4
INTERPRETING: THE KEY TO RESPONDING WITH COMPASSION
WE CREATED A “FOUND POEM” composed from the words of interview participants who were describing experiences of compassion at work. In it, people described common assumptions that made interpreting suffering difficult, such as:
There was a real norm in our department of modesty and always presenting a good face.
Keep your skeletons at home.
You’re not supposed to have a personal life.
You’re supposed to take care of business.1
Work organizations that have widespread and pervasive assumptions about putting on a good face or keeping our skeletons at home make it harder to understand suffering. These assumptions dispose us to interpret suffering as unworthy of compassion at work. If we can’t interpret suffering in a way that makes sense and calls up feelings of concern, compassion falters. It is only when we understand another person’s suffering as real and worthy that we include him or her in our circle of concern. While these interpretations might seem straightforward, they warrant a closer look as a key to responding with compassion.
THREE INTERPRETATIONS THAT CLOSE DOWN COMPASSION
Compassion researchers who investigate interpretations focus on what they call “appraisals” of suffering, which are accounts that we use to explain the causes of suffering to ourselves and others.2 Appraisals are pivotal. We make them at lightning speed. Our brains jump to these interpretations so quickly that the process may be invisible to us.3 For example, recall a moment when you thought to yourself about someone else: “You made this mess; now you have to suffer the consequences!” When we construe someone as blameworthy, that’s the first kind of appraisal that shuts down compassion. Researchers show us that we feel less empathy and concern when we determine that someone is responsible for his or her own suffering.
The next type of interpretation that closes down compassion comes about when we jump to the conclusion that someone doesn’t deserve our concern. Often these interpretations are swayed by stereotypes or stigmas. For instance, recall a time when someone who seemed homeless or otherwise impoverished asked you for money, and the thought passed through your mind, “If he’d just get a job, he wouldn’t have to be begging on the street.” Whether or not it’s true, this type of interpretation shuts down compassion.
The third type of interpretation involves how we understand our own capacity to respond when someone who is suffering really needs something. If we jump to the quick conclusion that we don’t have the resources or the capacity to respond, the compassion process shuts down. Recall a time when you said to yourself, “I just can’t handle this right now!” That interpretation of the situation makes you less likely to act with compassion.
As we said, these interpretations happen at the speed of thought, so they color compassion every time we encounter suffering. Many factors play into our largely automatic interpretations like these, including work experience, training, organizational culture, heritage, national culture, family traditions, position in the organization, and the implicit biases that we develop simply by internalizing stereotypes propagated by social systems.4 For instance, compassion researcher Dan Martin and his colleagues have demonstrated that when students choose business or law as a major in college, with the logic of succeeding economically, these students are significantly more likely to internalize economic stereotypes about people in lower social classes as being innately inferior.5 This orientation to the world becomes an obstacle to compassion. Sociologist Candace Clark has documented a widespread cultural assumption in the United States that if people are suffering from poverty or financial need, we are likely to blame them for their suffering, because Americans interpret that those in poverty just aren’t willing to work hard enough.6 We all carry around these internalized cultural assumptions about suffering. Recognizing them, challenging them in ourselves, and becoming more aware of how to change them is key to awakening compassion at work.
MORE GENEROUS INTERPRETATIONS OF SUFFERING
We can use this research that shows us how interpretations shut down compassion to likewise understand how to awaken it. We define appraisals that awaken compassion as generous interpretations of suffering, meaning that they give people who are suffering the benefit of the doubt. These appraisals are grounded in what we refer to as a positive default assumption—a taken-for-granted stance that people who are suffering are good, capable, and worthy of compassion.
Learning to make more generous interpretations of suffering requires that we work to actively shift our assumptions. It also means that we must learn to look for the presence of suffering when we encounter failures, errors, declines in performance, missed deadlines, absences, delays in communication, or other difficult or ambiguous work events. Making generous interpretations inclines us to remember that these situations often mask suffering. More generous interpretations require that we suspend an immediate rush to judgment and instead draw on our curiosity about what might be causing circumstances where suffering hides.
WITHHOLDING BLAME
One way that we can make more generous interpretations of suffering is to withhold the assignment of blame when something has gone wrong or doesn’t work out the way we think it should. The more we view someone as blameworthy, the less we can tap into empathy and concern. When we catch ourselves blaming someone for communicating poorly, missing a deadline, skipping a meeting, or dropping the ball on a task, we can draw on curiosity to ask about the causes and address the event directly. This does not mean letting a mistake slide or accommodating irresponsible behavior. It does mean kind and direct inquiry into what is happening whenever we don’t understand someone’s behavior. Just as inquiry work aids noticing, it also helps us to suspend judgment, withhold blame, and open space for interpreting with more generosity.
Our research shows that organizational messages maintaining a positive default assumption about people at work—that they are generally good, capable, and worthy of compassion—make these difficult dialogues about errors or unfortunate events easier. For instance, we studied organizational responses to Hurricane Sandy in New York. In some organizations, we found that leaders and managers would convey to members that employees who were absent or behind on work were good and capable but were suffering from the aftermath of the storm. These messages made it easier and more appropriate to interpret generously and cut some slack or give the benefit of the doubt. In contrast, in other organizations, leaders and managers would convey that the disaster was a chance for people to be lazy or take advantage of the system. Bulletins cautioned people against this kind of behavior, so it became harder to interpret generously. Instead, it seemed more appropriate to reinforce the rules and judge harshly if someone couldn’t perform.
Making more generous interpretations of suffering may sound nice in theory, but in practice it represents what some teachers call fierce compassion.7 It isn’t easy to remain mindful and calm in the heat of the moment, when someone is acting out. It isn’t easy to suspend judgment when someone is trying to put on a good face while making a mess at work. We will talk more about these difficult situations below. But withholding blame and engaging in compassionate conversations that allow generous interpretations about what’s happening, while still setting high standards and holding people accountable for consequences, is one of the most skilled forms of workplace interaction we all must learn. These crucial conversations entail lifelong learning about how to hold true to work while making generous interpretations of suffering that generate solutions for both the person and the organization.8
IMBUING WITH WORTH
A second way that we can make more generous interpretations of suffering involves developing the ability to see others as worthy and deserving of compassion. Imbuing people with worth no matter their position in the organization, role, political stance, lifestyle, identity, economic status, or personality is no small feat. People who are different from us often seem undeserving of compassion in our eyes. As we said, these are blazing-fast stereotypical judgments that color our thinking automatically and implicitly. We can work to challenge them by actively practicing the positive default assumption and reminding ourselves of others’ worth when we catch these judgments in our thinking.
We can make more generous interpretations by actively imbuing more people and their experiences with worth and dignity. For instance, middle managers aren’t so often the target of our compassion. But they often suffer when they feel coerced to enforce rules or policies that cause distress. Because of their role and status, lower-level employees who suffer from a change enforced by the manager can forget the fact that the manager is suffering, too. And higher-level executives may not interpret the middle managers’ suffering as worthy of compassion because they are just doing the job assigned to them. The difficult role has led some researchers to attend to the plight of middle managers, revealing their centrality in alleviating suffering for employees while suffering themselves during change.9
Interpretations of who is worthy of compassion are shaped by time demands at work, cultural differences across departments, status distinctions between headquarters and subsidiary units, and broader cultural stigmas. For example, in many cultures and organizations, mental health issues are not accepted as legitimate forms of suffering at work. The broader cultural stigma associated with depression, anxiety, and suicide silences mental health issues at work. In chapter 10, we will share a powerful leadership communication that serves to break the silence around suicide in an organization and offers a generous interpretation of this form of suffering and its organizational consequences. Rates of stress, anxiety, depression, burnout, and suicide are skyrocketing in professional settings. We can learn to make more generous interpretations of these widespread forms of human suffering, recognizing that the hyperconnected workplace has brought with it a plethora of challenges to our mental health. Giving others the benefit of the doubt that their stress, anxiety, and burnout is real and deserving of compassion will go a long way toward awakening compassion at work.
CULTIVATING PRESENCE
A third way in which we can learn to make more generous interpretations of suffering involves cultivating the belief that we have the capacity to meet suffering with compassion anytime it arises. When we feel we don’t have the resources or skills to handle another’s suffering, our sense that we can’t handle it shuts down the process. But at times like these, when we think there’s nothing we can “do,” we can cultivate the ability to “be.”10 Philosopher Martin Buber made a similar point with his idea of the I-Thou relationship, noting the difference in our interactions when we shift from treating people as objects to recognizing the spark of the sacred or the infinite in the connection between ourselves and others.11 Being present with another person who is suffering paves the way for compassion, even if we can’t do anything to resolve the underlying causes of suffering. As we cultivate this capacity for presence in ourselves, we become more likely to interpret suffering generously. When we can be compassionate and keep our hearts open, we are less likely to fall prey to the interpretation that there’s nothing we can do.12
These three forms of generous interpretation—withholding blame, imbuing with worth, and cultivating presence—are keys to whether or not we give people who are suffering the benefit of the doubt. When we make more generous interpretations of suffering, we expand our circle of concern and our capacity for compassionate action.
KEY POINTS: MAKING MORE GENEROUS INTERPRETATIONS OF SUFFERING
∞ Suffering is often masked by missed deadlines, errors, or difficult and ambiguous work situations that trigger blame instead of compassion.
∞ Learn to be curious about the causes of difficult or ambiguous work situations as a way of cultivating more generous interpretations.
∞ Practice a positive default assumption that others are good, capable, and worthy of compassion. Offer the benefit of the doubt.
∞ Withhold blame. Steer conversations about errors or failure toward learning.
∞ Imbue others with dignity and worth no matter their role, position, or difference from you.
∞ Cultivate presence with suffering as a form of being. Learning this skill helps you to avoid the interpretation that there is nothing you can do.
WHEN GENEROUS INTERPRETATIONS AREN’T EASY
Sociologist Kristen Monroe has dedicated a significant portion of her career to understanding the dynamics of people who risked their lives to rescue Jewish people from being persecuted during the Nazi takeover of Europe. Applying all the tools of social science, she attempted to find out what made a difference in the willingness and desire to save someone from death or torture. Was it race, class, gender, education, family size, nationality, profession, religion, or even whether one was a rural person or urban dweller? In the end, none of those explained why someone would risk life and home for the sake of another. Instead, what mattered most was a mind-set toward shared humanity. Irene, a holocaust rescuer in Poland, explained succinctly the motivation that all these rescuers shared: “We all belong to one human family.”13
Many life experiences could foster this belief. Experiences of work are one. Workplaces offer the opportunity to be in community with others and experience being part of an interconnected whole. When we tap into this sense of shared human family at work, workplaces have tremendous power to bring out compassion that otherwise lies dormant and untapped. In this book, we will often refer to the positive default assumption that people are good and worthy of compassion as our shared humanity. What we mean by shared humanity is captured in Kristin Monroe’s description as well: “I would characterize it as a different way of seeing things; it certainly represents a different way of seeing the world and oneself in relation to others. . . . A particular perspective in which all mankind is connected through a common humanity, in which each individual is linked to all others and to a world in which all living beings are entitled to a certain human treatment by virtue of being alive.”14 While we know that organizations can foster this view, certainly it is also easy to lose sight of our shared humanity when social barriers begin to divide us.
WHEN WE AREN’T IN IT TOGETHER
For as much as work can remind us that we all belong to one human family, it can undermine that sense equally powerfully. There are times when we aren’t all in it together. Our aspirations are put to the test when we encounter people who aren’t doing their work or are taking advantage of the compassion of others. In fact, many people worry about being taken advantage of if they are compassionate at work. Awakening compassion at work means confronting this worry directly.
Elsie told a story about being a long-time employee in a magazine publishing firm. She knew how to manage her deadlines, so on a day when she needed to make some phone calls about cancer care for her father, she took time out of work to talk to the hospital, knowing that it would not impact her schedule. Marla, a relatively new coworker sitting in a nearby cubicle, left a stack of additional articles that needed editing on Elsie’s chair over her lunch hour. On the top of the stack of paper, Marla left a note that read: “These are for you, since you don’t have anything else to do.” Elsie felt shocked and hurt by the note. When she tried to talk to Marla, however, Marla reacted angrily and shouted at Elsie about her lack of a work ethic. Elsie sought the intervention of a manager. The manager glossed over Marla’s uncivil behavior by telling Elsie, “You know, Marla’s under a lot of stress right now.” While at times this suggestion could have fed into a generous interpretation for Marla’s behavior that might have resonated with Elsie, in this instance the manager’s words sounded hollow and insincere. Elsie felt the manager was making an excuse for Marla in a desire to escape dealing with the situation in a more direct manner.
Making more generous interpretations of suffering does involve looking for hidden causes of workplace behaviors like Marla’s incivility. That does not mean that we are stripped of responsibility for managing them well, however. In fact, awakening compassion at work requires the opposite. What many managers and leaders do not recognize is that compassion at work is not soft and fuzzy. Said dramatically by Margot, another holocaust rescuer in Kristin Monroe’s research: “You don’t walk away. You don’t walk away from somebody who needs real help—even if this is someone who ‘is terrible.’”15 In less dramatic terms, compassion at work requires not turning away from people who seem to be difficult to deal with, feckless, incompetent, lazy, or emotionally unaware. Our shared humanity requires that we manage these situations in ways that do not allow them to perpetuate suffering at work.
WHEN WE HAVE TO LET GO
While some supervisors allow a poorly performing employee to flame out and leave rather than addressing the issue directly, awakening compassion at work requires that we make more generous interpretations of suffering even when we have to let people go. Leaders, managers, and employees who have to let people go during restructuring or downsizing sometimes hide behind legal concerns rather than having compassionate conversations that explain the decision. This comes at a cost to both the employees and the organization. Recall the research we cited in chapter 2 showing that compassionate downsizing practices yield financial resilience.
In our research we encountered a manager, Terrell, who awakened compassion even as he had to let an employee go for performance reasons. When William didn’t show up for work one day and didn’t call in sick, Terrell knew that something was amiss. William had never done that in over ten years of being an employee. Terrell called William and left a message, but the call went unreturned. At the end of the day, Terrell called again and left a message expressing concern. It wasn’t until the next morning that William’s wife phoned. Timidly, she explained that William hadn’t reported for work because he had been arrested. A drug addiction that William had kept a secret from his coworkers and manager, even from his wife and kids, had finally overtaken his ability to hide it. Terrell felt shocked and betrayed. As a small business owner who had been dedicated to his employees over a long time, he was hurt and angry that William had lied to him and missed the opportunity to seek help and support before it was too late. While he helped William’s wife handle the legal procedures to get him out of jail, Terrell found himself wondering about what to do. What was the nature of a truly compassionate response?
Terrell informed other employees that William would be taking several days off. Without explaining or conveying judgment about William, he simply helped people to coordinate in William’s absence. Terrell took time to think. After a few days, when he felt that he could talk with William without overreacting, he met with William privately and conveyed his hurt and disappointment. He listened to William’s story of what had happened. Terrell listened with empathy and suggested that William could no longer work under the influence of drugs. Terrell suggested that he pour all his energy into drug treatment. Terrell allowed William to announce his departure, and William was able to leave with dignity. Terrell found that true compassion in this case involved both a generous interpretation of William’s ability to recover, and being willing and able to let William go.
Another type of compassionate letting go involves conflicts at work. Colleagues in conflict with one another often slip into uncivil interactions, taking revenge on each other as Marla did to Elsie. Other times, conflict breeds cold silences that hinder collaboration. These conflicts require working things through and letting go of grudges. We can awaken compassion at work through more generous interpretations of suffering that comes from these conflicts, as well as developing greater skill in addressing them with compassion.16 But many managers and leaders overlook this interpersonal corrosiveness, thinking that there is little they can do about it. As we saw above, cultivating the capacity to be compassionate even when we cannot solve the underlying problem is a powerful key to compassion. We witnessed this in our research, with Sarah, the leader of Midwest Billing, a group we will describe more in chapter 9. Sarah engaged extensively in helping people let go of conflicts at work. She was challenged to maintain her generous interpretations of suffering when an employee verbally attacked her in front of the whole group. Sarah described this as one of her most difficult moments as a manager: “I can tell you something that happened that is the personal thing I am probably most proud of as a leader, because it could have been really messy.” Her unit had just taken over a large new project, and tension was high. Jada volunteered to lead the project group. Sarah explained, “A couple of the people that we hired didn’t end up fitting into the group like we thought they would. The stress level was going up, and we tried something that didn’t work. Everyone felt even worse after the failure. Jada needed to vent.”
Sarah was known for keeping her door open to people who wanted to talk about work stress. This time, however, Jada did not visit Sarah’s office privately. “For some reason, Jada decided to vent at our daily morning meeting, and she lost control. She wasn’t just letting me know her dissatisfaction with what was going on, but she got into yelling, crying, name calling, and it became a kind of a personal attack on me. And I just stood there. I knew that to try to rebut anything, or to refute anything, or to get into this argument was going to be a losing battle. So I let it go all the way through. It went on maybe twenty minutes, a very intense twenty minutes. Most of the members of the unit were in tears just hearing it. Then Jada got up and left. She ran out, grabbed her purse, and left. I told everyone that the meeting was adjourned, and I went to my office to regroup.”
Sarah felt outraged. She knew that she could fire Jada for this outburst. She did not know if Jada would even return to work after running out of the meeting. But a few hours later, Jada returned. “I was in the kitchen; a bunch of people were also in the kitchen. She walked in and said, ‘I am so sorry.’ This was a very sincere, from-her-heart apology. She said, ‘I lost it. I lost it. And I wouldn’t blame you a bit if you fired me.’ Right then, I made a choice. I went and I put my arms around her and I said, ‘I forgive you.’” As a manager with a lot of experience, Sarah had a sense that there was something else happening for Jada. “I asked her, ‘Do you want to come into my office and talk?’ And that’s when everything started coming out. She’d found out a couple days before that her husband was having an affair. Jada has four children. I let her go through it all, and then I just put my arms back around her and I said, ‘Jada, I forgive you.’”
So we see again that compassion isn’t always gentle and warm—it’s a different form of managerial toughness.17 “I’m proud of that,” Sarah concluded. “One of the things that makes me proud isn’t just the fact that I felt that something else was going on, but the fact that she came to the realization that she was wrong. And that she could come back and feel comfortable enough to come in and apologize and make things right, even if she was going to be fired.”
Sometimes compassion requires the courage to speak honestly about what is unacceptable. Sometimes it means standing up to disrespect and incivility and intervening to stop people from manipulating the system.18 Sometimes it involves forgiving and forgoing our desire for vengeance or punishment.19 On some occasions, with some people, claims of suffering may not be truthfully represented. In such cases, further exploration of a person’s circumstances may call up feelings of being taken advantage of or misled. The process of interpreting suffering is consequential. For compassion to flow, generous interpretations must be accompanied by a belief that a person’s pain is real.
KEY POINTS: WHEN GENEROUS INTERPRETATIONS AREN’T EASY
∞ Work can remind us that we all belong to one human family and emphasize our shared humanity, supporting generous interpretations of one another’s suffering.
∞ Generous interpretations of suffering are challenging when we encounter poor performance, broken trust, manipulation, disrespect, or other uncivil behaviors at work, but these challenges call for compassionate action.
∞ Fierce compassion involves refusing to perpetuate suffering in work situations, which can involve letting people go or standing up to disrespectful behavior.
∞ Generous interpretations of suffering help to keep us from acting out of vengeance or punishing others when suffering erupts in inappropriate ways at work.
AN INVITATION TO REFLECT ON GENEROUS INTERPRETATIONS OF SUFFERING
A simple question like “Is everything OK?” may open a tender conversation where we must learn to proceed without judgment or blame, simply listening with a sense of shared humanity. Setting aside for a moment the need to fix or solve or do, we focus simply on being present with suffering and doing the inward work of making more generous interpretations of the human being who needs a listening ear. Even when there is nothing else we can do, imbuing someone with worth and dignity moves us toward compassion.
When work organizations drive out suffering by wrapping pain with harsh judgments, people who can make generous interpretations allow compassion back in. These appraisals of suffering—how we explain the suffering and its causes to ourselves and others—are key to responding with compassion. How we lean into the meaning of suffering at work can either break our workplaces open with empathy or seal them up with disdain. Compassion writers Daniel Homan and Lonni Collins Pratt emphasize the importance of such generous interpretations when they observe, “When I reach past my own ideas, I begin to stretch myself open to the world, and this opening of my heart could change everything.”20
∞
Have you had an experience when your heart opened and you had to stretch beyond the you/me divide to call upon your membership in the broader human family? Recognizing that these interpretations are the key to responding, what does this moment reveal about awakening compassion in your work?