Compassion is a trait that may be observed more in families (and communities, or clubs or gatherings where cultures, rules and practices are informal and non-written) than in professional organisations, where it may be viewed with a certain suspicion.

This is probably due to lack of trust.

I propose that this lack of trust is a residue of many centuries if not millennia of them and us thinking when it comes to either managing a workforce, or helping people who are often called the less fortunate [1] in society. 

In our them and us world, when considering organisations and employment, compassion may be viewed as being soft on workers (and by extension, people who come looking for help).

Perhaps there is a grain of truth in this – and if you have been around for a while you will recognise the worker that takes advantage of what they perceive to be compassion in agencies and then use the agency in a self-serving manner. Naturally this can have a detrimental effect on morale, efficiency, work practice etc. (This post describing narcissism might be helpful in understanding how this might happen)

In managing such organisations, the no compassion without truth statement is helpful, and I would propose that this is where good selection of staff and thereafter, supervision comes in.  (A method of staff selection that would reduce the chances of employing people who take advantage of the organisation is proposed in the Sub-Chapter on Recruitment below).

I would say that at the end of the day the result of compassion coupled with truth is actually an encouragement for people, whether we are practitioners or people seeking help – and, of course, practitioners can need help too – to take responsibility for our actions.

There are many aspects of organisations that might inhibit proactive compassion (for example, fear, rigidity, reactive behaviour etc.), but I believe that the principal inhibitor is the way that we default to a logical position during times when we feel uncertain, uncomfortable or threatened.

This is so prevalent in organisations that it is almost the norm and I have often experienced it.

Consideration is rarely given to the process of how the default-to-logic happens because it is so ingrained that we are not really aware of it.  Rarely, when conflict arises in a workplace, does ‘who is hurting here’ trump ‘we must resolve this quickly and logically’.

Now there is nothing wrong with logic, but from the compassion point of view, I believe that great opportunities are missed if it is always the position from which we view the world of the ever-changing human, whether she is at home or at work.

Also, the default-to-logic (and thereafter the reluctance to be compassionate, i.e. perceived to be soft) often arises, I believe anyway, from the dominance of Pillars thinking (or, particularly the values of the corporate world – i.e. who is to blame) in community work and the workplace in general.

The corporate world – which influences the Pillars anyway – is, by and large, a bit light on compassion – so being soft would indeed be anathema to the corporation where profit always trumps human concerns.

In the light of this, our community workplace needs to be constantly vigilant to ensure that alternative voices are heard to counter the corporate ones.

One way of doing this is to maintain clear focus on reality, and as we said already, this is a primarily a leadership responsibility, but while the leader can and hopefully will set the atmosphere, I believe that expressing the alternative voice is the responsibility of every worker.

I mentioned above that compassion involves reaching out, and reaching out to workers might not be common in many organisations, generally.

But in the sort of organisation that we aspire to, reaching out to staff members is, I believe, essential. 


[1]. Even a cursory knowledge of the history of labour relations is enough to recognise them and us in management – staff relations which prevails to the present day.  I also believe that the tradition of helping others contains a significant component of them and us thinking – none more so than the history of helping those who we describe as mentally ill or socially deviant etc.

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