Compassion - can it ever exist in the workplace?
A few years ago, I set-off on a path to teach the world love and compassion at work. I designed a program that would help re-connect people at the people-level. This included a lot of human-centric ideas like using eye-contact, the power of laughing, mindfulness, and so on. It was the program that summed-up all of my 20-year corporate experience and all of the hardships I faced at work at that time. I found the same issues happening in whatever position I was in, and in whatever country I was working in at the time. I felt the pain of my fellow employees and the rigid rules that get thrown at us by the companies that we work for. I felt the frustration and stress of my colleagues when their bosses wouldn’t listen to them when they cried for help. I’ve seen my friends, considered valued employees, walk away from toxic environments. I’ve seen employees win awards and only months later be told they had to leave. I’ve been in meetings where management was ordered to let go of mid-career expensive employees and look at lower costs solutions and replace them with new graduate employees. So I took all of that and designed a program that could bring the spirit of people together without any focus on business - with the focus truly on building people networks, caring about each other, looking-out for each other and communicating without fear. These are the qualities that I believed made up a great place to work.
But, it failed to sell, miserably. What I proposed was compassion and love in the workplace so that employees can thrive together and reach deeper levels of teamwork and understanding. In many essences, it was to inspire a light within all of us.
It all sounded rather “nice” and even “romantic” in many ways. So why didn’t businesses take it seriously? Why didn’t they buy it? Isn’t this important? I hear of many companies trying to create more compassionate workplaces these days. However, even those companies that claim they focus on compassion at work, still have many unhappy workers. There are still cases of harassment and turn-over. There are still stressed employees…
So today, I’d like to inquire whether or not compassion at work is even possible. Before I go on, I need to remind the reader that I am not an authority on anything and I do not wish to ever be considered as one. So let’s look at this as if we were sitting perhaps in a coffee shop sipping some coffee or tea and having a chat with an open heart, as equal friends. Let’s start!
Most workplaces around the world that talk about introducing compassion in the workplace will never quite get there. In the world of business, the bottom line is you need to sell to survive. There are probably thousands if not more business that are competing for the same thing, whether it’s a service or product. All of them claiming to be better than the other. They need to compete; they need to have goals; their employees need to have goals; companies need their employees to be ambitious to achieve these goals. Wait… goals, competition, ambition… do any of these traits have anything to do with compassion? Ambition creates greed doesn’t it? So as long as a company is ambitious or “seeking” something, whether it’s a new product, a new target, a new company vision, a new growth, there is ambition and greed.
How can we ask employees of a company to learn to be compassionate? What is compassion? Is it the meaning that goes along with any other buzzword? Does it have anything to do with love? Why don’t we ask what compassion isn’t? How about it?
Firstly, if anyone tries to convince you that compassion is something you can train through practice, or by repeating some mantra, or sitting for 30 minutes a day, run away as fast as you can. Creating a habit for anything means you are using a fabricated energy to create something that you actually already have. You need to force your mind to create a meaning of compassion that you have learned from someone else, or from the dictionary, or perhaps by repeating something over and over you can build a circuit in the brain that will create the compassionate person. Let’s go into this a little more.
Can we at least see, that compassion has nothing to do with any division whatsoever. I can’t be compassionate to one person because she or he is my friend, and not to another person. This involves making a choice and that is not love. Therefore, in a world of violence, racism, and brutality, wars, compassion obviously doesn’t exist. Surely we are all aware of what is going on in the world - not just in companies but all around the world. In companies, employees get frustrated, they get evaluated, there is jealousy and ambition to be promoted and achievement. Employees are always competing with each other aren’t they? Therefore, there seems to be all sorts of violence built within all of us. Some of these are conscious, and others are not. We seem to create workplaces that hire and promote people that are assertive, aggressive, want to succeed (whatever that means), that have the ability to work faster, better, and become more, and do more, and always improve. All of these are forms of violence. There are people in positions of power which is authority, and therefore control and direct hundreds or thousands of other people. And, if you want to continue to get a good paycheck, you need to listen to what the boss says even if it’s sometimes not what you want. I always wonder if we are really aware that these are all forms of violence and just how much we ourselves are contributing to this.
Looking around we see that society is built this way and we are becoming more and more concerned with ourselves rather than observing these destructive behaviors that are contributing to society. What kind of society is the company you are working for really creating? Is it taking care of every single human and organism living on this earth or just saying they do whilst they continue to battle, and create more complications in society? The longer this type of society continues to thrive on this aggressiveness, the more attached people are going to materialistic values and made-up morals that have come from centuries upon centuries of human conditioning.
We in society, are also divided by countries, religions, we follow gurus and propaganda, we believe in the advice given in books, so-called “thought-leaders”. Life has become a popularity contest about whatever emotion or propaganda is “hot” at the time. Look throughout history and you will see this repetitive behaviors. All of these form some attachment which of course, leads to fear.
Or is compassion more related to what we do, for example, help those in need, or sympathize with someone, or take pity or charity. When did all of these concepts take place and become part of our society as we see it today? I think we need to start understanding how thought works in our minds and how it sabotages “what is” and distorts it.
Let’s try removing any meanings or definitions of the word “compassion”. If we have some connotation of the word in our minds, which has come from somewhere in the past, we are not going to be able to see what it truly is. So, let’s try this together, just for a moment at least. Remove the meaning of the word compassion from your memory. As long as we look at anything in the present with a memory of the past, we can never truly see what it is because thought will try and define it for you with whatever is stored there. As far as I can see, thought cannot by any means at all, cultivate any kind of compassion, which is why I said earlier that if anyone tries to sell you any system, any “way” or practice, you will not understand compassion. Understanding that we all need to have a very special, and deep understanding of what compassion is or we shall simply continue to be violent in the forms discussed.
So, compassion therefore, can not be the word itself. A word, or definition is static. It doesn’t move and therefore is not the thing. What we have essentially done is remove the memory of the word. And for compassion to be completely seen “in action”, one needs to remove the connotations with symbols, all beliefs (or stated non-beliefs), all ideals, remove all attachments (attachments are fear), when there is a complete ZERO of all of these, then you are completely vulnerable - exposed in entirety without the fear of anything. Thought responds only of memory which is one of conditioning, and past experiences. Remove those and what is left? Unless you understand that this release, or resistance to be truly free, nothing can manifest. There can be no compassion if there is division of any kind at all. Compassion is not cultivated through thought, or a discipline or practice, or suppression, or being polite and kind to someone, or empathetic. Compassion only comes when thought itself is not involved in its entirety.
So then, can it be so in the workplace?
Love and light,
GC