After greeting the former student, I described how Ron regularly came into my office to graze my books, ask about topics on which he was uninformed, and often would walk away with a book to read which, at a later date he would return, expecting a full conversation on the book’s contents. Ron’s choices often surprised me, I explained to the student since he was a hardcore empiricist and social scientist, and I was a lyrically inclined professor of humanities. Intrigued by my comments, the former student asked permission to take photos of my bookshelves and after he had done so, went into Ron’s office and methodically took photos of all the books his revered former professor had on his shelves. 

I can think of no greater tribute to a mentor than to explore his mind through what he had read or might read. This former student’s reverence for Ron’s library and Ron’s reverence for mine illustrates an important feature of how we approach management education—in for-profit, non-profit, and public sectors—at the University of San Francisco. We recognize that reading widely, especially outside of one’s field and in literary modes that stimulate creativity, benefits the practice of management and life, even to the highest levels of practice, as demonstrated by Barack Obama’s conversation about literature with Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times. 

The value of coming to the practice or study of management with a liberal arts education has been enthusiastically endorsed as preparation for leadership by recognized sources in the field, academic and popular. From the Harvard Business Review to Forbes, the Wall Street Journal to The Atlantic, educators are appreciating that exposure to the humanities provides students the skills necessary to succeed in managerial settings: 

• How to hone powers of observation and to reflect—to study and analyze events, objects, and people; 
• How to explore and manipulate big concepts and complex contexts but not get lost in the abstract; 
• How to apply new ways of thinking to difficult problems that can’t be analyzed in conventional ways; 
• How to communicate with diverse constituencies with persuasive and cogent arguments. 

Skilled cultural interpreters who are well-read across the humanities can also recognize traits necessary for a successful managerial point of view, including an ability to tolerate ambiguity, recognize multiple perspectives, and proceed with an open-ended vision; an interpretive posture that is crucial for facing a murky future or tricky problems in a managerial setting.

For example, when teaching a case study in ethics courses for both MBA and MPA students, I ask students to follow the same steps a reader would follow analyzing a narrative or lyric:

• Where and when did the event occur? How is the stage set and the action determined? (business environment, and other details/setting)
• What happened? (outline of the action/plot)
• Who was involved? How do their points of view differ? (roles/positions and attributes of those involved/character)
• Why were the key decisions made and what were those decisions? (problem-solving methods/plot development)
• Which ethical considerations were taken into account? What recurrent themes or values surface in dialogue or behavior? (interests of people affected by the decision, relevant professional standards, theories, principles/themes)
• What course of action was decided on, and why? (including any ethical justification that was given/resolution of conflict)

I would then ask students to provide a summary of their experience and to reflect on what they and/or others (including multiple stakeholders) learned from these events. Was the decision taken virtuous? Would different actions lead to different outcomes? Might the characters have acted differently if they had known what the outcome would be? Did the events lead to any changes in duties, policies, or procedures? 

In a September 2016 issue of Academy of Management Learning and Education, Christopher Michaelson supports the approach I take when he argues that those teaching ethics in business schools should consider using novels as required, indeed core reading for their students. He bases his recommendation on the premise that narrative pedagogy cultivates better businesspeople who have not only better skills but better characters and are employees who operate with more “enduring ethical effectiveness.” Michaelson characterizes the narrative approach to teaching ethics as shifting the primary question asked from “What should I do?” to “How should one live?” The question changes not just in direction but scope, from the immediate and individualistic request for a specific answer to a more general human consideration of moral conduct. 

Thus, changing along with curricula supported by emerging research is the growing recognition that reading great works in the humanities can promote one’s ability to imagine and understand things from someone else’s perspective and, in turn, to grow in one’s career and personal life. Several Wall Street Journal items highlight the benefits of reading literature for managers. In “Why Good Storytellers are Happier in Life and Love,” a contributor writes that, “research shows that the way people construct their individual stories has a large impact on their physical and mental health. People who frame their personal narratives in a positive way have more life satisfaction.” Another item focuses on how one acquires those storytelling techniques, building basic social skills that reading fiction develops as outlined in a study published online in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. 

Beyond the benefit in terms of enhanced “social skills,” however, reading creative writing can lead to deeper, more empathetic engagement with others that do not simply avoid the awkward (in the way that obeying the external control of the law is the mere minimum for moral conduct), but actively seeks to understand people, to develop empathy. As explained by David Brendel, in a survey where business executives rated empathy and intellectual curiosity as among the five most important skills for success in a digitized and global economy, in which many of our business partners are never in our physical presence. “In order to serve the needs of clients and colleagues around the world,” Brendel writes, “we must be adept at understanding their feelings, thoughts, and points of view” that is promoted by “reading the humanities.” 

Taking a cue from the poet Mary Oliver who observed, “Attention without feeling is only a report,” let me walk you through some of the virtues of reading Gabriel Marquez’s story, “The Most Handsome Drowned Man in the World,” as part of a management curriculum. This simple but potent tale illustrates how a community uses imagination to resolve a potentially fearful mystery and the multiple ways those imaginative responses manifest in their lives. What is undeniable in the plot trajectory is how the characters’ capacity for moral conduct grows as they exercise the ability to tolerate mystery, to choose the good, and to create beauty while explaining an actual event and imagining a better life. 

“The Most Handsome Drowned Man in the World,” tells the tale of a small, coastal fishing village interrupted by the arrival of a dead body washed up by the waves. This drowned man has a huge impact on the village, which is changed forever by his arrival. Characters move from a resigned complacency to an irritated curiosity and eventually to a creative vision inspired by an over-sized, exotic, washed-up corpse. As we watch the transformation in the townspeople, we are led to consider our own communities and how we lead our life, who inspires us, and how we handle the challenges of forces society and nature. 

“The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” opens with a group of children playing on the beach of a small fishing village. In the waves, a “dark and slinky” bulge is approaching and creating a tone of doom. It turns out to be a drowned man, covered in seaweed, stones, and dead marine creatures. The men head to neighboring villages to see if the dead man belongs to one of them, while the women clean off the body and prepare it for a funeral. “They didn’t have to clean his face to know that he was from elsewhere,” they live so remotely. The coastal, cliff-side town was a “desert-like cape” “with no flowers,” and so little land that the inhabitants have to throw their dead over the cliffs and into the sea rather than bury them in the ground, thus the curiosity arises more out of the identity of the body than its presence. While the women work on the drowned man’s body, as they imagine the “far-off seas and deep waters,” from which he came, they quickly assert, breathlessly, that he is the biggest, strongest-looking, most virile, and handsomest man they have ever seen in their lives, so remarkable “he didn’t even fit in their imaginations.” But his arrival triggers their imaginative capacity and they conclude that he died a “death with dignity,” is named Esteban, and when the men return with the news that no neighboring towns can claim him, the women weep with joy that he is now “theirs.” 

The men don’t understand what all the fuss is about until the women show them the drowned man’s face. Then they, too, are in awe at his handsomeness, his masculinity, and his size. While they admire the drowned man, they think that he must have been ashamed of his size in life and must have felt awkward on account of it. “Fascinated by his disproportion and beauty,” the men respect him; but more than that, they become empathetic to his challenges and join the women and care for Esteban, attention that triggers care for each other as “the first cracks of tears opened in their hearts.” As Esteban comes alive to the villagers, so do they come alive to each other. 

Together, the villagers prepare a splendid funeral for the drowned man. When they finally let his body go over the cliff and back to the waves below, they all know that their lives have been permanently changed and that they “were not complete, nor would they ever be again,” with Esteban gone. As they “shuddered to the marrow with the sincerity of Esteban,” his spirit remains an inspiration to expand their vision and improve their lives. The villagers know that they will build their houses stronger and bigger, to be big enough for a man like Esteban. They will paint their walls brighter and plant flowers, so that someday, when the ships pass by their town, they will look at the bright, beautiful, fragrant town and say, “yes, there, is the village of Esteban.” 

When the villagers set their vision on a higher purpose and start creating a conscious culture of values supported by a mission; when they change their orientation away from their smallness and dreariness and embrace possibility, recognizing multiple stakeholders and responding to the unavoidable contingencies of the external world, they enact a preparation for embodied citizenship that changes the community. These are also traits that describe a successfully managed organization, or maybe what we might call not Esteban’s village but “Ron Harris’s” village.

 

In a column by David Brooks in the New York Times, he observed a trend in higher education that is heartening to a professor like me who has publicly advocated in Huffington Post and elsewhere for applying the humanities in professional education. Hoping to encourage a trend that resists a narrowed down focus on producing professionals rather than people, Brooks argues in “The Big University,” that a college education should “leave a mark on the full human being” by promoting conversations that educate the soul.

Yet academics trained in the humanities are often tentative about bringing their ideas to programs that train professionals; likewise, professional degree programs, like the MBA and MPA programs I teach in, can be equally reluctant to expand their offerings to include knowledge and skills acquired by a study in the humanities. My role as a professor trained in religious and literary studies, occupying a position in a school of management, was not a curricular choice but an administrative maneuver. Taking advantage of the circumstances, however, has become my chance to demonstrate what Brooks and others across the educational, policy, and professional spectrum are recognizing more and more: that turning to the fundamentals of education in the humanities is not merely an anachronistic act of desperation but a means of squarely addressing modern anxieties in a rapidly changing material and professional landscape.

While opinion writers across the media have begun supporting and expanding humanities offerings as preparation for work and life, most have neglected to consider those who seldom get past the academic threshold in the first place but whose journeys have taken them to the workplace. Books@Work (booksattwork.org) corrects that oversight. They recognize that only 60% of workers in the U.S. have access to higher education. Many front lines, blue-collar, and even middle management workers lack structured opportunities to engage in intellectual adventures by way of formal education and to benefit from the kinds of skill, knowledge, confidence, and empathy-building experiences that can be elicited from reading and discussing literature.

After talking to the founder and executive director, Ann Smith, about the goals and methods of Books@Work, I was reminded of the work of the Free Southern Theatre, established in 1963 to support the Civil Rights Movement. Although the Free Southern Theatre no longer exists, it established a model for how an organization can recognize the transformative potential of the arts and use literature to stimulate creative and reflective thought around community-based involvement. The program helped create more informed and engaged citizens and broke down social divisions just as Books@Work disrupts the hierarchical structure at many workplaces and promotes the development of skills that directly benefit both the employee and the employer.

 

While Books@Work may not be attached to a particular social movement, its modest goals to encourage employees to reflect on how they do their jobs and live daily has the potential for a wide-reaching effect. In addition to breaking down workplace divisions, the program also creates town-gown connections as faculty, especially adjuncts struggling to stay employed in their fields, find new inspiration to make connections between their scholarship and their communities. Teaching outside of a university setting challenges academics to demonstrate the relevance of their fields and to amplify the connections between literature and life. Rather than suggesting a displacement of higher education, programs like Books@Work creates not just better employees but prospective students.

Begun in 2010 by Smith, an art historian lawyer with a doctorate in organizational management, Books@Workis now active in 10 states and hopes to go national.  Participating companies and community groups reflect a broad spectrum of society. Companies pay the modest costs of the program, including materials and a stipend for the educator who leads three months of seminars. Employees read a book a month and participate with the instructor in selecting the texts to read and discuss in settings deliberately designed for the convenience of the employee. Selections include a wide variety of readings, from classics by Hemingway to short fiction by Dave Eggers, from non-fiction studies like Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns to YA novels.

Whatever the text, the outcomes are remarkably consistent across all settings where Books@Work has operated. Employees who participate, register greater interest in continuing education with corresponding confidence that they can be successful as students. Soft skills like collaboration, communication, decision-making, and critical thinking all improve and improve employee performance, no matter their task. The workplace becomes more trusting as hierarchies relax and more ethical as literature discussions help people to identify and respond thoughtfully to moral challenges both in and outside of the workplace. As Ann observed, they recognize in literary characters “that could be me” and are open to a reality that they “never knew,” encouraging them to extend their empathetic range and sensitivity to diversity and difference. These outcomes are supported by evidence gathered from three extensive surveys conducted at the beginning, middle, and end of the program.

Books@Work can be read two ways: as a description of what the program carries to the workplace—books—and as an articulation of what happens wherever one reads: books work!

 

As I continue in these blogs to reflect on the role the humanities can play in settings not traditionally seen as sites for creativity and reflection, I recalled an experience from a trip I took to El Salvador in 2012. Joining a delegation from the University of San Francisco, our trip was in part homage to the Jesuit martyrs from the University of Central America who were murdered by the Salvadoran military in 1989.  Part of our mission was to immerse ourselves in the setting and to explore the ongoing healing and reconciliation after the civil wars. We toured the country and learned from its citizens about the conditions that led to the murders and the subsequent problems with violence and corruption that continue to plague the country and make it among the most dangerous places in the world. (http://www.vox.com/2015/11/2/9646848/el-salvador-violence)

Yet despite all the fear and violence in the country, there are movements for change.  Among the voices struggling to be heard are those of youth incarcerated in the El Espino Reinsertion Center in Ahuachapan, El Salvador. We were introduced to these voices by a young American volunteer, Jenna Knapp, who understands the transformative power of language and who has used her creative and discursive writing skills to help Salvadoran youth imagine another kind of life. Their writing has also left us a testimony of a witness and, with Jenna’s persistent efforts, will soon result in a body of literature published in a volume that she can use to reach out to colleges, high schools, and other venues to use in curriculums aimed at introducing students to issues of social injustice.

As Jenna explained to us, the youth survive in deplorable conditions, having arrived at the detention center because of their ties to gang life, a relationship almost impossible to avoid or ignore in a country with few choices and many pressures on young people. Due to extreme poverty, structural violence, and broken family units, most of the young writers had been excluded from society long before they became gang members. Yet these energetic youths have “complex and painful stories” to tell and long to “be somebody in this life,” Jenna observed. “They hunger for society’s acceptance.”

Jenna’s way of helping these young people move from despair to hope and from rejection to acceptance was to facilitate a creative writing process that encouraged them to share their stories. She collected, transcribed, and returned to them in an ongoing process of editing and collaboration. Eventually, each author narrowed down to a theme and meticulously attended to their creative process, illustrating “their worlds and past experiences with shocking sincerity.” The program provides a safe space and an empathetic listener in an environment free of judgment and demonstrates how providing an intentional space and creative writing exercise, young people can begin the process of healing and transformation.

The transformation, however, is not felt by the authors alone. Readers, too, are encouraged by the writings to show the same creative courage the youth showed in writing that necessitated their taking off the masks they adopted for protection and survival. As readers encounter the writings—primarily narratives distilled into poetry—they are moved to take off their masks of judgment, bitterness, and fear and to read the stories with the openness and compassion that all humans, especially these incarcerated youth, deserve.

Currently, Jenna is compiling a volume of works by both male and female youth and hopes to publish them in Spanish and English. Beneath a Gangster’s Mask or Trás la máscara de un pandillero, she hopes, will prove the truth of the Salvadoran proverb: “por algo pasan las cosas,” everything happens for a reason. The authors, as one writes, invite us into their lives, and through language, we can make the same journey Frederick Douglass invited his readers to take when reading his narrative of enslavement: “to understand it one must need to experience it, or imagine himself in similar circumstances.”

It is such an exercise in imaginative empathy that Jenna’s work invites us all to experience, as one writer expressed “such a cruel life…living like an animal in the dark/disconnect from the world…”; but also, as another writer offered, “dreaming of one day getting away from this bitter pain,” and seizing on “a light of hope/to continue onward/the fight/ to one day be free,” to “see the glimmer of the stars/ to feel that gentle breeze/to feel the warmth of the people/I most love in this life.”

 

Over the last several years, parents, educators and policy makers have placed a heavy influence on STEM education (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), citing that the United States is falling behind in global competitiveness. While placing emphasis on STEM education will help meet the lack of advanced degrees to fill technology-related jobs, it has overshadowed the importance of degrees within the humanities. In a world where there is more emphasis placed on technology-related education, how do educators illustrate the value of the humanities?

As a resident of San Francisco, I experience the necessity of the humanities firsthand on a weekly basis. For instance, on Mondays, I lead field trips for public school students to 826 Valencia, a learning center in the Mission District of San Francisco, where volunteers support under-resourced students with their creative and expository writing skills. While the Mission was once known for its vibrant community, it’s visibly and rapidly gentrifying, losing the heart of its neighborhood. Our students appear increasingly out of place amid high-priced boutiques and bars catering to Silicon Valley’s wealthiest. 

Providing a strong contrast to 826 Valencia in the Mission District, my Thursdays end late at 101 Howard, where I teach ethics to working MBA and Master of Public Administration students in the historic Folger building in San Francisco’s financial district, home to management courses offered by the University of San Francisco. The building is wedged in the financial district that symbolizes wealth and the gears of economics, and while it’s also shaped by Silicon Valley affluence, this neighborhood is where many of the city’s homeless congregate, seen as a nuisance to the nominally tolerant citizens who move past them. 

But within these vastly different parts of San Francisco, where tech entrepreneurs and struggling students commingle with little interaction, exists the very need for the humanities: the ability to share and understand stories and build community. As San Francisco takes on a larger dichotomy between wealth and social status, a humanities education is more essential than ever. Students need to learn to share stories to create empathy in order to shape future business and society leaders who will sustain our community values. 

To promote the development of empathy, I teach literature to MBA and MPA students. Demonstrating empathy is an essential part of their job if they are to succeed, as managers and public administrators have to understand people from all different backgrounds in order to create a diverse office space and address pluralistic needs. The literary texts prompt my students to think about moral conduct and find creative ways to solve problems. Engaging with these texts promotes careful observation, thoughtful reflection and generous sharing. 

The texts I use range widely in form and content and change periodically to reflect current concerns relevant to their professions. Sometimes we will read an intimate poem like Yeats’ “To A Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing,” to explore the emotional dimensions of unrewarded effort and how a thoughtful leader will respond – “be secret and exult.” Or we will parse Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” to observe how a carefully crafted argument grounded in history, philosophy and experience can influence meaningful personal and political change. We’ve read Arthur Miller’s “Death of A Salesman” and considered what it means to have “the wrong dreams”. 

Students, whether in grammar or grad school, are successful when their education has prepared them to see and respond to what they witness in their communities. When their empathy transfers from the characters in a story to their neighbors on the streets, they develop skills to observe, reflect and share. If education continually reinforces these skills, moments of empathy can become habits of being. 

Humanities educators agree that proficiency in these liberal arts-based standards is essential for success. Reading deeply into great narratives, students develop the ability to transcend local loyalties and to imagine the situations of others. Through narrative analysis and reflection:

We recognize that we arrive at our lives in the middle of the story and spend the rest of our lives understanding the narratives that came before us, imagining the stories that lie ahead.

Our human task is to build on others’ stories until we are ready to tell our own complex narrative derived from experience, supported by intelligent evidence and articulated with clarity that has, at its core, what is common to us all. 

At 826 Valencia and 101 Howard, students are learning to observe with passion and scrutiny the settings in which their stories are imagined and all the many ways they can twist their plots toward empathy. This is an essential skill as office places and government institutions are embracing change and diversity because, in order to run a successful meeting or even talk with an employee or client, students need to know how to empathize and relate. While STEM subjects are an important part of education, it shouldn’t come at the expense of the humanities and the growth of our communities. 

 

In an entry I previously wrote for HuffPost blog, I described how scientifically based mindfulness training can help improve employee performance by building the capacity to sustain compassion and promote happiness. The New York Times’ article, “The Happiness Code,” (http://nyti.ms/1SPQDz3) also explored the topic as a management principle and how a company offers to generate happiness for its employees by using evidence-based research to produce the outcome. The Center for Applied Rationality (CFAR) in Silicon Valley relies on its founders’ expertise in behavioral economics to promote employee satisfaction. The premise of the workshop is simple: to rid ourselves of bad mental habits like procrastination, avoiding problems, making poor choices, and wasting time to rationalize our unproductive behaviors. These ”cognitive errors”, CFAR argues, persist in our patterned conduct and keep us in a loop of feeling either harried or frustrated. Some of these problems are byproducts of our brain’s chemical reward systems—it’s more pleasurable to cash a check than pay a bill—but some of it is lazy and solipsistic thinking, like avoiding bad news as if that would keep it from being true. These kinds of logical errors, however, can be corrected by applying various tools derived from evidence-based research that can enable users to be more intellectually dynamic, nimble and, of course, happier.

Evidence-Based Management (EBMgt or EBM) is an emerging movement to explicitly use the current, best available evidence in management and decision-making to improve outcomes for the employer, employee, and customer. My colleague in the School of Management at the University of San Francisco, Neil Walshe, is a researcher committed to evidence-based practice, specifically in the realm of management. Neil, an academic council member at the Center for Evidence-Based Management (https://www.cebma.org) notes, “there is nothing new about evidence-based practice. Medicine, policing, education have all been advocates and practitioners of using the best available evidence in the course of their decision-making for several decades. However, it is only recently that management has started to recognize the need to change how management is studied and indeed, how it is practiced.” 

Evidence-Based Management promotes a relatively simple idea; that management decisions should be based upon a combination of critical thinking and the best available evidence.

“Evidence” can come from scientific research, professional experience, and internally sourced organizational data. With this in mind, it can be said that all managers use some form of evidence in their decision-making but there is a clear bias towards the value of experience and the opinions of external experts over all else – even when it contradicts organizational data and scientific findings. 

Evidence-Based Management, therefore, tries to place a value on the quality of evidence and encourages managers to look not only at what the research says about a given topic but also what their own organizational data suggests. “It is common for managers to assume a problem exists (e.g. absenteeism, low morale, limited employee-engagement, etc.) when they have absolutely no internal evidence to support this. When challenged on this, the rationalization often centers on their own experience of a given phenomenon and little else.” 

For many managers, evidence is perceived as a threat to the credibility of their own decision making, a sentiment perpetuated by the industry of management gurus and experts all of whom extol the importance of using a mix of “gut feeling” and “best practices” in the course of managerial decision making. Data, especially that derived from within the organization, rarely gets a voice. “It can be hard for managers to understand that their own employees are a potential source of quality evidence”.  

One company practicing and promoting as its product its version of EBM is TINYpulse, a company founded by entrepreneur David Niu in 2012 after returning from a long, global trip where he took the opportunity to interview entrepreneurs from various industries and companies. Focusing on one thing they all had in common — the challenges of managing and retaining employees — he created TINYpulse to give leaders a method to take the “pulse” on how happy, burnt out, and frustrated their employees are. Using anonymous surveys to take these tiny pulses, Niu and his team created TINYpulse Engage. The goal is not just to achieve individual employee satisfaction but also to build strong cultures. The company’s mission is to “make employees happier” because the evidence supports that when employees are happy, retention, customer service, and engagement all improve. In early 2016, TINYpulse expanded into the performance management space with Perform, a mobile-first app that helps managers and employees work together to meet performance goals.

I spoke with Ketti Salemme, Senior Communications Manager of TINYpulse who also shared some of the founder’s principles and comments about my inquiry. As Ketti explained the company’s mission and processes, she kept returning to the concept of culture and how keeping track of employee satisfaction through small and frequent performance reviews contributed to the communal good of the company as well as the individual employee’s sense of self-worth and satisfaction. Although their methods vary depending on the company, essentially TINYpulse assists managers by developing weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly surveys that become part of a company’s ongoing activities. Some questions may be light or even open-ended, on topics as diverse as how clean everyone keeps the staff kitchen to opinions on leadership and product lines.  What all the surveys include is the question, to be rated on a 1-10 scale: “How happy are you at work?.” All the tiny surveys share the guarantee of anonymity, a feature that is essential to the success of the process because of the trust it builds and the candor it fosters. Their clients come from the for-profit, non-profit and public sectors.

When I asked Ketti whether or not the company worried about “the illusion of technique,” as philosopher William Barrett so memorably described the encroaching effects of a technological mind, she agreed that metric-based approaches could be perceived as instruments of exercising control rather than releasing happiness. To my question “is there ever such a thing as too much information?” the founder Nui provided this helpful reply:  “There definitely can be the case of too much information at one time. For example, when organizations first start TINYpulsing, they will often get a groundswell of feedback. If the organization is really large, the initial set of feedback can feel overwhelming. Thus it’s really important that the leaders and managers of the organization are ready to address the feedback.” 

Given this experience, the TINYpulse team has developed a set of best practices that are useful for any companies collecting and manipulating data. These practices include:

1. Acknowledge to the employees that management received the feedback and are reading through each one carefully (because everyone has participated in a survey without getting a response). 
2. Categorize the feedback into themes to share with the whole company. 
3. Schedule town hall or all-company meetings ahead of time to set expectations for respondents and administrators so they have a date to target to share the survey results.
4. Address the themes even if there is an issue that cannot be dealt with immediately. If there is something that the company can take positive action on, then set up the action plan and owner.
5. Remind respondents of the positive impact of their feedback so they will be encouraged to trust the process and continue to participate.
6. Empower functional heads or department leaders to use the surveys effectively and for the greatest impact. 

Ketti also acknowledged that the companies that benefit the most from the surveys are those who are seeking to be proactive in building or preserving a company culture and to develop sustainable problem-solving practices. Like with any therapy or treatment, trying to assess employee satisfaction amid a crisis isn’t as effective in addressing problems. The data that companies collect is only useful when it is applied and that process takes time. But for emerging businesses, evidence-based support and even their own way of doing business at TINYpulse can be an inspiration. As Ketti proclaimed, “our mission is to delight,” a word that also serves as an acronym for their company’s core values which read like a standard guide to management but as if communicated by a cheerleader: to Delight customers; Elect to spread positivity; Lead with solutions and embrace change; Increase communication with transparency; Go the extra mile with passion; Hold oneself accountable, and finally Treasure culture and freedom. 

TINYpulse, therefore, tries to walk its own talk. In addition to building a harmonious culture, the company gives away 1% of its product to deserving non-profits, and provides an additional 1% of its profit to the Entrepreneurs’ Organization, a global non-profit organization whose stated mission is to “engage leading entrepreneurs to learn and grow.” And its employees volunteer 1% of their time to community-based and service organizations. Finally, TINYpulse shares its evidence-based practices and information gathered from surveys through the TINYpulse Institute and its open-source white papers and special reports. 

Where the data, the technique and the happy talk all come together are in a concept of culture the founder described for me in the following way: 

“Culture is the vibe you get from a company within 10 seconds of walking through the door. It’s the energy level one senses and the beliefs and values that we all share. So hopefully if you divided us into separate rooms, you’ll still get a common sense of how we act, treat others, and go about our day.” 

 

As the holiday season was approaching, I received a surprise gift in my email that supported my ongoing activity blogging about how the humanities can support education in management. Two enterprising recent graduates of Wheaton College, Julia Wittrock, and Grant Hensel, had sent me a copy of a book they had written together and distributed to faculty in schools of business and management whom they matched with their interest in leadership studies. What the Fortune 500 Read, was the collation and redaction of advice Julia and Grant solicited by writing to every Fortune 500 CEO: (http://fortune500booklist.com/). 150 CEOs responded and over several months the pair read and summarized the top 50 titles they deemed most useful. Their motive was to extend their learning beyond the completion of their formal education and to create a repository of wisdom that could be valuable to maturing managers.

As I read through the book Julia and Grant assembled with such care, my literary-critical instincts kicked in and my mind turned to a New Yorker essay from earlier in 2015, an adaptation of the speech Andrew Solomon gave at the Whiting Writer’s Awards. Solomon’s essay, The Middle of Things: Advice for Young Writers, offers sound suggestions, many derived from Rilke’s classic Letters to a Young Poet, that are as helpful to managers as they are to writers. (http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-middle-of-things-advice-for-young-writers). 

With this in mind, I came to appreciate much of the value of Julia’s and Grant’s effort lay not in the evidentiary outcome—what knowledge each CEO-chosen book imparted—but in the process, they engaged in and the approach that motivated their project. In this sense, the skills they most articulately engaged were not those conventionally assigned to managers but to writers. 

For example, for Solomon, the first caveat and most important position a writer can take is to be humble. “The worst mistake anyone can make is to perceive anyone else lesser. The deeper you look into other souls—and writing is primarily an exercise in doing just that—the clearer people’s inherent dignity becomes.” The approach that Julia and Grant took to their project was as Solomon describes. They positioned themselves in humility but risked asking others to not only look deep into their souls—a product of reading, not just a product of writing—to identify their core values. By beginning from a humble position of listening, they heard the wisdom of their elders, also a point important to Solomon in the development of writers. “Age and experience,” Solomon reminds us, matter in the advancement of business ideas and the development of our character but the young don’t always appreciate them. 

“While all old people have been young, no young people have been old, and this troubling fact engenders the frustration of all parents and elders, which is that while you can describe your experience, you cannot confer it.” 

Understanding that experience can only be described not conferred, Julia and Grant applied the faculty Solomon that advises for writers but that is available to everyone: imagination. “To exploit the imagination’s curiosities,” to understand one’s world is the task of the writer and the challenge these young authors took up. They imagined a way to acquire the wisdom they sought; they dived into the suggested readings and applied their best analytical skills to interpret the texts; and they produced a text of their own that advanced their belief that “we have a responsibility to guide and mentor the next generation,” underscoring a responsibility Solomon is adamant is shared by writers: “Writing has a moral purpose…you can make the world a better place.” 

Grant and Julia accepted upon graduation their responsibility as they entered the business world and approached their professional development with humility, seeking to learn from others how they could develop their leadership and managerial skills in conscious and ethical ways. But they also applied standard tools of research, critical thinking, and effective communication in achieving their goal. While they seldom filter or question the knowledge received from the books they read, their “appreciative inquiry” approach recognizes their position in life as young but eager to aspire to maturity in thoughtful and principled ways. Moreover, they did so not motivated by their own aggrandizement but out of a practical curiosity and moral sense of how best to have an impact in actual, not theoretical, settings. Indeed, the young authors have taken the time to organize their book in a thematic arrangement that lends itself to easy reference and also chose to include action steps readers can take to apply what they learned. With 52 entries or chapters, this means a book a week, a task a week for a year, a measured and productive approach to career development. 

Julia and Grant expressed these and more observations when we shared about an hour-long conversation. They concluded with a note of gratitude not only for the content and tools they acquired along the way but also for how the encouragement they experienced gave them confidence in current leaders who took the time to answer questions posed by those who will follow them. The process of redaction and synthesis engaged Julia and Grant more deeply in the material than they might have achieved without the goal of the book in mind, illustrating a good example for any reader or problem-solver. As they mature in their professional lives, Julia and Grant will develop as writers develop by Solomon’s standards. They will learn to “trust what is difficult”—like recognizing the absence of women and people of color from their list of CEOs asked for advice and the books they recommended—but understand encountering difficulty as part of the goal not just for writers and managers but for all humans. What these encounters teach is necessary for writers and managers and is better understood by those of us who have enjoyed more decades on the planet. Of the many differences “between having lived more and done more and being newly energized and fresh to the race,” is “patience.” Patience is the skill that supports the condition of humility, where we all begin as writers or as CEOs who recognize, as Rilke did, that “eternity lay before us,” as we read, write, and manage our way through the world.

I blogged for The Huffington Post for a few years on various aspects of how the humanities can benefit education in management and public administration at the University of San Francisco. Twice I featured examples of how one of my students interpreted an Ethical Will assignment as part of a required ethics class in all programs. I decided I would conclude 2017 by making this an annual tradition. To recall, an Ethical Will is an informal document that is often included with people’s estate planning papers. It is a letter to the future, in which you share the relationships, accomplishments, and values that made your life satisfying. This letter takes no special training to write, and does not have to follow any particular format; it is simply an opportunity to tell your beneficiaries what is important to you. I encourage students to think beyond the epistolary form and to exercise their unique creativity in generating a legacy. 

To prepare them for this task, students are guided through a series of meditations, readings, podcasts, and videos, all aimed at stimulating their reflection on their lives and how they have come to identify and live their core values. Among the resources students consult is 

David Foster Wallace’s now-famous commencement speech which he delivered at Kenyon College in 2005 This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life which covers subjects including “the difficulty of empathy, the importance of being well adjusted, and the essential lonesomeness of adult life.” 

Wallace begins with a parable: 

“There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, ‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, ‘What the hell is water?”’ Wallace elaborated on his parable for the graduating students: “The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about… The fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance.” 

And, nearing the end of his speech he instructs students on the purpose of their education and the value of reflecting in the way we ask them to do with the Ethical Will assignment: 

“The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death. It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over: This is water. This is water.” 

In response to Wallace’s challenge to embrace simple awareness, prior examples have drawn lessons from basketball and golf. Today I offer the following example for how to live a good life as derived from a daily commute on public transportation. Foster says, “This is Water.” Angel Xu says, “This is BART.”

In constructing her analogy, Angel followed the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit System) map and developed life lessons for each line. Believing that “life is beautiful,” and that “hardness comes in just to make you feel the joys after going through them,” Angel concluded that “Life is like taking the BART,” for the following reasons:

Red Line 

1. Don’t be afraid to ask for guidance when you get lost. Even the most experienced rider can get confused. 
2. It’s never too late to do anything. If you miss a connection there will be another train or another route to take. And you might take an interesting diversion you would have otherwise missed. 

Blue Line 

3. The mistake is the best teacher. If you make a mistake on public transportation you pay with time, energy, and anxiety, and unintended consequences. But you also never forget to avoid that mistake again. 

Green Line 

4. Be nice, keep smiling. Some events and experiences on public transportation are beyond your control and can be disconcerting. Yet everyone is feeling what you are feeling. We all benefit when we keep up our spirits. 
5. Enjoy the scenery. The journey can be as important as the destination. Take time away from busyness and tasks and look around at the people and places that make up your world.

6. Be prepared. For your journey to be successful and rewarding you need to plan ahead but also be prepared to be surprised and have a plan for how to handle what you don’t expect. Because it will come. 

Yellow Line 

7. People get on, get off. We have small windows of time to make connections and to appreciate the lives of others. Consider where you and others get on and get off and take advantage of the time you have to explore worlds and lives. 
8. Think in other’s shoes. People travel and enter into our lives for all kinds of reasons and bring with them an assortment of moods. We don’t know the stories they bring, the troubles they bear, or the joys they feel unless we take the time to ask them and consider their point of view. 

Angel concludes her analogy by reminding us that:

“different lines arrive at the same destination.” 

We are all headed to the same fate—a mortal recognition the Ethical Will assignment encourages students to confront—but we can decide how we ride our trains to glory. So, the next time you feel frustrated with public transportation, consider that you may be sitting next to a better Angel of your nature.

 

An item from The Atlantic explored the reasons behind what is known as “the ambition gap,” wherein women express less interest than men in competing for senior managerial roles. (https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/ambition-office-women/523443/) The article highlights a recent study undertaken by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) to support its conclusion that how women are treated affects their career trajectory more than the commonly assumed reason: lack of motivation (https://www.bcg.com/publications/2017/people-organization-leadership-change-dispelling-the-myths-of-the-gender-ambition-gap.aspx).

The researchers at BCG looked at survey data of more than 200,000 respondents from a wide range of companies, industries, age groups, and family statuses, with employees in nearly 200 countries. In their data, they found that women’s desire to reach the top ranks at work primarily varies by company, rather than by family status, as often presumed. In other words, it isn’t entirely choosing family over work that is limiting women’s choices to advance. Rather, researchers found that existing gender diversity had a big impact on how workers felt about pursuing more senior roles. 

In work environments where both men and women felt that the company was making progress toward gender diversity within its top ranks, all genders were more likely to aspire to a leadership position. But where the corporate culture was stagnant, regressive, or hostile towards gender equity, women’s choice to avoid advancement opportunities were viewed as a “rational response” to reading the circumstances and making adjustments, trade-offs, and choices, that would allow them to seek meaning and achievement in other areas of their lives that provided a more realistic chance at success. 

Among the advice offered by leaders at BCG is recognizing how “the little things add up.” The attitude of managers, the career advice people receive, and the comments they hear can all imply messages about the fairness of a workplace that in turn will motivate women. The main takeaway, therefore, is not to assume that women aren’t competitive or don’t want senior roles. Instead, companies should focus on creating an environment that feels fair and equitable and encourages women to thrive. 

When a work culture doesn’t support thriving, however, another result may be the inability to find not just external success but the internal meaning in one’s work. Stifled opportunities can limit the meaning one can derive from work and can interfere with finding meaning in other aspects of life. Emily Esfahani Smith, the author of The Power of Meaning: Crafting a Life That Matters describes in an interview on PBS how in recent years, psychologists have started looking more closely at how the single-minded pursuit of happiness or success affects us (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/living-meaningful-life-simple-storytelling/). They have come to what seems like a counterintuitive conclusion, she reports: 

“Chasing happiness and obsessing over it, the way our culture encourages us to do, can actually make people unhappy and lonely.”

But it’s different when we set another goal for ourselves when we search for and pursue meaning in life. These same questions lie at the center of much great art, literature, and philosophy that we liberally apply in our management education at the University of San Francisco, as my recent blog posts have described. What characterizes this meaningful life is a sense of connection—of contributing to something beyond yourself. That could be your family, your work, play, nature, or God. When people say their lives are meaningful, Smith remarks, “It’s because three conditions have been satisfied: They believe their lives matter, they have a sense of purpose that drives them forward, and they think their lives are coherent and make sense.”

Smith suggests that a good way to begin identifying these criteria for meaning is by exercising “the simple act of storytelling.” Telling your story (and listening to another’s) gives meaning, or can at least clear the path to it. Smith even suggests that “the rise of rap and hip-hop and the popularity of the radio series StoryCorps,” forms that make a narrative out of the events in people’s lives offers a framework that goes beyond the day-to-day that helps people make sense of themselves and their lives. 

These observations about meaning in the workplace and how they are tied to the potential of women to tell their stories all come together in a recent Ethical Will composed by one of my MBA students, Mary Pham. Composing an Ethical Will is required of all students, although the form each story takes is up to the individual student. Many take Frank Lloyd Wright’s principle that “form and function are one,” and find a way to tell the story of the moral meaning of their lives through a metaphor that has personal value for them but universal value for all. In the first example of an Ethical Will, cited in the previous blog post, I chose to feature a student who compared his life lessons to basketball. I am ashamed to say that it never occurred to me that a female student would also choose a sports analogy, but Mary Pham did, taking her quest for meaning and equity just a step further. 

She writes: “I first picked up a club at the age of 7 and I can say that the game of golf has taught me valuable life lessons.” Included in those lessons are:

Etiquette: For example, showing respect by remaining quiet during someone’s swing.

Integrity: Playing the ball where it lies (not moving it from behind the tree to the fairway) and counting every single stroke on your scorecard.

Patience & Perseverance: Staying in the game for the entire 4 ½ hour round, knowing that it takes countless sessions at the driving range to work on your swing.

Mary then takes us through the different types of shots she employs during a round of golf. She shares what goes through her mind and how it relates to her personal values and the lessons she’s learned:

First Tee

Walking up to hole #1 and preparing for your first tee shot can be nerve-racking. Everybody’s watching you. You don’t want to be THAT guy who tops the ball or hits it up high into the air landing 30 yards in front of you, but everybody goes through that at some point. I’m always nervous and excited at the same time when it comes to the 1st tee. It’s very similar to that first day of school: you want to set a good impression and start off on the right foot. 

Takeaway:  As much as I want to look good by sending that ball straight and down the fairway, the real challenge is setting a PR or a personal record for myself. At the end of the day, I am really only competing against myself. This can apply to different areas of my life. The lesson I constantly remind myself is to “not compare myself to others.” I understand the importance of directing my focus inwardly and needing to care more about my personal wants and needs. It can be challenging for me to not become distracted by the successes of others. The whole point is to stay focused on what you want to achieve and not what others expect out of you. 

Fairway

After a tee shot, the best spot I can land on – is the fairway. It’s THE best lie and the shot that everybody wants because then you’re in a great position for your next shot. 

Takeaway: So you’re feeling great and confident after that awesome shot. Someone from your group may have given you a high five and you noticed that he or she is right there with you and you acknowledge them too with a “Good ball” or “Terrific Shot, Bob!” It’s the spirit of camaraderie and cheering each other on that makes this game or even life a little bit more special.  Whether it’s acknowledging your self worth or recognizing the small deeds of others – there’s something about finding joy in the little things because they always count in a bigger way than you expect. 

Rough

When you’re not on the fairway, you can end up in what they call the “rough” and they call it that for a reason! The grass is thicker and you’re at a not-so-great angle to the green, where the flag is. 

Takeaway:  Arriving in the “rough” has changed over my 20 years playing golf. While golfing with my dad growing up, he taught me a lot about how to carry myself in both the good and bad situations. When I hit a really good shot I’d celebrate hard and he’d remind me to be cool and obviously humble because nobody likes a bragger! And when I hit a bad shot, I would become angry and beat myself up for it every time and then my dad would have all sorts of sayings to say to me like “just focus on your next shot” “that’s ok, you’ll be fine” or “let it go and move on.” Over the years, after numerous amounts of shots from the rough, I’d like to say I matured and developed a more positive mindset towards life’s challenges. Sometimes being optimistic is the only way for me to calm down and think through a difficult situation. We each have our own ways of dealing with problems and stress, but finding an ounce of positivity somewhere can make things seem not as bad. 

Decision Shot

If you’re not on the fairway or in the rough, sometimes you’re faced with a “decision shot.” Imagine a small creek in between you and the green. If you land in the creek, you get a 1-stroke penalty added onto your score AND you lose a golf ball. So there are two options: you play it safe and aim right before water OR you go for the green with the risk of ending up in the water. 

Takeaway: I’ve played the safe shots most of my life, until recently. My immigrant parents worked hard to set up me and my brother for success. They were raised to work to provide for their family as opposed to staying at a job that they fulfilled them and provided meaning. They tried to instill in me the same attitude about work, insisting I pursue a career like accounting that was safe and lucrative. But the lack of meaning led me to finally take the risk to prepare for and attend graduate business school. And here I am trying to pave a new way for myself on my own terms. 

Bunker

Moving onto the “short game” when you land around the green and you’re so close, it’s time to pull out a wedge club and “chip” it onto the green. 

Takeaway: At this point, I’m scrambling and trying to make the most out of a situation. I’m hanging on, motivated to finish with a birdie, par or whatever it may be as I balance family, work, and school. Whether it’s coming in early or staying late to meet an unexpected deadline or needing to sacrifice happy hour to spend time fine-tuning that presentation for the next day, the dedication and extra effort I show will get me out of the bunker. 

Putt

Lastly, it’s time to putt. To me, this type of shot is the most difficult. It takes patience, focus, and lots of practice to finish. The undulation of the green requires you to adjust two main things – speed and alignment. If you’re uphill, you’ll need to hit the ball a little bit harder and if you’re downhill, you’ll do the opposite. Now if the placement of the hole is on a slope, you’ll need to aim to the far right or far left of the hole to take the slope into consideration. It can be complicated. 

Takeaway:  You know when you watch a PGA tour, the crowd goes silent, the players are under high pressure and then the winner sinks the putt in to celebrate. That moment is so emotional because all that hard work ends with that celebratory putt. Although it’s common to think of golf as a solitary sport, that moment of victory isn’t as sweet without your fans – your family, significant other, and friends who have been there with you every step of the way. Never forget your Fan Club and take the time to thank them for all they helped you to achieve.

 

In reflecting on life in an essay, New York Times columnist David Brooks observed that we characterize ourselves by two types of virtues, résumé virtues, and eulogy virtues. “The résumé virtues are the skills you bring to the marketplace. The eulogy virtues are the ones that are talked about at your funeral.” However, even though “we all know that the eulogy virtues are more important than the résumé ones,” our culture and our educational systems focus on teaching “the skills and strategies you need for career success,” leaving students clearer on how to build an external career than on how to build inner character (http://nyti.ms/1IUsWxY). 

Recognizing the merits in Brooks’ observations, I adapted an assignment for students in my MBA and MPA ethics classes that asked them to reflect on and create their own moral bucket list. Coming near the conclusion of learning and applying ethical theory, have in their possession a body of knowledge you cannot pretend not to have. In other words, when taking a moral stand or making an ethical decision, they should be able to and are responsible to, use this knowledge. So I ask them, in the manner of a bucket list, to develop “ethical wills,” (for example: https://celebrationsoflife.net/ethicalwills/) much more common practice these days, with samples all across the web and progressive lawyers asking clients to include a list of intangible assets they wish to bequeath along with their tangible assets. Even the corporate world recognized almost a decade ago the value of an ethical will, as reported in Barron’s: (http://www.barrons.com/articles/SB50001424052970204883804575483921684638904). 

So I ask my students to consider what advice, values, experiences they would bequeath loved ones. I also ask them to consider types of knowledge (intellectual, emotional, spiritual) and apply what they have learned in class to their own experience.

I urge students to avoid speaking in broad platitudes and worn cliché. Rather they should make their examples and discourse personal and meaningful to their lives, but with enough universal application to make it meaningful to others. Finally, I give students the option of selecting the genre or mode of presentation their ethical wills may take. The choices students make are as eclectic as they are imaginative even when choosing a conventional media like writing or video. Students have filed their wills in sacred settings and wearing sacred objects; they have put together mixtapes and video mashups of favorite songs, photo albums, film clips, and literary quotes. The epistolary form is most common but the audience isn’t always obvious. Sometimes it can be to a child not yet born or a parent about to cross over. A student who was a chef who prepared and served a meal of evocative foods that he connected with comfort and love and another floral arranger made a tribute in which each botanical selection was associated with or served as a symbol of virtue. 

After the Warriors championship loss after a record-breaking season, an epic moment for my students in the San Francisco Bay Area, and as the teams prepared to return for the next season, I chose to share some redacted highlights from the ethical will of a former student who extracted his life lessons from basketball. Here are the recommendations from Tyler Morehead’s ethical will: Man-to-manifesto:

     Play Fast and Loose

Enjoy life, every moment of it. We are at our best when we can embody being fully present in the situation. Try to limit your multitasking but not your potential.

     Fearlessly take your shot

Do not let fear of failure hold you back.  Push your boundaries and use your ability to adapt and learn a new skill. Expand your horizons and get a new perspective.  

     Be able to dribble with your left hand

Do not shy away from your weaknesses; identify them and embrace them so they no longer can be used against you. Navigate the situation with the best skill set at that time.  

     Study the game film, Master your pregame warm-up

Eagerly prepare to reach goals; put in the time and effort when no one is watching.  Remember to avoid short-cuts and build a strong foundational knowledge, analyzing a situation multiple times.

     Defend hard in overtime

Be reliable. Meet deadlines and keep your word. Sustain earned credibility by working hard during the tough times and showing up when promised. Reliability builds grit and trust. 

     Remain in help-side defense – always keep an eye on the ball and your man

Demonstrate loyalty.  Family & my friends contribute to our success. Cherish time with my loved ones and honor their value.

     When caught in a trap, be strong with the ball and find the open man

Stay strong with your beliefs and resist the temptation to compromise during stress. Pivot your options and decide confidently and decisively what is the best solution without regret. 

     Don’t drag your pivot foot 

Do not take advantage of other people for your own benefit. Create followers instead of competitors, collaborators instead of critics.

     A player who makes a team great is more valuable than a great player

Prioritize team’s goals over personal goals. Listen more than speak and choose quality over quantity when providing feedback. Team goals are much more satisfying and enduring than individual goals.

     Learn from your coaches

Appreciate the mentors who show up in your life, from grammar school teachers to God. Each reveals a unique way to opportunity.

 

The School of Management at the University of San Francisco promotes its role in preparing students to enter the workforce by identifying three sectors in which they are most likely to exercise their talents: as public administrators in various levels of government; as small to corporate business managers in for-profit endeavors; and finally, in a kind of combination of the two, as employees of non-profit enterprises that often fill the gaps in government services but do so by applying business practices that build in sustainability and success. 

Non-profit administration is often undertaken by those who are motivated after recognizing a social problem that needs addressing or after appreciating a common good that could be shared more widely. But these organizations are also founded by problem solvers who recognize that their special skill, acquired not by conventional education in management, may meet a social need or produce a benefit. Previously I’ve written about how one can apply skills developed in humanities courses to the workplace, but here I offer an example of a non-profit that offers a technique derived from specialized knowledge of ancient traditions to create a socially engaged contemplative organization aimed at transforming the workplace itself.

I spoke to one of the co-founders and current president of the Courage of Care Coalition (courageofcare.org), Brooke D. Lavelle, who described for me how her long study in cognitive psychology and Buddhist contemplative theory came together in a vision for the organization aimed at providing training for people in caring roles and professions (educators, health care professionals, social workers, clergy, activists, etc). What Brooke and her co-founder, John Maransky–a professor of Buddhism and Comparative Theology at Boston College–recognized was that those drawn to work that requires active and engaged compassion could benefit from an approach to their work that cultivates sustainable care and compassion as derived from Buddhism and other contemplative practices. 

While some in academia may scorn their approach as lacking theological purity, Lavelle and Maransky welcome the opportunity to adapt their understanding of Buddhist practices to secular contexts and to apply contemplative resources for social change. This approach to Buddhism’s practical application is not new; twenty years ago the Dalai Lama, along with a lawyer and an entrepreneur, created Mind and Life, a non-profit committed to building a scientific understanding of the mind as a way to help reduce suffering and promote human flourishing. What distinguishes the Courage of Care Coalition from Mind and Life, however, is its front-line focus. Unlike Mind and Life, which is a grant-funding body that also hosts annual think-tank dialogues with the Dalai Lama, academic institutes, and international symposia, Courage of Care Coalition seeks to operate on the ground, meeting the needs of workers who meet needs. While they aspire to see their practices widely adapted, they operate not on a global scale but on the neighborhood level.

As Brooke explained to me, her academic training in Buddhism coincided with a growing awareness among the public of the benefits of mindfulness and meditation as techniques for improving, discerning, and replenishing humans in their daily lives. “Compassion,” Brooke observed, is “a stance, not a feeling, an encounter or a perspective” that has multiple signatures. In a relational or dialogic approach, Brooke recognizes that some of the delivery methods her organization offers, like online workshops, may not only believe this to be a fundamental principle; but also a flexible tool that adapts to the schedule of busy professionals, even an online community can resist the belief that people can act autonomously to renew their compassionate spirits. 

Care for others involves an obligation to say “you are mine” and to hold each other in a “field of care,” Brooke explained. Courage of Care rejects the notion of compensatory or redemptive suffering and resists individual tendencies towards martyrdom by stressing the collaborative aspect of compassionate care. There are many ways to “create space” for compassion, from multiple portals and levels of entry, in workshops, seminars, and retreats. The sense of community generated by Courage of Care extends beyond the formal training in workshops and seminars and is sustained as a habit of being in a nuanced idea of self-care.  

Resisting the trend towards instant gratification from applying mindfulness techniques and veering away from stress as the main stimulus to practice, Brooke describes how we can scaffold our needs to build, develop and live empathetic lives and to reclaim spirituality as a safe, scientific, public activity. Where courage becomes part of the picture is when one chooses a professional life that requires daily acts of mercy. “Courage,” Brooke observed, “is the quality of our capacity for caring.” The Courage of Care Coalition believes that we are empowered by others whom we serve and that it takes courage to recognize the ability to be compassionate. 

This understanding of courage tracks with the research of Professor Neil Walshe in the School of Management at the University of San Francisco. As an organizational psychologist, Neil tries to understand the experience of courage as it applies to the organizational realm. Neil’s work has tried to move past psychology’s tendency to fixate on people’s motivations towards courage and instead, address the experience of courage for individuals. As he explains, “There is a paucity of research that deals with the human experience of moral behavior and even less that looks at its absence. We know far more about the conditions that can bring about morally motivated behavior but relatively little about whether this is a positive or negative experience once enacted.” 

While the assumption has long been that being courageous is a positive experience, Neil, like Brooke, asks “positive for whom?” In the organizational context, while it is morally admirable that organizations might encourage courage among employees, they are exposed to little if any risk in the course of doing so. Ultimately, as Neil observes, “it is the individual who expends the moral and physical capital that comes with being courageous, yet it is the organization that ultimately benefits through an increase in their moral perception by employees and outsiders alike.”

Motivated by the sharp rise in academic research in the realm of positive psychology and positive organizational scholarship (2000 onwards) Neil has tried to understand what it feels like to be courageous as part of one’s work role and similarly, what the experience of cowardice is like. 

Despite the volume of research present on courage as an abstract construct, little if any attention has been paid to the experience of courage among those who perform moral and virtuous acts as part of paid employment. While organizational psychology has had quite the preoccupation with courage in the past two decades most of its attention has been directed at attempts to quantify or measure people’s capacity for courageous action (http://psycnet.apa.org/books/12168/012; http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/cpb/59/2/135 ; http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17439760903435224). These often exclude the role of context and circumstance from the act of courage itself. Indeed, Neil has observed that organizations have begun to use and screen employees for the construct of Moral Potential without really understanding the complexity not only of morality but of its application to workplace behaviors. 

Institutional efforts cited by Neil support of the work of Courage of Care Coalition, including the University of Michigan’s Centre for Positive Psychology and the influential CompassionLab, a research initiative that aimed to give voice to the potential that empathy and compassion could play, not just in understanding the challenges of contemporary employment and organizational membership but also to address the potential benefits that organizations might realize by way of efficiency, decreased absenteeism, reduced turnover and the simple possibility that people might enjoy their work more if the workplace was a touch more human.