The Stern Opportunity

About a year ago, for no reason whatsoever, I received flowers at the office from a friend who knew I was having a bad day. I had never received flowers at the office before, and I had mixed emotions about its arrival. At first, I was thrilled that someone would cheer me up but I initially felt awkward and slightly embarrassed that I had gotten a beautiful bouquet at work. I wanted to enjoy them while I was at work because it brought me joy during the days when work got really stressful and draining. I didn’t want to take them home either because I am not home long enough in a day to actually see and enjoy the flowers. I can’t deny that there were cohorts in the office that did double takes when they passed my desk at the sight of the gorgeous bouquet. It could be because I was violating the anti-plant policy, or because I had dared to direct their feelings of love and compassion for someone else at work.

Over the years, it has become unfashionable to show compassion and love in corporations. This could be largely because the necessary aspects of good business and management are largely dispassionate. They tend to require left-side of the brain factors, which include rational, analytical, and objective thinking. When unloving, dispassionate behavior exists in business leaders, whatever its cause, it inevitably sets the tone for the whole organization to be uncaring and unloving, and devoid of any emotional awareness. I think many of us can relate because the majority of us have worked for companies like these. Studies have shown that people who extol their virtues of love and spirituality in organizations have until recently been frowned upon. Attitudes cultivated at work and organizations have not aligned with some of mankind’s most basic needs – to be loved, to find our true purpose and to make deep connections with those that we are around most.

But as we know times are changing. More and more people want to get more than just compensation out of their jobs. At the very least, connections made with coworkers and others at the office add to job satisfaction. It’s hard to admit, but I am sometimes known to have two personas: one at work, and one for outside of work. Recently a coworker told me that I “appear to be cold and guarded at work.” However, I realized that we spend more than 50% of our day at work, so it’s not a stretch to show some compassion and feelings. In fact, many successful companies have infused compassion into their corporate cultures. For example, the early Cadbury and Rowntree British enterprises were run based on Quaker principles. Even the large Philadelphia based law firm, Duane Morris, maintains its modern-day culture based on these age-old principles. High finance and related companies rarely appear in the same sentence, but at one time they were run based on principles of love and compassion. At a global level, companies themselves are showing more compassion, in the form of social responsibility and ethical business practices. In today’s times, the challenge that managers and business leaders have to face is to develop a way for compassion to be cultivated at the workplace even if the industries they exist in don’t always foster these feelings at work. While most would agree that requiring love and compassion is not a profitable means to a business in large corporations, encouraging a culture of compassion could make its most important assets – its people- just a little bit happier.

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