7: Compassion in the Workplace

When I started researching and investigating compassion the best part of eight years ago, some colleagues at work (in a leadership development organisation in England) were sceptical about the subject. One even said: ‘Michael, none of our clients are interested in compassion. None of them are asking for it’. I decided to persist with my interest in the subject and simply weathered the ongoing criticism that we should not be concerning ourselves or wasting time on something as pink and fluffy – and frankly as useless to organisations – as compassion.

Thanks to other like-minded friends and colleagues, however, we began to make some progress in terms of our understanding of compassion, discovering along the way – and to our delight – that there were others around the world who were also taking a serious look at the role of compassion, particularly compassion at work. Today, compassion is really coming to the fore.