Why is Being a Compassionate Leader Important? with Special Guest Jenny Steadman

Transcript

Karen Kirton  00:30

Welcome. And I'd like to introduce you to Jenny Steadman, who is the Acting national director for potential project which is a global leadership training, consulting and research firm. Jenny is passionate about helping leaders and teams to create more human worlds of work through the power of mindful awareness and wise compassion, which is the topic of today's episode, as well as being a highly qualified mindfulness trainer. And corporate facilitator. Jenny draws on years of experience from organizational strategy and transformation, learning and development and change management across diverse sectors ranging from energy to Sydney Olympics. I've known Jenny and for about 13 years and I've had the pleasure of working with her for several of those and apart from all these wonderful things I've just stated I would also describe her as warm, friendly, compassionate and exceptionally driven and process oriented. Her wonderful insights today are drawn from global research for potential project latest bestselling book, which is called Compassionate Leadership how to do hard things in a human way, which was published this year by Harvard Business Review Press. I'll let Ginni and tell you more about what the data from 1000s of leaders, employees and companies in nearly 100 countries shows. But needless to say, if you're interested in fostering higher levels of employee engagement, performance, loyalty and well being, then stay tuned, I'm really looking forward to hearing more about how taking a mindful compassionate approach is not only increasing performance and well being but bringing a cultural shift in organizations from multinationals through to government departments and private enterprise welcome Jenny.

Jenny Steadman  02:23

Thank you. What a great introduction.

Karen Kirton  02:27

It's all well deserved. And in episode eight of this series, we actually spoke about empathy in the workplace. So I'd love to start with asking you Jenny, if you could define for us Compassionate Leadership and how is that different from empathetic leadership?

Jenny Steadman  02:44

So yeah, happy to and I listened to that episode as well. Thank you can scrape. So how would I define the difference between Compassionate Leadership and empathetic leadership? Well, we also like to add the word wise in before wise, Compassionate Leadership because it's not just about being compassionate. It needs to be combined with wisdom as well. But first of all, to answer your question, the difference between empathy and compassion, it's really interesting if you look at the research in Tanya singer in Germany is one of the leading neuroscientists to look at this. Through functional MRI scans. We can see that there are actually two different neural networks within the brain, empathy and compassion. So empathy could be considered more of an emotion, like we're really feeling with someone we fit and we're designed like that. As humans, we've got mirror neurons. We are very much attuned with other people. So that's feeling the pain that other people are feeling or the emotion whatever that might be. Doesn't have to be pain. Compassion, on the other hand, is considered to be more of an intention to alleviate the suffering of someone. So maybe if I give you a little bit of an example, which is just imagine that you're hiking some sort of Bush track and you see someone ahead of you, who has been pinned down by a boulder, let's say a rock, Branch, whatever. And you'd go up and say, Oh, that's awful. Like, I really feel for you the pain that you must be in this or that sympathy. Like that's that feeling of I'm really feeling compassion would be now what can I do to help? Like I feel we start with empathy, we have that spark of empathy, and compassion is stepping into action. So empathy plus action equals compassion.

Karen Kirton  04:44

Love that definition. So how would you see that playing out in the workplace?

04:53

Well, in the workplace, this is where I'd like to add in a bit of wisdom into it. And I know this is a podcast, but I'm going to do my best to describe something that would be best seen visually. Just imagine that we've got a matrix that's got these quadrants in, and this matrix has got a vertical axis. And at the top of that is compassion. Or you could say caring for your employees. It doesn't have to be compassionate if that's a word that you're not so comfortable with at the moment. Let's just call it caring for the moment. So at the top of this vertical axis is compassion and down the bottom is indifference. So if you can picture them vertically, then on the horizontal, on the very right hand side is wisdom or call it this business acumen or knowing what the difficult things are, and having a willingness to do those difficult things that would be at the right. And at the very left of that horizontal axis would be ignorance like you don't even know what it is that you've got to do or what those hard things are. So that naturally brings in four boxes here. So we've got carrying up the top and we've got knowing what the hard thing is being willing to do it on the right hand side. So that top right box is where we would see that being in a work setting, which is we have both the the caring for the people, and we also have that willingness to do things that are hard. But if we take that matrix across, let's say we're staying at the top, we're caring, but we've moved to the end of the horizontal axis, where we don't really know what the hard thing is to do. Or we don't have that willingness to do that hard thing. That could be a situation where we're letting our caring get in the way of taking action. So that so I'm going to unpack the others in just a moment. But you might be able to think of examples when you've worked with managers or with leaders who, you know, they're good friends with the people they work with, or they nothing wrong with that, of course, or it might be that they know that someone's in a really, really difficult situation. They're really feeling for them. Oh, gosh, this is hard for them. I don't want to have to give them bad news. Well, that's where avoidant caring avoidance can come into it. But if you start looking down at the bottom side of things, if on that bottom left if they don't know what the hard thing is to do, and they're not willing to do that, and nor do they have caring that sort of like ineffective indifference, they there's not a lot of great things. To say about that particular box. And then the final box at the bottom, Brian is where they know what the hard thing is that they've got to do. They've got the business acumen. They know that they've got to have the hard conversations. And they do that but they do it in a way where it's not showing care or concern for their people. So that would be putting results ahead of people's well being. So we often see this, and maybe you can think of examples of people who are in, let's say that bottom right box caring, uncaring execution, where they're putting results before people they're just like, I don't really care what the impact on these people will be. I'm just going to push ahead and do and maybe you can think of people like that, or at the top left, which is I care so much I'm not prepared to take to do the hard things in a work setting. We've got to have performance reviews, we've got to give feedback. We've got to close offices, we've got to have mergers. We've got to do all of those things. So what it is is about bringing into that quadrant, up the top right. Does that make sense? I know there was a lot of words.

Lachy Gray  08:35

It's so interesting. It reminds me of radical candor. the book by Kim Scott, I think she see it as a challenge directly care personally, kind of quadrant and it sounds similar in intent that it's it can be common to find people in the workplace, and I'll probably put my hand up but this one I was started being a leader is caring for people, but not knowing how to have the difficult conversation and therefore kind of putting it off and thinking that I was doing somehow doing the right thing by that and I've really reflected that on over time to realize that's a real disservice to that person because I think related to feedback you actually that was preventing me from even from giving feedback even because I thought How do I have this difficult conversation? Or maybe I just don't have it, which was easier for me but in on reflection, probably not the right right way to go about it.

09:37

Yeah, okay. I agree with that entirely. And I think that situation that you've been in in the past is where a lot of people are finding themselves these days. I was talking at a conference about this recently and that's what so many was saying was that, you know, we care for these people. How can I step in and do that difficult thing when I know that this might cause extra pain or it's going to be information that they don't particularly want to get. But I the difference I would make between radical candor. And what we would be saying from our perspective is I'd swap out the word radical and put the word caring, because that brings in that element of still caring for people but you still having that candor about it. So like caring, caring candor, which means we'll do that thing. We still have that radical compensation, but was that word of caring in there? It just has that little bit of an emphasis on the human side of things.

Lachy Gray  10:34

That's really helpful. And could you share with us some of the findings from the research that the potential project did to inform the Compassionate Leadership book

10:44

Yes, sure. So there were some interesting findings. We looked at when leaders are rated by their followers as being high in wisdom, call that business acumen call that whatever you want, they they rated well on a certain number of uncertain categories, and I can go through those if you wish. When the followers rated that leaders will on caring or compassion, they also rated well, but when they rated their leaders on a combination together of wisdom and compassion, in most cases, it was more than double the impact of that on the employees within the company. So looking at things like job satisfaction, organizational their commitment that they have to the organization, their job performance, their job engagement, and also their decreased burnout. It was just really interesting to see in the data, and I can go through what sort of data we have that just really interesting to see that you get a certain amount of positive results with those two categories separately. And that combined them together, it was significantly higher, the results that we've got there, so that comes back to those two axes that we've got within that quadrant. If we do well on one, great if we do one on the other. Great. Combine them both together so that we're in that top right quadrant. Then we're really getting some great results for the employees within the company and for the business results as well.

Lachy Gray  12:25

Just to give us a sense of the landscape, I mean, what percentage of leaders do you think are leading with compassion at the moment out there? What's your experience?

12:37

It's about 20. This is going from memory. So I might be slightly off here, but I think it's about 22%. We're in that top right quadrant, but down the bottom if you look down the bottom of where there's indifference with it not caring, combined together. I think that's something like 44% of people are operating from a position of indifference for their employees. But I think roughly 22% in that top right category from memory.

Karen Kirton  13:06

So lots of opportunity there.

13:10

I would say a lot of opportunity.

Karen Kirton  13:13

One of the things that Loki and I both really resonated with with the book title was how to do hard things in a human way. And I think you know, in my business as HR consultants, we are asked to help with the hard stuff, such as redundancies performance management discussions. And I've seen this been a real conflict for leaders when they're trying to show compassion or caring as you said, and but they're also trying to keep their staff motivated. So whether that's the staff that they're having to have these conversations with or just the other people that are left in the organization. And then we have this layer of legal risk and requirements which can make those processes seem very cold, and steroidal. So what would be your advice for leaders that find themselves in that internal conflict?

14:16

Well, there are four main steps that we would recommend, and these are things that are trainable. So if people feel that this is a bit of a stretch for them at the moment, to step into showing a bit more caring or vulnerability or the ability to listen to others at work, if they're people with whom they've normally disagree or something like that. This doesn't mean they can never do this. That's absolutely fine. So we will break it down into four main steps. And these all start with the word caring like the first word relates to the compassion side of things. And the second word of these relates to the wisdom side of things. So if I just briefly and to whatever degree we should go through all four of these. So the first of them will be what we call caring presence, which is to be who now like a mantra for that could be to be who now now I know that can sound pretty simple, but basically it's there's a lot of power in that though. There's a lot of benefit in that though, because the first step is just really being present for the people who you're with. So when you are speaking, when you have to give that bad news, when you've got to do the redundancies when you've got to do whatever it is that you've got to pass on. That's hard news. For some being present, they're like turning off notifications, making sure that you've allocated some time, before and after before to prepare for it afterwards, to continue to provide any further support that's needed. And removing distractions so that we can really be with the people. For a lot of people that is actually in itself a bit of a stretch because we're so used to being distracted. We're so used to having things being at us all the time. We're so used to having our mind and our attention go to somewhere other than the person who we're talking to. That's the first step it might sound simple. can take a little bit of practice to get used to it and a little bit of training, but it can make a real difference. And maybe you can also think of managers that you've worked with in the past who do that well who are just really there for you and you've listened or you've seen them do that for other people, you know what a difference that they can make. So that would be the first thing interrupt me at any stage. So the second one is what we call caring courage. And I know I've heard you talk about this Karen on your podcast before as well but that's choosing courage over comfort and I know you've heard that in Brene Brown's material as well, we would agree entirely with that. Is that to do those hard things, and to step out of that caring avoidance where we might get stuck in an empathetic hijack. We need to be willing to feel, you know, to take that courageous step and putting that over just being comfortable. So one sort of flows on from the next to the next. So we've got the presence, and then we've got the courage over comfort. The next one is the Karen candle and just sort of mantra for that I guess you could say is direct is faster. So this is where we need to not wrap a hand grenade, we need to get to the point. We need to start with the message and then we're being present with them and we're sitting with our discomfort and they're really engaging in that conversation but direct is faster and the fourth of these is what we call caring transparency. So being really clear about the message that we're giving, checking in with the person to make sure that they've understood what we're doing. And this may not be as I've been saying it kind of indicating at the moment as a one on one could be in groups it can be in all sorts of different settings that this is a little bit like a flywheel that once you get it going. Once you get into the pattern of this, it and it starts to spin and rotate it then get some momentum of its own. And then when that's brought into organizations can really lead to cultural change, like if employees know that their manager is going to be present with them is going to be prepared to do the hard things is going to be direct. And to be clear. We've seen throughout research as well that that leads to psychological trust. Safety. Yeah.

Karen Kirton  18:36

I think it sounds like a leader that all of us would want to have. Right? Like I think that isn't, isn't it like when you think about what kind of leader do I want to be well, what's the con that you would like to have and I was reflecting on when you're saying about the caring presence because I think although many people would say they want to do that because they're stuck in their own discomfort in being there. It is actually very difficult thing to do to move out of that and be there for the other person and perhaps I don't I don't know if you have any thoughts on this, but if you can, if you can get to that point, the other three seem to kind of follow more easily but that seems to be perhaps the one that needs to be worked on.

19:20

If you see them as being the important thing because I think a lot of people would probably want to just gloss over them and get to the well you know, I've got to be courageous type thing. But I yeah, I appreciate it that you're pointing that out as being one of the most important parts.

Lachy Gray  19:37

How do you recommend or suggest people do that? Right? I mean, as you said, distraction is a part of life, isn't it to the point where perhaps we don't even realize we're distracted. That's just busy and busy is busy. And that's work, unfortunately, and and in our personal life as well. So, yeah, how do you suggest people kind of think about that? They probably have I'm assuming the best intentions to be present. How do they go about that? To achieve it? I guess?

20:11

Yeah, good question. And there are all sorts of different ways and it is a train wreck. It is something that we need to train ourselves. Because as you've said, there's so many distractions. That are pulling us in the direction of distraction, like we get to work and then we just jump straight into action addiction. I got to do this, go this. Check my emails, I've gotta respond to that person. I've got a dud, you know, we're just at the beck and call of everything else that's coming around us. So it is actually something that requires a little bit of intention. And we can start really small it might be it might be before going into a meeting. just pausing yourself for one minute and letting go of everything else letting go of looking at the phone. And just even if it's 30 seconds, just something where you can just sort of notice where you're at that moment. Be with the environment that you're in at that moment letting go of looking at the phone, it might be pausing before sending an email and just stopping and checking. Have I said what I meant to say like that that's a way of being present. But of course, what we do potential projects, everything that we do is based on mindfulness and firmly grounded in neuroscience and research. So we've done a lot of research looking at the benefit of actually doing a mind training practice of some sort where you might say, five minutes a day or 10 minutes a day. Do something where you're intentionally bringing your attention through to onto something that's happening in the present moment. So that might be just noticing your breath or it might be noticing the sounds that are outside or it might be it might be particularly engaging in a conversation with someone where all you're doing is making them the focus of your concentration at that time. But we can see that the more we do this because of neuroplasticity, the brain is always changing itself according to how we use it. So whenever we intentionally engage our focus on whatever it might be on the task at hand, whoever that might be, whatever it might be. We're strengthening that capacity to be present again and again and again in the future. And we do that the more we notice when our mind has taken us away. The more we notice when distractions have taken us away, and the more quickly we can unhook from that and come back to whatever it is. That's our task at hand. Whatever we need to be present for in that moment. It's trainable can be done in little micro steps, or it can be done with something that's a little bit more intentional, like a five or 10 minute focus and awareness training.

Lachy Gray  22:57

A lot that building it into a routine I guess making it a habit that we started our weekly team where every Monday morning we do two minutes of mindfulness as an opportunity for us to arrive in the meeting. And it's quite interesting you know, I think especially for new Jana was when they join it's it's strange, right? You've got 14 people there on Zoom and it's like Shouldn't we all be talking? But no, we're actually going to stop and and, and we will come from the weekend is really busy and you really realize how much chatter I have. And it's not until I stop that I give myself that opportunity to acknowledge what's how busy my thoughts are. And to then it's two minutes goes very quickly, I think. But to do it together, as well. I think that's a collective something that we're all doing together and then we come out of Osaka right. Okay, now let's let's do the meeting.

24:04

Yeah, that's awesome. Lachy. That's fantastic. And as I was starting to say before, ways in which you can do that, that was the first one that came to mind. I thought oh, maybe I shouldn't jump straight to having everyone together. Be sitting Simon. Why I said the 30 seconds before you get into the meeting. But I do highly recommend because that's where it normalizes it within the culture. It's okay to not be constantly constantly busy. Okay to actually pause and stop and just check in with yourself. And it's okay for everybody else to do the same as well. So that's great that you do them. Your company that's really great.

Lachy Gray  24:47

In Episode 11, kind of I talked about feedback in the workplace. You know, feedback is such an important part of learning. Let us know how we're going areas for improvement. And I'm interested to know what feedback should we be listening out for or requesting, if we're trying to take these steps on board and we're trying to work towards becoming a more compassionate leader.

25:17

I think feedback and seeking it out as well, in terms of who disagrees with what I've said. And obviously you need to have built up a bit of safety within your team to have people feel that it's okay for them to disagree. That when they can see that you genuinely do care and you're coming at this from a position of kindness and caring and wanting to grow yourself, then that's more likely to be forthcoming, but I think that's one way which is just asking people for who disagrees who's got different opinions about things. Also about taking little, little steps of being courageous. Throughout having a cold shower in the morning

Karen Kirton  26:09

I read so much research into the benefits of that kind of stuff. I cannot do it. I hate the cold

26:18

yeah, it's Yeah. But it might be just a little way of being able to practice doing something that's a bit hard. That's over the comfort. More more important than just being comfortable there.

Karen Kirton  26:32

stretching yourself out of that comfort zone. I did a session this week and they were talking about the comfort zone and you know, don't step out of it. Just stretch it because the more you stretch it the more that the circle goes from a tiny circle to a really big circle. And yeah, I really liked that concept. But back to the book by a potential project that was published on Compassionate Leadership. It did make me initially think about Dr. Kristin Neff and her research into self compassion. So I'm just interested in your thoughts Jenny on bringing a conversation around self compassion into the workplace and encouraging leaders to be compassionate for themselves as well as for others.

27:16

Yeah, great. And Kristin Neff has done such incredible research like really scientifically validated deep research that shows that self compassion is so valuable, and it's not soft and it's not woowoo and it's not turning us into doormats or anything like that. Like this is actually hard stuff. And it's in its latest book, fierce self compassion and think goes to that as well that we can actually, which is what we're saying without bringing compassion into the work force as a leader or as any sort of influencer that that is really important. So I guess you could say, it's along the lines of we can't serve from an empty vessel. Or the other metaphor of the oxygen mask and an aeroplane like we've got to put us our oxygen mask on first. To effectively help the other people. And as leaders we need to do that. If we're continually depleting ourselves. We're not going to be any good to anyone like it's not going to last it's not sustainable. So self compassion isn't about it. Well, it's not for start self esteem. Self Compassion isn't self esteem mean isn't just about fostering an ego or trying to talk us into something ourselves into being someone who we may not be at that moment but self compassion is an act of kindness toward toward ourselves. It is having the the the mindfulness, all the wisdom to know when we've reached a limit or when we're at that point where that vessel is getting low. Knowing as well there's that common humanity side of things like we're not the only one and it's okay to be feeling like this. And then also just checking in well, what do I need to do to fill up my vessel to look after myself so that I can more effectively look after others. And whilst I can't remember the exact steps off the top of my head, like the research is definitely there that those who employing will actually I do have some I do actually have some research here. Now that I think that we could see in the writing of this book that bringing self compassion to your emotional experience at work has got a really strong business case for that as well. So for those leaders who rated themselves high on self compassion, showed that they had 66% Less stress compared to their counterparts who did not rate themselves high on self compassion. also experienced 21% Less burnout compared to their counterparts who didn't rate themselves high on self compassion, and two, and they had 200% Less intent to quit the organization.

Karen Kirton  30:19

Well, actually interest everybody.

30:21

Yeah. Yeah. So there is a business case there. Absolutely. And I was first saying that I didn't have the stance. I think I was thinking probably more about Kristin Neff 's work. I couldn't remember specifically the the numbers around what she has shown, but that's what we saw within our book. Is that are in the research for the book that so interesting that yeah, giving ourselves a break isn't the same as letting ourselves off the hook. Like we're still we're still accountable for what we're doing. But we're not constantly beating ourselves up if we make that inevitable mistake that we're all going to make. And I think back to what you were saying about being present as well, is that part of that is noticing when we've got this inner critic, as we all experience going on and on and on in our head. And when we're in those positions where we've got to give people tough feedback. I know I've been like this before, where I'm like, I'm going to stuff up and you know, I'm going to do a terrible job and I'm going to upset them. significantly in some way. And they can be really judging me for what I'm doing at the moment. And it's that voice that's actually taking us away from being present as well. So with self compassion, we can like okay, I hear your inner critic, but right now what I need to do is just be present for this person in front of me

Karen Kirton  31:46

great point.

Lachy Gray  31:48

I love that. I was listening to a podcast yesterday actually, with a psychologist being interviewed who, whose specialty is Chatter is the inner critic. And it's really interesting because he one of the points he made was that the negative thoughts they serve a function like they're not inherently bad. They are there to serve us. That is, yeah, like we it's the narrative that we then build around that that become can become really challenging, but they are actually there to to serve us and to guidepost and signpost I guess and say, Hey, maybe we should think about this yet while I have. Here's a couple of different perspectives to think about it. Okay, I'm going to move on. And I'm just interested, Jerry, I mean, those stats that you shared a pretty significant so it sounds like there's a huge opportunity to to develop the skills around self compassion. And in your experience, is this something that is is learned? I mean, who are these people who are naturally self compassionate is that are they learning this? Are they are they they just from birth, they're more likely to be more self compassionate. I'm curious.

33:14

It is learnable it is. Absolutely. And this is where this is where mindfulness can come into it as well or it leads to having greater self awareness that might be a better way of saying can come into it as well, because we're more likely to notice those thoughts as they're occurring of the thoughts of I'm no good. And everyone's judging me and I did a really poor podcast interview and the hopeless there are no one will invite me back again. And, you know, notice those things, those thoughts, and it is actually a training and a practice to become aware of them. And then just to I will take it from a couple of angles really after that, which is, first of all, knowing that the words that were that are going through in our mind about all of this aren't necessarily the truth. Yes, they might be there to protect to sort of be supportive for us, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they're speaking truth to those words. And also then that ability again and again and again, to bring just a sense of kindness or whether it might be acceptance to the situation. So we know that we've made a mistake, as we all will do, as is inevitable. Nobody's perfect. We make a mistake. And yes, we can learn from but is there also the ability then just to bring a sense of acceptance to it? Well, it's done. You know, the logic of the acceptance If I can't, if there's something I can do about it. I'll go on and do something about it. If I can't, then I just need to accept it. And in that moment of actually accepting, which isn't saying we're not going to learn or anything like that. That's the moment of self care self kindness, self compassion. Whatever it is that you want to call it. And do that again and again and again. We're more likely to build up that ability to to not constantly rehash the past of just how bad that was. And also, we're less likely to be rehearsing the doomsday future, the catastrophizing?

Karen Kirton  35:33

We'll never do that, Jimmy, we're perfect.

35:38

Anybody else might be thinking and I'm going to you so Lachy. I really think it's a practice. I think it's just a training like a lot of these things. We're not I don't know that we are necessarily born instantly. Self compassionate. Maybe we are maybe they're not in our environment has caused us to have such a high, high standards. And to beat ourselves up when we don't do it right. I think that we've probably got a little bit of unlearning to do there.

Karen Kirton  36:10

Yeah, I know. I saw Kristin Neff speak many years ago. And it's just it's stuck with me. That whole time. It's just a very small thing. But what I noticed after her session was that when maybe like if you drop a cup, or you turn the water on too hot, you accidentally burn yourself or anything like that. In those moments, I would say to myself, Oh, he's such an idiot and I had never noticed that before until I saw her speak and I'm talking could have been 678 years ago. And now whenever that happens, I catch myself on it and I say no, you're not. Because if somebody else did that, you wouldn't say Jenny, you're an idiot. You disrupt the cup. But it was so powerful to me her speech and the the impact of it. And I can see how you know, if you build that up over and over again in time, as you were just saying, and then you learn you learn to accept things and, you know, that would be a fantastic way to build up that self compassion because I'm not sure that we're naturally that way. We're kind of taught that. We're not really that and I think it does take intention to shift your mindset and to be aware that you're doing it, but that was the most powerful thing to me. I didn't even realize I was doing it.

37:28

Yeah, that you were speaking to yourself. Yeah. No idea. Yeah, I know. It's interesting when you actually make it, like gamify it if you like, I'm just going to do an experiment for the next day. And just notice every time I speak harshly to myself, and just see how frequently am I doing? That? And then can we bring a moment of acceptance to I remember years ago when I went to Africa, and I climbed Mount as I probably would have wanted to be, and I started that whole as I was climbing up these mountains, you're not going to get to the top this you've you've wasted your money, wasted time, you know, good data, data. And I thought enough, like enough, I've had enough of this. I'm just going to listen to how many times I'm just going to notice every time and then I'm going to decide to present forgive myself for having that. That criticism of myself and then accept whatever it was about me that I had been criticizing myself for in a moment. And what was really interesting was that I did it a lot like there was a lot of criticism there. But then there was a lot of opportunity for just practicing acceptance, practicing acceptance, practicing acceptance, and I think I actually got up the mountains better and easier than I then I would have, if I'd been sort of like, come on, you've got to do this and saying, accepting so

Lachy Gray  38:52

that reminds me of the suggestion to talk to yourself how you would a best friend and I think it's, it's related, isn't it? And it's something that I'm, I'm actively trying to practice because reminds me of earlier this year, I was training for a marathon, which I haven't done for a long time. And it was a bit of a stretch. And then a week before the marathon I got COVID And so then was like, Ah, you idiot, you shouldn't go hang out with your friends and blah, blah. And my mate who I had been on all the training with, and got COVID as well. But to him I was saying, Sorry, Sorry to hear that, you know. Oh, hold on. We're in the exact same boat. There's an opportunity for me to be kinder to myself and to say, hey, like bad luck. Let's do it again in the future. You know, it's so interesting how different those two narratives are.

39:51

Yeah, that is so interesting, and that you could say that the way that you were speaking to yourself was so different to the way that you were speaking to your friends. Yeah. So but in a work context with all of this, it's, again, just not for people listening, not thinking that compassion in a work context is yes, it's kind of yes, it's caring, but when you combine it with the wisdom, as well, the knowledge of those hard things that we've got to do, be confined that we can step out of getting stuck like people talk about. Sometimes people talk about compassion, fatigue, that really I'd say that's more empathy, fatigue, we're stuck in that thing of just got to kind of be nice to people. But compassion has the element of actions, wanting to alleviate the suffering, wanting to actually move to a better position than where we are at the moment.

Lachy Gray  40:59

Yeah, I'd imagine leading with compassion in the workplace could be a new concept. I mean, based on the stats that you shared earlier, it sounds like it probably is. And there might be some of us and I'll say me included who haven't experienced this type of leadership or seen it model. So it's quite new in in concept, even let alone in practice. I mean, are there some common objections or pushback that you hear from leaders when when you're talking through leading with compassion?

41:30

I think it's that misunderstanding about what compassion actually is. So they think that they're going to be a doormat or people will walk over them or that they'll never get any of the hard things done. They won't be able to push through change, they won't be able to bring people along with some of these tough journeys. So I think until they really understand that that isn't what compassion means. And if the word compassion isn't just doesn't land well. The Groys use a different word, but until they understand that, then I think there can be a little bit of pushback with it. So yeah, I think that's, I think that's the main aspect there. Yeah, when it comes to rolling down,

Lachy Gray  42:18

I like the suggestion to modify the language to suit the workplace. I think that's, that's really important, isn't it? Because it's easy to throw the baby out with the bathwater, like radical candor, for example. It's so American. So when we were looking at it, it's so easy to say well, we would never say that. I wouldn't have to say candor, you know, it's just not something we would use. So it's easy to say, well, that whole framework, therefore is is irrelevant, but it's not. So I liked that you're the that you tailor the language to suit the workplace.

42:51

Yeah, because there are all sorts of different ways of looking at this, for sure. ways of describing it, and yeah, like how you say it's not about throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It's I think the thing is that the research that we did in conjunction with Harvard Business Review in Forbes and in a whole lot of academic patterns, as well from different universities, Columbia Business School, Berkeley, University of Toronto, there's so much data there that no matter what we thought beforehand, the data is so compelling, like you've got to listen no matter what the no matter what our inclinations might be, or our thoughts about the use of a particular word or another word. The data really does tell a story and we've got to stop and listen there. So yeah, it's some important things.

Karen Kirton  43:50

Jimmy, I have made so many notes out of today, I don't know where even where to begin in terms of recapping I think I'll, I'll start with that. You talked about wise compassion. So we need to include that wisdom. And, and the fact that empathy plus action equals compassion, and I think they're really important concepts to think about because as we're just talking about, you know, the power of words, some people may just hear compassionate, and think, oh, that's that soft stuff that we were whatever, I'm not gonna go there. So. So I think breaking it down in that way is actually really important. And you know, our workplaces need leaders who can do hard things in a human way. I love that phrase. And the statistics that you've shared, as you say, they can't be ignored. And this is research that's, you know, been replicated in different ways in slightly different years and countries by all sorts of different researchers over the years. It all goes back to we need to be human in the in the workplace. So I also liked he said that you know, it's teachable, this idea that we can be compassionate so being a wise compassionate leader is possible, no matter where we're, we're starting from, and mindfulness So managing our mind our inner critic, our thoughts, our distractions, and really does give us the potential for those great things. How about you looking?

Lachy Gray  45:30

Good, so many notes. I would say to be present. So practice being the being present. And I really liked the idea of having of starting with a simple habit, which for me for the next week, could be just giving myself a minute or two before a meeting, just to arrive.

Karen Kirton  45:55

So links to the articles and perhaps the podcast you were listening to as well Locky around that chatter and also to the book from the potential project. And anything else that we've discussed that we'll look at as in our notes, we go through them later. We'll be over on our website, just follow the links to the podcast section@yahoo.com.au or amplify hr.com.au. If you've received value from this episode, we'd love it if you could leave a rating or review over at Apple podcasts. And if you would like to get in touch with Jane, you can do that on LinkedIn. So if you go to linkedin.com, and then you've got this slash i n slash, and then it's Jenny, hyphen, Stedman S T E A D M A N, or you can shoot her an email Jenny dot Stedman at potential project.com And of course, you can go to the potential project website for lots of different resources. It's potential project.com.

Lachy Gray  46:57

And coming up in the next episode is managing change.

Karen Kirton  47:01

Yes, that's coming up in two weeks from now. So click the subscribe button and you'll be notified of when that's available. Any final thoughts? Firstly, from you, Jenny, in terms of any takeaways that we missed that you think that our listeners should take away today?

47:20

I think you've been pretty comprehensive. Yeah, thank you. We really do appreciate the opportunity to be here on your podcast and really grateful. Thank you.

Karen Kirton  47:27

Thank you. I've loved it. And any final thoughts from you Lachy.

Lachy Gray  47:31

Oh, I've got another book to read. I'm looking forward to it.

Karen Kirton  47:39

Thank you, and thank you so much for joining us. And we'll see you next time on the Make It Work podcast.

Lachy Gray  47:51

That's fantastic.

Karen Kirton  47:53

I have to be really careful not to just go down my own rabbit hole of interests, which is why it's good to have the list of things. So like, Oh, this is so interesting. I want to talk about

48:04

I hope I said it in the way that you wanted and all of that. Of course

Lachy Gray  48:08

you did. Fantastic. Yeah, that was

Karen Kirton  48:13

my notes at the bottom there as well. So I remember them.

Lachy Gray  48:18

How did you get into this area? Jenny?

48:23

Ah, a bit of a little bit of an interesting journey. I've been in the mindfulness side of things for a long time, but not necessarily. People may not have known that. But I was first introduced to mindfulness because I lived on my own as a 15 year old and lived in little one bedroom unit while I was doing your 11 and 12. At school, really, really hard. But one of the head teachers at the school introduced mindfulness for the senior students and I took that up in that set. It was just so safely but honestly it was so difficult my life back then I was so lonely. And so thinking that I didn't know how I was going to survive, and that really helped me alone. And so mindfulness has stayed in my life sort of greater and lesser degrees but to quite a significant degree over those years. Since the mid 80s. That's when I was 15. But then, in terms of how did I turn it into my work well, I encountered when I had breast cancer back in 2016. And as much as I liked the job that I was doing, it really did. Help me to sort of stop and think is this. Am I really making the world a better place? Like am I really, truly directly making the world a better place? And I also knew I wanted to be more available for my family because they were a bit younger. Obviously, it's logical that they would be younger than what they succeeded. quite young. Yeah. So I left endeavor, which is where Karen had been working as well and then realized that.