Byron's Babbles

The following is an original blog post, based on lessons and concepts in Worline and Dutton’s book, Awakening Compassion at Work.

THREE RESEARCH-BACKED REASONS THAT COMPASSION COUNTS
Monica C. Worline


Jane E. Dutton

When we were first studying compassion at work, our colleague Peter Frost published a paper entitled Why Compassion Counts. It was the first in its field to make a case for the study of compassion in business. “We need theory and research that improve our ability to connect with our fellow beings,” Peter wrote. “As students of organizations and organizational life, if we don’t build notions of empathy, of concern for the inhabitants of the world we study, who will?”

Almost 20 years have passed. If Peter were alive today, we think he’d be thrilled with the response to his call to action. Researchers and scholars around the globe are exploring, theorizing, and building more elaborate understandings of compassion at work. We also think he’d love our book Awakening Compassion at Work, which pulls together much of what we’ve learned in a form that makes it easy to put to practical use in all kinds of organizations.

There’s a lot going on in the science of compassion. We wanted to highlight three research findings you might not have heard, but they offer new insights into why compassion counts.

WITNESSING COMPASSION AT WORK CHANGES HOW WE SEE OUR ORGANIZATIONS

Sometimes it’s easy to focus exclusively on the recipients of compassion as its beneficiaries. We can easily grasp that people receiving donated meals are probably benefiting from compassion. What we don’t grasp as easily is that those of us who witness compassion also gain from it.

In one of our studies, we found that just seeing a group of people organize compassion for colleagues at work generated the same effects as those who participated in offering or receiving the compassion. Witnessing compassion changes how much of ourselves we are willing to bring to work, how we see our coworkers, and how we see our organizations. Sociologist and theologian Robert Wuthnow echoes this point when he writes that “compassion enriches us and ennobles us, even those of us who are neither the care givers nor the recipients, because it holds forth a vision of what good society can be.”

COMPASSION FOR COWORKERS IS ESSENTIAL TO SERVICE & HOSPITALITY

The hospitality industry is growing. Hotels, restaurants, resort destinations, and experience providers make up more of our economy. But service quality and hospitality are also essential in health care, education, social services, and community-based organizations where helping people feel welcome and included is a key to successful outcomes.

Compassion researchers Pablo Zoghbi-Manrique-de-Lara and Ria Guerra-Baez show that employees in the hospitality industry are likely to be especially tuned into one another’s suffering. They are arranged in close work teams and they perform highly interdependent tasks. These teams require one another’s full support in order to create the desired customer experience, including detecting and responding to suffering. Coworkers compassionate support for one another is essential to creating excellence in service and hospitality.

COMPASSION STRENGTHENS AN ORGANIZATION’S RESILIENCE

In a study of 18 organizations that had engaged in downsizing, across 16 different industries, the extent to which employees characterized their organizations as compassionate correlated with more resilient profitability. The more compassionate organizations also kept more customers through the downturn. Other studies have found the same link between compassion and the ability to engage and retain clients. When people feel cared for as part of their work culture, they are more able to adapt and bounce back and that helps their organizations adapt and bounce back as well.

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Monica 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, the world’s leading research collaboratory focused on compassion at work.

Jane 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 Ross School of Business. She has written over 100 articles and published 13 books, including Energize Your Workplace and How to Be a Positive Leader. She is also a founding member of the CompassionLab.

Their new book, Awakening Compassion at Work, available now on Amazon, reveals why opening our eyes to the power of compassion is smart business.