Are you a pain?

Leaders don't inflict pain; they bear pain.  ~Max DePree

Last week I commented about KimCameron's research regarding the qualities of a positive climate: compassion, forgiveness, and gratitude.  I'm focusing this week and the next two weeks on these three qualities.

Compassion.  Max DePree stated it so well, that "leaders don’t inflict pain; they bear pain."  And in bearing pain we are expressing compassion.  Several of Cameron's colleagues at the University of Michigan's Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship authored a paper entitled, Seeing Organizations Differently:  Three Lenses on Compassion.  They begin this paper by stating, "We cannot fully see organizations until we allow people to speak the unspoken reality of suffering and reveal the human response to suffering that is compassion."

Having reviewed many perspectives on compassion, this team of researchers defined compassion as being comprised of three interrelated elements: noticing another's suffering, feeling empathy for the other's pain, and responding to the suffering in some way.

I'll admit that I've witnessed numerous organizations notice, feel and respond when a member of their organization experiences a crisis, especially a sudden and catastrophic crisis.  Reading this research, however, made me wonder how much we show compassion on a daily basis amid the mundane and common drudgery of life.  When a colleague takes a risk and tries something different and it bombs, do we show compassion?  When a staff member has to leave work early, again, because their child is struggling with an illness and their spouse/partner is gone on work travel, do we treat them with compassion?

Another researcher, Hallowell, calls these "human moments" at work: when someone is physically and psychologically present for another person. Hallowell says, "We can help one another reconnect to our workplace and feel valued." (Hallowell, E. M., 1999, The human moment at work. Harvard Business Review, 77, 58-66) 

This idea of compassion is really kind of amazing.  "A simple gesture like a caring note, giving someone a few hours off from work, a hug, can help transform people's sense of themselves and change the way they relate to their colleagues and shape the way they view their organization." (Lilius, J. M., Worline, M. C., Dutton, J. E., Kanov, J. M., Frost, P. J., & Maitlis, S., 2004). What good is compassion at work? Working paper, University of Michigan)

So if it's really this simple, why don't we do it more often?  I think it's because we've been programmed to believe that "business" or "work" is sometimes also "pain" and we’re supposed to just suck it up.  And any pain we experience on our own time, that's personal, and should not be brought into the workplace.  But this paradigm leaves out a critical factor; we're human and humans suffer.  We're not capable of compartmentalizing our suffering; it is part of our being, part of the fabric of who we are as individuals.

This week, how will we each bear another's pain?