Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle. – Plato
What Do Singaporeans Value?
According to a joint survey conducted by aAdvantage Consulting Group and Barrett Values Centre, out of a list of 10 core values, Singaporeans respondents picked ‘compassion’, ‘caring for the elderly’, and ‘caring for the disadvantaged’ as the most important values in an ideal society.
“If you look at the research, compassion is something that’s very innate to us,” said Emma Seppala, Ph.D., science director at Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education.
As a leading expert on health psychology, well-being, and resilience, Ms. Seppala explains in her book, ‘Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success’, that happiness is the key to fast tracking one’s professional and personal success.
“When another being is suffering, we are drawn to help them,” she told Epoch Times New York.
Similarly, Michael Tomasello and several scientists at the Max Planck Institute—Germany’s most successful research organisation—have evinced that infants naturally partake in helpful behaviour.
They noted that an infant’s pupils will enlarge when they see a person in need and dilate when they see that person’s needs being met.
In a groundbreaking Harvard University study, David Rand concluded that an adult’s first impulse is ‘to help others’, further validating the fact that compassion is the basis of human behaviour.
Scientists and science writers, Dacher Keltner, Jason Marsh, and Jeremy Adam Smith, shed light on the profound roots of human goodness in their book, ‘The Compassionate Instinct’.
They found that goodness, empathy, compassion, altruism, trust, and gratitude are innate characteristics of human nature.
They also discovered that compassion and kindness are both beneficial to human survival and crucial to the mankind’s evolution.
Their neuroscientific findings sharply contrasted the ‘survival of the fittest’ theory originally proposed by Herbert Spencer.
As Ms. Seppala explained, “We would never have survived in the wild without each other.”
Kindness and Compassion Can Benefit One’s Life
Recent studies have shown that compassion is intrinsic to human nature and exerts a powerful effect on our physical and mental well-being.
Jordan Grafman, a neuroscientist from the National Institute of Health, discovered in a brain-imaging study that the pleasure centres of the brain are activated when a person performs a charitable deed.
In another study published by Harvard Business School Professor Michael Norton, people who spent money on others were noticeably happier than those who had spent money on themselves.
Neuroscientist and psychologist Dr. Richard Davidson of the University of Wisconsin conducted deep brain scans of Buddhist meditators using MRIs and EEG devices.
He concluded that meditation—which brings out a person’s compassion towards oneself and others—lit up the left pre-frontal cortex of the brain, which is linked to feelings of joy, happiness, enthusiasm, and resilience.
Thirty years ago, Harvard researchers carried out an experiment wherein a group of participants were carefully observed while viewing a film on the charitable works of Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
The researchers noted that each participant experienced a sense of warmth and a positive change in heart rate and blood pressure.
Leading psychologist Jonathan Haidt refers to this effect as, ‘elevation’, as it uplifts people’s spirits and motivates them to do something good—inevitably leading to a kinder society.
The expression, ‘in giving we receive’, refers to the giver being rewarded with positive transformative energy, although many people are not consciously aware of it.
In addition, kindness is contagious and essential for building harmonious relationships. Expressions of gratitude such as a simple ‘thank you’, a smile, or a warm gaze, can compel a person to reciprocate in kind.
This ‘chain-reaction’ effect has been verified by social scientists James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego and Nicolas Christakis of Harvard.
Stephanie Brown, a researcher at Stonybrook University, noted that helping others not only improves one’s mental state, but it may also speed up one’s recovery from illness and help prolong one’s life.
These findings were verified by medical researchers Steve Cole and Barbara Fredrickson, who detected that levels of inflammation—which have been associated with the onset of cancer—are generally lower in people who regularly experience ‘eudaimonic happiness’, a happy and contented state resulting from living a meaningful or purposeful life.
In addition, practising compassion and kindness, such as smiling at others, has proven to increase the concentration of immunoglobulin in saliva, which enhances a person’s immune system.
Kindness Is Good for the Heart
Acts of kindness produce oxytocin, which increases nitric oxide production in the human brain.
Oxytocin not only causes blood vessels to dilate—thus increasing blood flow throughout the body—it also helps minimise the levels of free radicals and inflammation in the cardiovascular system, the two major causes of heart disease.
Moreover, studies show that maintaining a compassionate and kind state has a positive effect on the vagus nerve, which helps to slow down our heart rate, thus lessening the risk of heart disease.
“In a way, our bodies are designed for love, because the more we love, the more healthy we become,” said Barbara Fredrickson, a psychologist at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in an interview with Emory University.
Compassionate Leaders Are Naturally More Successful
Many people believe that compassionate leaders appear weak. However, renowned individuals such as Martin Luther King, Desmond Tutu, and Mother Teresa, have proven these people wrong.
There were a lot of people who were surprised by the outpouring of grief across Thailand for the passing of King Bhumibol Adulyadej. However, photos of King Bhumibol kindly and compassionately greeting his subjects may help explain why he was so loved by most Thais, and why he was revered as the ‘People’s King’.
During his reign, King Bhumibol had devoted a great deal of time to his people. He travelled to different parts of Thailand to meet with his subjects in order to better understand their needs and concerns.
Under King Bhumibol’s leadership, more than 4,000 projects had been initiated for the betterment of the Thai people.
For his efforts to help raise the standard of living for the Thai people, King Bhumibol was honoured with the United Nations’ first Human Development Lifetime Achievement Award in May 2006.
During the 1973 student uprising, King Bhumibol reportedly instructed the police to restrain from using violence against the students. He not only opened the gates of Chitlada Palace for the fleeing demonstrators, but also provided them with tents and food on the palace grounds.
His kind gesture touched the hearts and minds of the student protestors, as well as an entire nation.
A good person can make another person good; it means that goodness will elicit goodness in society; other persons will also be good- King Bhumibol was once quoted as saying.
Said Chang Phatsip, a Thai living in Singapore, “About 15 years ago, I started to take notice of King Bhumibol. He has inspired me a lot. That’s why I started to change and began treating people better.”
Compassion Contributes to an Organisation’s Success
According to the 2015 National Values Assessment, conducted by aAdvantage Consulting Group and Barrett Values Centre, 2,000 polled Singaporeans and permanent residents said that they placed great value on being able to work in a compassionate environment where employees are recognised, cared for, and respected.
Goodness, compassion, and kindness can have a rippling effect both in society and in organisations. A compassionate leader inspires compassion and loyalty among his employees.
If the majority of employees are compassionate and kind, it will make for a more cooperative, loyal, committed, and congenial environment.
Research is really starting to show that companies whose cultures are positive, that are characterised by respect, by kindness, empathy, support, and mutual understanding … lead to better outcomes for everyone – said Ms. Seppala in an interview with the Epoch Times, New York.
“[These outcomes include] better loyalty, better worker engagement, and it’s ultimately better for the bottom line.”
Contrary to popular belief, relationships with co-workers holds greater sway in job commitment than the pay factor, as revealed in a study by the UK-based, Association of Accounting Technicians.
In another study, Jonathan Haidt of New York University, noted that most employees who are touched by their boss’ compassion or kindness, generally like working for their boss.
According to the 2015 National Values Assessment, conducted by aAdvantage Consulting Group and Barrett Values Centre, 2,000 polled Singaporeans and permanent residents said that they placed great value on being able to work in a compassionate environment where employees are recognised, cared for, and respected.
Adam Grant, a professor at the Wharton Business School, elucidated in his best-selling book, ‘Give and Take’, that givers are often more liked and appreciated, thus more influential. Conversely, he mentioned that leaders who exhibit anger often lose their employee’s trust and loyalty.
Authoritative styles of leadership do produce results, but according to Dr. James Doty, director at Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education, these results are often short-lived.
In an interview with Harvard Business Review, he said, “Creating an environment where there is fear, anxiety, and lack of trust makes people shut down.”
“If people have fear and anxiety, we know from neuroscience that their threat response is engaged, and their cognitive control is impacted. As a consequence, their productivity and creativity diminishes.”
Swedish researchers at the Stress Institute in Stockholm found that employees were 40% less likely to suffer heart problems if they worked for a kind boss, and 60% more likely to suffer a heart attack if they worked for an inconsiderate or uncommunicative boss. Their findings were later published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
Christina Boedker of the Australian School of Business contends that leaders who devote their time to developing and recognising people were definitely on the ladder to success.
Geoff Aigner, director of Social Leadership Australia, noted in his book, ‘Leadership Beyond Good Intentions: What It Takes To Really Make a Difference’, that good management is ultimately an act of compassion.
In a Straits Times article entitled ‘The wisdom of creating a ‘jolly good’ workplace’, Singaporean Tan Chade-Meng—one of Google’s first engineers—enthused about the importance of compassion in the workplace.”
“Top managers who care about their people and show their affection are nice people,” he said, “so they are loved by people working for them. In general, the more you love your managers, the harder you work for them.”
Given the many benefits of embracing compassion and kindness in the workplace, isn’t it time that we rethink our leadership styles?
As Plato once said, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.”
