“There’s a myth that work should be an emotion free zone.”
Monica Worline
I host a weekly radio show on SiriusXM 111, Business Radio Powered by Wharton, called Work and Life. We publish edited versions of my conversations as free podcasts. I invite you to listen to the episode (embedded below) that is my conversation with Monica C. Worline, Ph.D., founder and CEO of EnlivenWork, an organization that teaches businesses how to use compassionate leadership to enliven, or humanize and energize, the work that they do. Monica is also a research scientist at Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education; Executive Director of CompassionLab — the world’s leading research collaboratory focused on compassion in the workplace — a lecturer at the Ross School of Business, and co-author, with Jane Dutton, of Awakening Compassion at Work: The Quiet Power that Elevates People and Organizations.
We spoke about the impact compassion can have on improving both employees’ lives and business performance. Monica describes four steps for awakening compassion in the workplace, or in any situation. Any employee at any level who follows these steps can have a powerful effect on their organization’s culture. We discuss how leaders set the tone in most organizations for compassion; even the smallest adjustments can go a long way. In the second half of the conversation, two wonderful callers joined the conversation with poignant and instructive examples of the value of awakening compassion.
Originally published at medium.com