This content is locked. Please login or become a member.
Mindfulness for Organizations: Kindness, Compassion, and Competitive Advantage, with Rasmus Hougaard, Managing Director, The Potential Project
Mindfulness is a great thing, not only because it makes us more effective and makes us less stressed, but also because, more importantly, it makes us better human beings. When we train in mindfulness we actually develop the ability to be kind to others as a default state. My experience is that it comes from sitting down, silencing the mind, silencing everything we’re doing. And when we do that enough, we find a peace within ourselves. And when we find a peace within ourselves, it’s easier to find peace with other people, whereby we just have more kindness and compassion for others.
Kindness to many is perceived as maybe a little bit soft thing that does not belong in the office. I would totally disagree with that. Growing global competition, kindness is what makes our clients want to be in contact with us. Process leaders, kindness and compassion is what makes our employees want to work for us and be motivated and engaged. Look at it this way– everything is changing constantly. And our ability to be successful relies on our ability to deeply connect with other people. Whether that is our clients or the people that we’re leading.
So the kinder we are, or let’s say the more compassionate we are, the more we have a genuine wish that may you who are in front of me right now, whether you are one of my colleagues, whether you’re an employee or whether you’re my client, the more I have the urge, may I bring you happiness, may I be of benefit to you, the more you’ll be attracted to actually working with me.
A great example that we had working with one of our great clients and global professional services firm. When we introduced the concept of kindness, initially there was some resistance. “Hey, what is this doing in our office? We’re here to be professional.” But after going through a few conversations around the essence of kindness one of the people in the room, the very senior partner, his consulting firm, suddenly sat there and he said guys, “just imagine if we would make kindness part of our business strategy. How would that change our client’s relation or perception of us? Now we’re in a global competition and some of our competitors are just as smart as we are. But if we would add on top of our smartness the kindness towards our clients that could actually be a competitive advantage.” So in a world where competition is arising, compassion to me seems to be one of the fundamental compared to the advantages in business.