Recently, it seems like everyone from Arianna Huffington to Harvard business professors are talking about what meditation can do for a companies in terms of increasing productivity and bottom lines. Even LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner is talking about compassion and why it’s integral to leadership.
The examples of compassionate companies range from those contributing to charities to those entrenched in local communities—like Panera Cares in Chicago, a restaurant that asks customers to pay only what they can afford. USA Today reported that Panera Cares uses profit primarily to job-train at-risk kids, and muses that “corporate kindness” could one day become as commonplace as coupons.
For those of us whose workplaces aren’t included in the 25% of US companies with stress reduction initiatives for staff, corporate kindness might seem more like a distant trend than a day-to-day reality. So, how do you know if your workplace fosters compassion?
The Greater Good Science Center recently published a Compassionate Organizations quiz. The quiz is based on more than a decade of compassion research conducted by CompassionLab and the Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business.
The quiz consists of 23 questions that ask you to reflect on your work environment and relationships. The quiz gauges your company’s level of compassion, and offers tips to foster compassion on a daily basis. There is also a specific list of tips for leaders—your boss being open to that might be a compassion indicator, too.
