How Compassion Becomes the New Normal
When we think about bringing more compassion into an organization, our attention appropriately goes first to people. We want caring, kind leaders who notice when someone is struggling, who examine the circumstances with genuine curiosity, and who have the courage and wisdom to act with compassion. If we want compassion to become embedded in an organization, we also need to look at the ways work itself is structured.
One useful place to look is at organizational routines. Monica Worline and Jane Dutton define routines as “recognizable, recurring ways that interdependent tasks are accomplished in organizations.” They describe routines as providing “grooves” that guide how work gets done. Routines are one of four elements of an organization’s Social Architecture, along with roles, networks, and culture. Together, these elements help shape whether compassion is supported or undermined by the organization.
The beauty in using routines as a starting point for change is their everyday, ordinary presence in our workplaces. Every organization has routines for hiring people, holding meetings, communicating, managing projects, giving feedback, making decisions, and countless other activities. We participate in many of them without thinking very much about the assumptions built into them or the experiences they create for the people involved, but those built-in assumptions have a major influence on our behaviors.
This also means that changing a routine does not necessarily require a major organizational initiative. Sometimes a small adjustment to something we already do can make it easier to notice difficulty, surface information, respond to what people need, or prevent unnecessary suffering from arising in the first place. And, because routines recur, the effect of a well-designed change does not end with a single compassionate interaction. It happens over and over again until it creates a new assumption about the way work happens.
Consider these five examples.
Hiring
Every year, a physician we know at a teaching hospital interviews candidates for medical residency positions. Among the questions he asks is:
“Define compassion and provide a specific instance where, because you were able to demonstrate it, you changed the outcome for one of your patients.”
Adding one question to an interview is a very small change to a hiring routine. Yet think about what becomes possible because the question is there. The interviewer learns something about whether the candidate recognizes compassion as part of the practice of medicine and how they have acted on it. The candidate also learns something about the organization: compassion matters enough here that we ask about it when deciding who will join us.
Hiring routines shape who becomes part of an organization. They also communicate, from someone's earliest encounters with the organization, what kinds of capabilities and behaviors are valued.
Over time, the shift in this hiring routine led to a new level of compassionate culture, not only with the medical staff but it spread throughout the entire hospital system.
Meetings
Meetings are so ubiquitous that it is easy to overlook how strongly their routines shape people's experience of work. Who speaks first? Who speaks most? How are disagreements handled? What happens when someone has an idea that challenges the prevailing view?
A team interested in increasing psychological safety might adopt a simple practice: no one speaks a second time until everyone who wants to speak has had an opportunity to speak once.
That rule will not by itself create psychological safety. It can, however, change the conditions of a conversation. People who are quick to speak or hold more organizational power have less opportunity to dominate the discussion, while those who need more time to formulate their thoughts have more space to participate. A small change in the meeting routine can increase the chance that people feel their voice is welcome and that the team hears information it might otherwise miss.
Communication
Technology has made it possible to communicate with colleagues at virtually any hour. It has also blurred the boundaries around when people are expected to be available for work.
An organization can establish a simple routine around after-hours email. After a designated time, unless something is genuinely urgent, an email can be written when it is convenient for the sender but scheduled for delivery the following morning.
Nothing prevents someone from working at night if that suits their schedule. The change occurs in the experience of the person receiving the message. An email arriving at 10:30 at night can create an implicit sense that work is still happening and perhaps that a response is expected, even when the sender had no such intention. Scheduling the same email for the start of the next work day removes that signal while allowing the sender to work in the way that suits them.
Noticing What People Need
Compassion begins with noticing. Yet people do not always reveal when they are struggling. Leaders cannot assume that they will recognize what someone needs simply by paying closer attention.
One small addition to a one-on-one or team meeting can help:
“What is one way you want to be supported and one way you want to be challenged this week?”
The first part gives people explicit permission to name where they could use help. A difficulty that might otherwise remain beneath the surface can become easier to discuss because asking for support is now part of the routine rather than something a person has to muster the courage to initiate on their own.
The second half of the question is equally important. Compassion does not mean protecting people from challenge. Asking where someone wants to be challenged recognizes the importance of stretching and growing. And, naming it as challenge means normalizing risk taking and the possibility of failure. Support and challenge can exist together. This routine creates space for people to have a voice in determining what they need from each other.
Project Management
Some of the suffering people experience at work arises from interpersonal interactions. Some of it is produced by the way work is organized.
Unrealistic project timelines are a familiar example. What happens when a project is estimated to require 100 hours and actually requires 140? People work longer days and end up carrying the stress of trying to meet expectations that were unrealistic from the beginning. Then the project ends, everyone moves on, and the next project may be estimated using the same assumptions.
A small change in the project management routine can stop that pattern cold: at the conclusion of every project, simply compare the original time budget with the time actually required.
The point is not to determine who estimated incorrectly or assign blame. The comparison creates an opportunity to learn. If projects routinely take longer than anticipated, the organization can begin improving its estimates, changing expectations, allocating resources differently, or examining why the discrepancy exists. Instead of repeatedly asking people to absorb the consequences of unrealistic planning, the organization begins noticing and responding to a source of avoidable stress.
Small Changes, On Repeat
None of these examples is particularly dramatic. Their significance comes from small reframes and repetition. As these small changes are repeated, compassion begins moving beyond individual leaders and is woven into the fabric of the organization itself.
We can begin by becoming curious about the grooves our organizations already follow. What experience are they creating for people? What do they make easier to notice, and what do they allow us to overlook? Where might one small change help people feel safer speaking, make a need easier to surface, reduce avoidable stress, or create more room for people to flourish?
Compassion can easily become a normal part of the way work happens, one routine at a time.
Hundreds of leaders from around the world have taken our Compassionate Leadership Certification Training programs over the last few years, bringing the lessons they learn back into their own organizations and lives.
Our Compassionate Leadership Certification Training will build your compassion from the inside out and connect you with a powerful global peer community for ongoing growth, inspiration, and support. It also serves as a prerequisite for our Compassionate Leadership Teacher Training Professional Accreditation.