Putting Compassion to Work: Compassion as a Tool for Navigating Challenging Workplace Relationships

The academic literature contains a number of examples of how organizations that value compassion are actively working to reduce employee suffering (by truly enacting the value of compassion, not just espousing it), which unsurprisingly has significant benefits to both the employee and organization. [...]while you may deem your colleague’s meeting etiquette to be quite unskillful and challenging for you (i.e., generates negative emotions), others in the organization may not have any issues with it. Additionally, it is worth explicitly acknowledging that there is a spectrum of people involved in these challenging interpersonal workplace situations (e.g., people who are more active vs. passive in their behavior that contributes to your suffering, those with whom you interact regularly vs. those with whom you thankfully seldom interact, and those who are in positions of power or authority over you vs. those who are your peers or subordinates). Even though the temptation to suppress and avoid your experience will likely be present, try reminding yourself that there is no evidence that suppression works or is effective; in fact, the data suggests that it just makes the situation worse.