Tag: empathy

Kindness Grows

Kindness is any act of thoughtfulness, service or generosity that is a response to the need of another person.  A positive aspect of kindness is that it is contagious – its positive influence grows of its own momentum.

Seth Godin alludes to this growth feature of kindness when he wrote in his blog:

Kindness ratchets up. It leads to more kindness.  It can create trust and openness and truth and enthusiasm and patience and possibility.

You might be able to recall when this happened for you. I can recall my own positive feelings yesterday when a waitress helped my wife and I to put on our heavy coats to protect against the cold as we left the restaurant to step out into what felt like 4 degrees.  We were visiting Ravenna in northern Italy for the day and this was our first visit.

The waitress, who was in the process of closing up after lunch on Boxing Day, went out of her way to ask where we were from. When we answered that we were from Australia, she shared her story of 9 months in Australia, including visiting our home town in Brisbane. She also disclosed that she was originally from Sweden.  This kindness of engaging us in conversation at the end of the meal served to cap off a wonderful meal and was one of a number of acts of kindness we experienced during our lunch at the restaurant.  She may not have realised that this was the first real conversation we had experienced in 4 weeks in Italy.  We could not speak Italian but the waitress spoke English fluently.

On Christmas night, we encountered another kind act by a group of about 10 young singers and a guitarist who were travelling the streets in 3 degrees temperature and singing to individual homeless people in the streets.  They sang the song, “We wish you a Merry Christmas” in a number of languages and left a gift for the homeless person.

I was pleased to learn that my son and his girlfriend, both in their twenties, spent time on Christmas Day helping a charity to serve meals to homeless people.

You can engage in kindness at any time and in any way – you can be really creative about how you show kindness to others. Kindness.org offers suggestions on how to be kind and shares stories of other peoples’ acts of kindness by way of inspiration.

In my discussion of empathy as part of emotional intelligence and mindful leadership, I highlighted the fact that kindness is one manifestation of empathetic behaviour.  People who are self-absorbed are unable to perceive the needs of others or respond to those needs in a kind way.  As you grow in mindfulness, your capacity for kindness grows and you are able to be more of a positive influence in the lives of others.

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source: courtesy of skeeze on Pixabay

Mindful Leadership: Inspiring Followers

What do you think it would be like to follow a mindful leader, someone with advanced emotional intelligence skills?  As we have discussed, mindful leadership entails self-awareness, self-management, motivation, empathy and social skills (compassion and communicating with insight).  The mindful leader attracts and inspires  followers because of these characteristics.

They have a highly developed level of self-awareness, acknowledge their limitations, admit when they make a mistake and are tolerant of others’ mistakes.  When someone else makes a mistake they do not look for an individual to blame but undertake a system-based analysis to learn from what happened.

A mindful leader inspires confidence and trust – they are in control of their emotions.  They do not lose their temper when something happens that embarrasses them or their organisation/community.  Their high level of self-management enables them to stay calm in any situation they confront, even in what appears to be a crisis. This level of self-composure reassures followers that the situation is under control and models calmness and self-control.

Mindful leaders are highly motivated – they have a clear vision that is aligned to their values. In turn, they are able to effectively communicate their vision and reinforce their values by their congruence – aligning their actions with their words.  This alignment means that their communications are believable and inspiring.

The mindful leader understands others’ pain and suffering and genuinely feels with and for them.  They are empathetic listeners, able to reflect and clarify feelings as well as content.  They are not so self-absorbed that they are oblivious to others’ feelings – they are empathetic and inspire a willingness to be open about and deal with emotions. They themselves show vulnerability by being open about their own emotions – whether that means having felt anger, disappointment, distress, pride or any other emotion.

The mindful leader is compassionate – they not only notice others’ suffering and express empathy but also act to alleviate that suffering where possible.  Their compassion is an inspiration to others and gives followers permission to be compassionate to others in the organisation or the community. They talk about the organisation/ community in terms of a family – they do not employ the aggressiveness of the sport/war metaphor.

Mindful leaders communicate with insight gained through clarity of mind and a calm demeanour.  They see beyond appearances and have a depth of understanding that encourges and inspires followers.  Their communications are clear, meaningful and accessible – they inspire engagement.

They are fundamentally happy – they are doing something meaningful, engaging their core skills and contributing wholeheartedly to a vision that extends beyond themselves.

Chade-Meng Tan, author of Search Inside Yourself, is the epitomy of mindful leadership.  His effusiveness and happiness is contagious, his vision engaging and his clarity and acuity are inspiring. Meng, in his Google Talk, explains the foundations of the Search Inside Youself program, the benefits that accrue and why he chose to embed it in a prominent, global organisation such as Google.

Meng explains that his vision is to contribute to world peace by developing, on a global scale, leaders who are compassionate.  He sees that helping leaders to grow in mindfulness will achieve this goal.  The Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute is a vehicle to bring his philosophy and training to the world through conduct of workshops, seminars and intensive training on a global basis.  In pursuit of this vision, Meng and his collaborators are developing trainers who can work globally.

Meng is one example of a mindful leader and his passion, humour, insight and humility are inspiring.

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source: courtesy of  johnhain on Pixabay

Mindful Leadership: Social Skills – Compassion

Compassion is recognising a person’s pain and suffering and having an active desire to alleviate that pain and suffering.

Dr. James Doty, in his Ted Talk on The Science of Compassion, identifies three components of compassion:

  1. noticing another suffering (realise)
  2. showing empathetic concern (relate)
  3. taking some action to mitigate the pain (relieve)

Hence, compassion differs from empathy in that the emphasis is placed on taking action to redress suffering, not just feeling with and/or for another person.

James Doty suggests that many organisational leaders who seek power and control, lose their capacity to empathise and their willingness to be compassionate.

However, he points out the research in a book by Jane Dutton and Monica  Worline, Awakening Compassion at Work, where the authors show that compassion positively impacts the bottom line.  They contend that the benefits are two-dimensional.  Firstly, trust, cooperation and satisfaction increase; secondly, burnout, turnover and absence decrease.

Shari Storm, in her TED Talk, Building a Compassionate Workplace, maintains that one of the major impediments to developing compassionate organisational leaders and a compassionate workplace, is the metaphors we use to describe work – which become embedded in our language, influences our thinking and shapes our behaviour.  She identifies both the war and sports metaphors as problematic because they promote competition and winning over care and concern.  She suggests that the family as a metaphor for work would open up increased possibilities for nurturing in the workplace.  It would also enable women to flourish and thrive because women would be better able to relate to such a metaphor.

Unfortunately, the sports/ war metaphors tend to be male-centric and feed the desire of men to be seen as “macho”.   What is not easily recognised is that compassion requires courage as well as concern – particularly where you have to break out of the leader stereotypes encapsulated in the sports/war metaphors.

Mo Cheeks, head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, broke the stereotype at the start of the NBA playoff with Dallas Mavericks.  When 13 year old Natalie Gilbert, through nerves, forgot the words when singing the national anthem, Mo came to her aid, put his arm around her shoulder and gave her a helping hand by singing with her (despite not being a very good singer).  The crowd joined in and Mo has been universally praised for his courageous, compassionate action.  This event shows too that compassion is contagious – if only leaders would realise its power to transform organisations.

How can leaders show compassion?

There are multiple ways leaders can demonstrate compassion – what it takes is a compassionate mindset and the courage to act on it.  Here are just a few examples of compassion in action:

  • providing time off to people who experience trauma in the workplace
  • supporting middle level managers who have to lay off staff to deal with the anger and grief involved, as well as the rupture to the social fabric of the organisation
  • educating managers how to deal with mental health issues in the workplace, for the sake of the managers as well as for those staff experiencing mental illness
  • providing independent expert support to managers and staff who are experiencing difficulties
  • conducting rituals to express grief at the closure of an organisation or a major transition to a new structure
  • allowing staff time to deal with their negative emotions during major organisational change
  • publicly acknowledging the contribution of long- serving organisational members who are retiring – recognising that they will be experiencing mixed emotions including a sense of loss as well as excitement about their future.

As we grow in mindfulness, we are better able to notice when people are suffering, to show empathetic concern and act courageously to alleviate their suffering.

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source: courtesy of WerbeFabrik on Pixabay

 

Mindful Leadership: Empathy

 

The Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute draws on Evan Thompson’s (2001) explanation of the nature of empathy that identifies two key aspects:

(a) The ability to experience and understand what others feel

(b) while maintaining a clear discernment about your own and the other person’s feeling and perspectives.

(Empathy and Consciousness, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 8, 1-32)

So the first aspect of empathy is the capacity to experience what the other person is experiencing from their perspective.  It is like, metaphorically, standing in their place, realising and understanding what they are thinking and feeling.  It is not trying to provide a psychological solution or judging the emotion of the other person.  At the heart of empathy is understanding both intellectually and emotionally what is involved for the other person.

Secondly, it is the discernment ability to separate the other person’s emotion from your own.  It is not owning the other person’s feelings as if they were your own. This ability to differentiate yourself and your feelings from the other person and their feelings is critical.  An inability to do this means that you will eventually suffer from empathy overload, which can be harmful to you and reduces your capacity to help the other person.  Total identification with the other person is not the goal of a healthy approach to empathy.

There are a number of ways to enhance your empathy.  Here I will discuss three strategies:

1.Understanding and appreciating similarities

Foundational to empathy is self-awareness and the ability to recognise similarities between ourself and other people.  When we focus on differences, we are less able to empathise with others and are more inclined to make assumptions about others.  It is interesting, too, that we tend to judge ourselves by our intentions and judge others by their presumed motivation.  We all know that there can be a huge gap between intention and action.

2. Empathetic listening

Empathetic listening involves not only attending to what someone’s is saying (the words), but also the feelings (the emotions) behind the words. It includes the capacity to not only reflect back the content of the other person’s communication, but also the ability to reflect back the emotion and depth of emotion  involved.  This is often very difficult to do, given our busy lives and our tendency to run away from emotional encounters – either withdrawing physically or psychologically by tuning out.  As we grow in mindfulness, we are better able to stay present to the other person and listen empathetically.

3 Kindness

Simple acts of kindness, helping another in difficulty, builds empathy as it relies on awareness of another’s predicament and a willingness to take some action towards assisting that person.  If you are looking for inspiration for your own acts of kindness, here are some websites that may help:

Random Acts of Kindness

Kindness.org

103 Random Acts of Kindness

As you grow in mindfulness you develop your capacity to be empathetic, as empathy requires you to be present on purpose and non-judgementally.

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source: courtesy of geralt on Pixabay

Mindful Self-Compassion

Compassion is an integral element of mindfulness and emotional intelligence.

It involves being concerned for the pain and suffering of others, having the desire to reduce that suffering and taking action, at whatever level, to redress the suffering of others.   Taking action is a key aspect that differentiates compassion from empathy.

Self-compassion, then, is exercising compassion towards ourselves – ultimately, it means doing things to reduce our own self-initiated pain and suffering.

As we mentioned in a previous post, our minds tend automatically towards negative thoughts.  We are critical of ourselves, dwell on failures, feel embarrassed when we make a mistake and carry shame with us to our own detriment and that of others.

Diana Austin, in her doctoral study of midwives in New Zealand, found, for instance, that the sense of shame and self-blame impacted severely the ability of midwives to recover from the trauma of critical incidents.  Her study resulted in an e-book tool designed to promote self care and kindness towards self in the event of a health professional experiencing a critical event.

The Critical Incidents E-Book contains stories, information and practical advice for health professionals and their managers when mistakes happen and things go wrong.  In the final analysis, the e-book is a journey into self-compassion for those experiencing the depths of self-blame, shame and questioning of their own competence and ability to support others professionally.

Kristin Neff, one of the founders of the Center for Mindful Self-Compassion, identified three components of self-compassion:

  • physical warmth
  • gentle touch
  • soothing vocalization

In her video describing these three components, Kristin suggests a number of self-compassion practices that draw on these components.  For example, she recommends self-hugging and a simple exercise involving placing your hands over your chest while communicating care and tenderness towards yourself.

More detail on these self-compassion exercises can be found in the video below where Kristin Neff describes exactly how to do them:

As you grow in mindfulness you become more aware of self-criticism and the ways in which you blame yourself, and you gain the presence of mind to counter these self-initiated attacks on your self-esteem and sense of self-worth.  Mindful self-compassion exercises build mindfulness and develop self-care and kindness.  The more we are kind to ourselves, the more sensitive we become to the needs of others.

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source: Courtesy of johnhain  on Pixabay

Assumptions Build Walls Between Us

Assumptions about differences can build walls between us.  If we focus on what we assume are our differences, then we will emphasize what separates us, rather than what brings us together.  More often than not, our assumptions are wrong.

In one of his novels, After Dark, Haruki Murakami describes the experience of one of his key characters, Takahashi, who was required to attend and audit cases in the criminal court as part of his legal studies.  In the early stage of these visits to the court, Takahashi found that he could not relate to the people being charged with crime, their situation or their feelings – he would assume that “the ones on trial are not like me in any way”.

In speaking of this early experience of difference, Takahashi said, “Between the world they live in and the world I live in there’s this thick, high wall” (p. 96, emphasis added).

However, as he continued to attend the criminal court cases and listen to the testimonies and speeches, his assumption of the wall of difference between the accused and himself began to break down.  Takahashi describes this experience of the crumbling of his assumptions:

“I became a lot less sure of myself.  In other words, I started seeing it like this: that there really was no such thing as a wall separating their world from mine.  Or if there is a wall, it was probably a flimsy one made of papier-mâché.  The second I leaned on it, I’d probably fall right through and end up on the other side.  Or maybe it’s that the other side has already managed to sneak its way inside of me, and we just haven’t noticed.  That’s how I feel.  It’s hard to put into words.” (p.97)

His assumption of a wall of difference between the accused and himself completely broke down when one of the defendants was sentenced to death by hanging.  Takahashi found that he experienced a “deep emotional upset”, resulting in tremors going through his body and the inability to “stop shivering”.  In spite of himself, and his early assumptions about a lack of things in common with the accused, he experienced a deep level of empathy.

There is a famous video made in Demark that explores what we have in common, rather than the ways we are different.  The video, All That We Share, challenges our assumptions about differences and helps to break down the walls of intolerance.

 

As we grow in mindfulness, we can develop increased awareness about our assumptions that build walls between us.  Being mindful of the damage our assumptions can create, leads us to challenge these assumptions and break down the walls that divide us.

Cover image source: Courtesy of hbieser on Pixabay