finely greened understanding of action in relationship to someone's suffering. So we've talked about some actions as varying in terms of the magnitude of the action, how quickly the action is omitted, whether or not the action is customized to the particular needs of the individual.

So even though we have this one phase called action, again, our purpose in the book and other research is for us to be a little bit more discerning about what kinds of actions matter, and that sometimes in action can be as helpful as action in alleviating suffering. Oh wow,

can you give me an example of that? Okay. So, one instance where a kind of form of inaction or a redirection of action would have considerably increased the competence of comp is in a study of responses to Hurricane Katrina, where there's an initial outpouring from the whole world of wanting to aid the people of New Orleans, and as

part of that outpouring, people just started sending stuff. Schools got truckloads of backpacks, and they didn't have anywhere to store the backpacks, they didn't know what was in the backpacks, they didn't know if they were safe to distribute, they didn't have any mechanism for distributing them, and they just kept coming and coming and coming. And one of our respondents in the study actually said, first, I felt like we were drowning in the floodwaters and now I feel

like we're drowning in the stuff. So it was the intention was to help, the action was an attempt to help, but the effect of the action was actually to exacerbate the suffering in an unexpected way. That's a great example example would be maybe again one of us, one that's close at home, being academics working in university with lots of students. I'm not sure where you are, but where we are there's been just a huge increase in the amount of depression and anxiety experienced by students here a

lot probably like where you are. These students are coming from very different cultural traditions where the meaning of mental health issues is really different. So again thinking about when is in action actually the appropriate or most helpful response to students. We have found that some students from some cultural traditions, simply naming that is this is depression is actually really helpful without any additional need for therapy, without any additional need for any sort of chemical help or

drugs in other kinds. For students, you know, in other cultural traditions, they want the full spectrum of opportunities for dealing with their mental health our goals, you know, which includes therapy and drugs and all kinds of help from the university. So again, this is an example where the same maybe source of suffering generates different kinds of actions by individuals and the institutions. And in one case, and they are effective again to varying degrees by how whether

or not they fit what is culturally appropriate for the students. Yeah, you guys are full of like so many examples on like the Ready. Thank you for hosting that. I see a lot of feminist values in this book, and I'd be remiss not to point that out. It seems to be something that guides some of the work you do as well. And I'd love for you to comment on that. I noticed you kind of differentiate between like male values and female values and kind of make a call for

more female values in the workplace. I'd love to hear more if you could unpack that a bit more. And I also want to know, as a man, am I allowed to have some of those female values? Okay, well, let's do full disclosure. I was a feminist studies major.

I know it, so I come by my feminist credentials. Honestly, what we've learned in the course of writing the book and looking talking with a lot of other researchers and looking at what people are writing about compassion, is that we see it especially in America right now, but I think probably across the West at least, that the word compassion has resonance for women in a different way than for men. So the word compassion has cultural connotations to nurturing,

It has cultural connections to the feminine sphere. It has connections to care giving roles like parenting or caring for elders in the community. And so the word passion when we transport it into the workplace, has resonance for women in relation to other life domains. That makes it easier for them to pick up and see as relevant to their work or how it might help them in their

work role as well. And for men, the word compassion in the work sphere often raises a whole category of fears that are there for women too, But that may be more of the first response of men in work environments to the word compassion. So when I hear the word compassion and you want it to apply to me, but it doesn't fit my schema, it makes me worry Am I going to be seen as weak? Am I going to be taken advantage of? Here? Are people going to use my compassion as a reason to not give

me expertise or credibility in my field? And so it's not that as a man you don't have thecity capacity for compassion that we do as women, right, but that the resonance to the label may be very gendered and

very differently gendered. And so one of the things we really want and call for in this book and in the way we're talking about the book, is to help us find language that would help quell the fears of compassion in the workplace, ways of talking about caring for others, ways of talking about the legitimacy and deservingness of people that appeals to men or helps everyone in the workplace

overcome these fears that go along with compassion. So, yes, it's one of the fears that men have on average that if they show more compassion and care, if they introduce more caring to the workplace, that it'll like get in the way of their bottom line, like their success. They're a competitive advantage. That's a pretty widespread kind of heroistic across the business world. I mean I don't know the research actually on whether men hold that heuristic more

than women. In the business world, I think that's pretty much a There hasn't been a strong business case for compassion out there in the popular culture. I think that they so the fears that are studied at least are often the more interpersonal fears. But the business case for why compassion would feed your strategic advantage make you a more competitive organization is also something that's been pretty invisible until relatively recently. What are interpersonal fears? I want to

make sure I understand this well. This is drawing primarily on the work of Paul Gilbert and his research lab and a bunch of people that have adopted his thinking about what he calls compassionate mind, and he's developed a scale that he calls fear of compassion scale. So we all have fears of compassion. It's not that that women don't have them and men do. We all have them. They just also get triggered by different environments, trigger them differently.

But the number one fear of compassion is that it makes me seem weak. A second fear of compassion, and this is in relation to giving compassion, in relation to receiving compassion is that if I give or receive compassion, it opens the door for other people to take advantage of me. Right. And then there's a third prominent fear of compassion that's more about compassion directed to the self, which is, if I am more compassionate with myself, I

won't be high achieving. I see, because we have in the West really an internalized logic that high achievement comes from self discipline and from self harshness. So we don't have an internalized heuristic that is, if I'm kind to myself, I might achieve more. Yeah, that's what I meant by the fear that it again in the way of a competitive advantage. Yeah, okay, now I got Yeah, I'll just

said that. You know. Another part of the and plasant, I guess the feminist move in the book is we're trying to very much talk about compassion as skilled practice. That it's not just I think another sort of sense. Compassion is soft and it's not skilled. It's quote unquote natural. But one of the things looking at this in a workplace, as we've suggested before, is some compassion is more effective

than others. Some makes ways of expressing expressing and responding to other suffering, you know, moves people further towards suffering or it alleviates it. And so we're trying to show both at the organizational level as well as at the interpersonal level, that some compassion is better than others in terms of alleviating suffering. And I love that as the feminist move because that puts us out of feminism being just about gender, and it takes us into feminism also

being about power and skill and capacity. And so we're also very careful and moved by examples of deeply, deeply skilled compassion practice that come from men as well as women, and we have them in the book. So in that sense, revealing the invisible work of compassion is like a feminist theorizing move that liberates all of us. Thank you so

much for elaborating on that. Yeah, please go on. Yes, I'll just want to do I don't need to really talk at all this entire interview, because I feel that if I just let it go organically, you answer all

my questions. Well. One of the people that worked with us early on fifteen years ago when we were starting the Worker on Compassion was a faculty member named Peter Frost, and he wrote a book called Toxic Emotions at Work, and he also wrote about roles that people took on and work organizations called toxin handlers, and those were examples mostly men, because he was actually studying and teaching mostly senior executives, and he was trying to point out the

important role that certain men played in cleaning up the toxins the suffering being created by workplaces. And so that was an example, I think early on where we became highly sensitive to the roles that various people were picking up spontaneously in both sensing people's pain but also trying to mobilize and galvanize resources in the organization to help people with that kind of pain. So that's so women were picking up the toxins, Is that right? Women's and men.

It was just sort of taking a particular kind of role, like that person the go to person that you would go to if you not in HR, so not in human resources, but someone in your management team who you know just had the capacity often to listen, well, the politics are going really bad, Like who's the person everyone

goes to? That It was like the toxin handler, which had never that role, had never had a name before and he I cared so much about that was again so that organizations would notice a reward and help support people who are playing that role as in the ecology of you know, of people in the workplace, it was really important to name it and reward it. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think a lot of the listeners right now may identify themselves as toxic as

a toxic handler, yeah, or a toxic person. We have all sorts of types. On the Psychology podcast that listened to the Psychologic Thank you so much for unpacking that for me. That makes a lot of what you said makes a lot of sense. I felt what me put

this way. I feel like in society and kind of books talking about the importance of giving and caring, there's this trend for the writer to get pressure from publishers to make sure that you make it clear that it will also make you successful and achieving, and it drives me nuts. Like I found your book itself a really

refreshing take on it. But at the back of the book it says right at the top, caring is a competitive advantage, And that was a completely different message than the two hundred and something pages of the book itself. That's logan in the back I think is what's wrong with society. But I think your book is what's right with society. So I hope you'll forgive me for being so honest and blunt. But well, yeah, so we are very much agree with you, and it's important for you

to know that there are two versions of that. There was a whole other version of this book that was written first, much more about trying to bring the humanity

of this form of human caring center stage. And probably like the other people who are right about some of these more humanistic capacities and capabilities, you know, the business of publishing has, you know, I think moves people sometimes to wrapping it with a more instrumental bottom line kind of logic, when in fact I think we would scream at the top our loves about at some level it doesn't matter. Compassion is important in and of itself exactly,

and then it of itself in the story. Every single thing I see these days, the pendulum has swung so much towards how this will make you hack your job, how it will give you efficiency, it reduces us to machines, and the whole spirit of your book, I thought was about infusing humanity into it, which is the opposite of

that message. So I do think it's notable that when we wrote the chapter two of the book, which is really to try to say, like what does this mean for business, we did a road review and tried to look for many, many people's work to link into that chapter because Dane and I have been studying compassion for twenty years and we've very very seldom done what people

would call an outcome study. We've really been focused on the process and on the organization and system level kind of how does compassion get more competent and more skilled in organizations? So we're definitely leaning in your direction, but I also think I'm leaning in your direction. You guys are the experts on this s yeah, and I think

it's really also important. I mean, one way to think about it is again is like what we're trying to do with this book partly is to empower change agents who are in lots of different settings, and I think helping people be multi lingual about why compassion counts, you know, why we should care about this is also really helpful. So teaching a business, you know, I have a joint

appointment in psychology in the business school. Like in the business school, this is the entree you kind of have to get past the bottom line case to get to, you know, the sense of this. You know, just people are so hungry to reintroduce humanity into the workplace because

they're very alienated by what their experience is. But I think in teaching about this and writing about this, where it's not either or, I feel like it's incumbent upon us to give people multiple ways of having people pay attention to this and to be mobilized to act to unleash it or awaken it, or whatever metaphor you want to use. So that's another way to think about it.

It's not either or. It's an issue of giving people multiple languages for mobilizing people to pay attention to it and to devote resources to it, and to try to reinforce it as part of a social not just an individual skill set, but as a collective a community's capability around compassion. So I think that's a really compassionate, agreeable answer.

But I want to push back on that a little bit because I think that, you know, sometimes they can be a conflict each other, and I think it's up to the values of the organization to make that call. Are they going to put people first? You know, I think that it's not always the case that choosing caring and compassion first leads to greater productivity and success. And like, sometimes I think organizations need to make that choice, Like, you know what, I don't care if we lose some efficiency.

We're not the type of an organization that doesn't care, you know what I mean, Oh, totally, totally I think you know again, I think I'm more probably more and meshed in this type of logic, you know, the instrument economic logic. But yeah, I mean, you're you know what.

I deeply resonate to what you're saying. And there's often a short term, long term horizon issue there with what you're talking about, right, Like, organizations are so often forced into short term economies and they have to maximize profit in a three month period rather than choosing to make the long term investment in the humanity of people. And what we know is that when managers and executives have the longer time horizon, the investment in people also comes

to make much more sense. So there's a big conversation to be had there. I think about what you're opening up the interface between empathy and compassion and economics and economic decision making. Yeah, but we'll say that for another podcast chat. Well, just what the appetite of the listeners we have probably at this point now our listeners are divided. Are toxic people are like they can like rooting for the achievement side and the toxic handlers are like rooting

for the capassion side. Well, I know, but Scott like that was wrong, but I feel like that. So one of the goals for the book is also for people to be more forgiving and compassionate towards themselves. Because the thing is is I'm a toxic person in one context.

I can become a toxic person in one And now I don't think that people are These situational cues are really important, the setting is really important, and so part of the goal of writing an organizational book is to say is so that people can understand that in certain situations they're not maybe being as compassionate as they like, because again, the situation, there's so many things in the situation that are shutting this down at the individual level

and at the collective level. So yeah, so talking about toxic people, I mean This is one of the things about my belief about positive psychology is that I feel like unless we can understand how to change institutions that are shaping these psychological dynamics, you know, we don't have hope of building the human capability that we need to be able to deal with these really pressing issues. So yeah,

I'm right there with you. I mean, in terms of there's a you know, a fundamental human nature of needs, we can kind of like shine organizations can shine the spotlight on what do they want to bring out, you know, like they can make the decision like we rather bring out these set of need you know, values and needs, We would rather bring out the worst in people or the best in people. With that said, I also do

research in the field of personality psychology. I think there still are layered on top of that, there are just

layers upon layers. There are meaningful individual differences that even if you put everyone in the same environment, there are still going to be I'm going to be very trying not to use the word for toxic people, but there are going to be people who have tendencies towards being more goal oriented and like, let's get things done done done undone, you know, and which could in itself be a result of lifetime of experiences interacting with biology and

so all this stuff is complex, and but your message is duly noted, and I'm right there with you on that for sure. Okay. The organizational layer adds so much complexity too, because I can see situations from my research and then going into doing field research and organizations and talking with people about what compassion looks like in their work. Lives in an organization that's floundering around, where people don't know what to do and they don't have a sense

of progress. That person who's really goal oriented, who can create clarity in the midst of the uncertainty, and who can set a path for people to feel like they're going somewhere together, could actually be a huge doing huge compassion work. That's good. Yeah. So, and you know, one thing definitely that I've learned over twenty years is that there's very rarely a simple answer when it comes to compassion. Yeah, very rarely. And I do not mean at all to

equate goal oriented folks as toxic people. I actually don't mean to make that conflation whatsoever. So I want to be very clear. I would alienate, like seventy five percent of my alody ince anyway, if I if I conflated that, So I want to be very clear, I'm not saying that. Okay, let's move on. Okay now, So, awakening compassion competence in organizations, I mean we fit on a lot of this, right, or hinted a lot of this. How elements of organizations?

You know, you guys talk about the network ties between people we touched on cultural values, work roles, routines, actions of leaders. Is there anything else you wanted to add about that concept? Well, I think the most popular way of talking about compassion at an organizational level right now is to talk about building compassionate cultures. And I think it's helpful and important, and anything that introduces more compassion

into the rhetoric around work is a helpful step. So, if you think like an organizational psychologist, culture usually means to us researchers a set of beliefs and values and an underlying set of assumptions about how things work and what's appropriate and what our human beings like. Right, And we can take on pretty invisibly and unconsciously those assumptions,

and that's part of being acculturated. So if the only mechanisms that we have for change our culture mechanisms, it's actually very hard and slow work to change the deeply embedded values and the deep assumptions about human nature in an organization. It's not impossible, and it does happen. We

have cases of culture change. But part of the reason that we like showing other levers in the system, if you want to think about it that way, or other routes toward change that can open up compassion, is that while you're working on the long term culture change in an organization, you can actually help people much more quickly, like redesign their role and the roles that neighbor them and say, how could we just do our zones of

responsibility with more compassion? Like how could we incorporate more compassion into what we think our job is all about? And that will actually foster and reinforce over time the underlying value change that's happening in building a compassion culture. So we think that this social architecture of networks, values, roles, and routines is a really important way to help leaders

and change agents have more avenues towards creating compassion. Yeah, I will say again, I think if we use a faculty example, it's one that I think is very familiar for all of us. And you know, what would it mean if we thought of ourselves as researchers or teachers who were compassionate, who are trying to get better at being a compassionate human being in the course of doing our work. You know, how does it expand our imagination of what we could do, How does it change how

we think about how competent we are. I mean I actually sat in class right before we came up here and said, you know, I've been a faculty member for forty years. I've never had any training on empathy. I've never had any you know, sort of skilling of myself around a relational attainment that would make me a more compassionate faculty member in tea. And it's kind of crazy,

because crazy. Yeah, so we're in the business. So that's an example of not trying to change the culture of the university, but changing our conception of our role and what our duties and responsibilities are in our role. Changing you know again, how much we are attuned to collaborating around you know, helping doctrial students in trouble or helping you know, students who might be trying to we're really

having a hard time getting project work done. I mean, there's just so much more possibility for increasing the collective capability around compassion if we looked at kind of what is the basis for our current networks, How can we make them so that they're more humane, they're more humanely responsive? You know, how can we change our roles, How can we change the way we onboard people or the routines that we have in ways that would increase our compassion.

So I feel like in the human service work of being faculty members, if we look at these different levers, as Monica sort of suggested, there's all kinds of possibilities for expanding again the collective capability of the heart, which I would call versus the collective capability of the mind, which is what trumps everything when we're thinking about you know, academics, did you just make a Donald Trump reference? No, she used it as a verb trumps everything. Oh, I see.

You know you have to unverb yourself that one, just because it has too many connotations. Now that's hilarious, that's hilarious. Okay, I'm with you, I'm with you, So can you guys give me one way, like, how can organizations overcome obstacles to compassionate work? Because they're going to be these obstacles, right, I'm sure that when you go in and you do trainings that that's something that they say. Right, Well, it

depends on which obstacle we're talking about. You know, this is where it goes back to this point that's already sort of a tender point in our conversation is you know, one of the obstacles is believing it's not consequential, that compassion doesn't matter, and you know, the case for making the business case is in some sense it gives people evidence that then helps people to overgride their resistance or the obstacle that comes from saying compassion. You know, it's nice,

but it's not significant, it doesn't really matter. So that's one way is to give people evidence that it matters. I guess I would say my one way is that we all develop a pretty deeply held professional script as we come into our own whatever profession we're in, and that professional script dictates a lot of what we think

is legitimate to do in our work. And many times our professional scripts, I don't incorporate caring for other people, noticing other people's humanity, extending compassion and empathy as a part of what it means to be at my best

as a professional. And so, going back to Jane's faculty member example, when being a faculty member and my professional script incorporates having empathy and concern for the people around me and doing my best to be compassionate toward the people that I meet as I'm doing my research, as

I'm doing my teaching. That shift in what it means to be a professional can overcome huge obstacles in organizations that are otherwise we're holding at bay lots of our capacity to notice and feel with the people around us. I was really well said that, Yeah, cool, So you want to remove the barriers to learning and feeling and noticing and acting. That makes a lot of sense, and you're doing a great service with this. Did you guys

want to end on? Did you want to give like one more example of how a concrete thing an organization could do? You know, because you might be having some companies, I guess there's no such thing as that company is a person like you might have someone from a company listening to this podcast and is eager to like, you know, have another takeaway or feel free to say buy the book, you know, like, I totally feel free to answer that however you want right now. But I want to give

you a chance to leave on something. Can we each leave on one ex So yeah, that would be great, Okay, Okay. So I think one thing to take home is that compassion is actually everywhere. I mean, that's been one of our findings is that sometimes it's not visible, but it's because it's so deeply human. It's in most places, it's oftentimes underneath the surface, and people are doing it quietly

and sometimes in hidden ways. And I think in organizations that celebrate acts of compassion in the workplace, that make it part of and what the organization sees as valuable human action can make it an incredible difference. And it's more and more organizations you know that value innovation, creativity, quick responsiveness, whatever the strategy is, and they try to till the human connections between people in order to get

the work done. People are more naturally experiencing each other's suffering, and they are in many cases very compassionate, but it's being hidden as opposed to actually celebrated as a capacity of the human community. So I think the more that it can be made visible, celebrated, and in some cases rewarded,

I think that will yield benefits that we cannot even imagine. Wow, that was awesome, Okay, Lonica, Okay, Well, Jane and I one of the things that one of the nerdy things that we both really love to do together is to use metaphors deliberately to help us see new dimensions of compassion and to understand new things about it. And so one of our favorite metaphors is as a garden. And if you're trying to create your organization as a garden where compassion flourishes, then the soil of that garden is

how people are connected to each other. It's the quality of the connections between people is like the soil of your garden. So anything you can do, from a very small move to a very big one that helps more people be connected together and helps the connections be of better quality, that's going to awaken compassion. And sometimes it means changing the way you do your first five minutes

of your meetings so that people connect differently. Sometimes it might mean designing your whole organizations off site with a major focus on connecting, but it can be from small to big. But of focus on tilling the soil for those connections, can I elaborate and then so sort of building on tilling the soil. So we have written a case about LinkedIn and kind of how they select people

into their organization. So you have Jeff Weiener sort of saying at the top, you know, I care about compassionate leadership. But again some of the worry is when top leaders say things, does that really trickle down into the every day of what's happening on the ground in the organization. And I guess one of the surprises has been how managers at LinkedIn and they do it in different ways. Actually, before they let people in the door, they're trying to

select on how compassionate they are. And yeah, so there's small, small actions on the ground that can make a difference in terms of tilling the soil in ways that there's vibrant human connection as well as what leaders at the top a spouse and celebrate and those kinds of things. You know, imagine if like getting in admitted into college was not just your SAT scores, but also how compassionate you've been. Yeah, yeah, that is far more. Actually, what's

happening hopefully? Yeah? So can I end on something too, Yeah, I want to get it. I want to get a turn to tell you my favorite passage of your book. You talk about the difference between seeing and beholding. Oh, it's my favorite. It's also my favorite because it proceeds directly a quote from my dear friend Emma Sapala. But let me read this quote. Whether it is small in private or immense in public, beholding suffering with compassion sparks a sense of wonder and beauty, renewing our belief in

what is possible in organizations. I think that really gets to the heart of the spirit of this book is you all have a vision that organizations can be so much more than they are. And as I wanted to end on that note, what a terrific book, guys it thanks so much. It was a real treat to chat with you today. Yeah, thank you for thank you so much, and thank you for that ending. Yeah, I'm thrilled that that's the sentence that Thank you so much for listening

to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott Barry Kaufman. I hope you found this episode just as thought provoking as I did. If something you heard today stimulated you in some way, I encourage you to join in the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com. That's the Psychology podcast dot com.