Greetings from Vancouver, where the bulbs are beginning to burst, Spring is here!

I’ve been reflecting recently on the idea of compassion and the ‘bottom line.’ The responses I see fairly often about compassion and business is that kind of quizzical look from your dog when s/he turn’s their head slightly trying to work out what you’re doing. Compassion in business is not only seen as weird, but the whole concept is seen as rather alien.

I think this is likely related to how ‘compassion’ is defined. Compassion as pity, is not good for business. In fact, pity is not good for much, it’s hierarchical and subjects people to disempowerment. Compassion, in it’s strictest sense, is about putting my self in the shoes of the other person, and not doing anything that might hurt that person. And that leads to some very interesting perspectives that are very much about business and especially leadership. So, for example, if I know that someone is desperately unhappy in their job, and is not being productive, not performing at the best of their abilities, is it more compassionate to keep them employed in the organization, or is it more compassionate to support their efforts to find employment elsewhere, even to the point of firing them? Pity would support the former, compassion is about the latter.

In a phone conversation with a friend and sometime colleague yesterday talking about how compassion has improved their workplace, he explained that their research shows that their initiatives around compassion saved the organization about $1 million dollars over the last five years. They saw dramatic decreases in sick days, in tardiness, in losing good people because of bad relationships, and in short term disability costs. I asked him how that had happened. He said, first of all they framed the work under the auspices of compassion and forgiveness, and not for example conflict resolution. Both compassion and forgiveness require work on my part in order to succeed; often conflict resolution is seen as something others have to do. Next it was about the distinction between a team and a group of people who work together on projects. Teams meet regularly and hold each other accountable. It was also about clear job descriptions; team members know what their job is, and how it fits into the bigger picture. And it was about the good of the work. He said that in his organization people often fell back on “friendship”, thinking that although person ‘x’ was not pulling their weight, because of a ‘friendship’ they didn’t receive feedback. What was interesting was that true friendship is actually about reciprocal honesty, feedback and accountability. If I’m not pulling my weight, it is important that you let me know that, and then listen to my story about it with compassion. Perhaps there’s something going on in my life that is precluding me from pulling my weight. And if you cut me some slack for this short time, I will be able to do the same for you soon enough, because, compassion teaches us that we all have bad days.

And then, this important part of the equation, forgiveness. If we have been reciprocally honest and accountable with each other, then we are more likely to be able to forgive each other and move on. It’s the unclear and then unmet expectations, the triangulation of talking about each other and not to each other, and the long silences where we expect people to “get our point” that insidiously cause long term pain that manifests in sickness, tardiness, bad relationships and short term disability costs.

May this week find each of us adding to the bottom line by living and working more compassionately.