How to make compassion the king of your calls
Last week, Rishi Sunak proposed that the way we navigate the next few months will depend on the “individual acts of kindness that we show each other.”
I have seen plenty of brilliant articles with suggestions of how to show kindness to family, friends and those working on the front line at this time, but I've seen very little about how we can do the same for our colleagues.
Yet now, more than ever, as people experience increased stress and workloads or even feeling fear and grief, the need for us to show compassion to people we work with is paramount.
Why compassion needs to be our default
The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines compassion as “a sympathetic consciousness of another's distress, together with a desire to alleviate it”.
Bill Gates landed this in the context of our jobs last week, when he reminded us that our "true work is not our job" but it is in fact to "look after each other, to protect and to be of benefit to one another.”
For teams that were previously office based, those acts of kindness might have presented themselves as conversations over lunch, checking-in with one another, or going for drinks to celebrate a colleague's achievement.
But when your working day has become a series of calls and video conferences, these conversations are now either non-existent or happening through a screen.
Even if your team has worked remotely for years, the climate around you has just shifted dramatically, and you will have to find and develop new ways of working to allow compassion to reign.
3 ways of showing compassion
So here are 3 suggestions of how you can show compassion to your colleagues, be it over video conferences or calls:
1. Be quicker to listen than to speak
Second to physical survival, the greatest need of a human being is psychological survival. We need to feel validated, appreciated and understood. Yet Steven Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, suggests that most of the time in conversation we are "either speaking or preparing to speak." When we do this with a colleague it leaves very little room to understand what's actually going on inside.
While there is often a need to move quickly in business, and calls have a time limit to them, there should always be room to check-in and give one another enough 'psychological air’.
In the climate we are currently in, where people will understandably be more concerned with their own situation, listening well is a hugely distinguishing asset.
One way that you can allow others to feel heard in a video call is to practise using silence. We rarely reveal what we are actually thinking or feeling about something when we first speak.
So if you are moderating a phone or video call, leave a few seconds pause after someone has finished speaking. It will give room for more depth to be drawn out, and you might even find you are making faster progress as people start to say what they are really thinking.
You could also schedule a virtual coffee over video call with a colleague, with the goal of listening to how they are doing.
2. Celebrate your team
Last week the UK drew together for a national clapping event, to honour the work the National Health Service has been doing during this crisis.
Your team might have just had a huge increase in their workload, or maybe they are bored to tears, but celebrating one another and recognising where praise is due is a huge morale booster.
Try to be specific when you are offering praise. Saying something like “you did a great job yesterday”, is a lot less believable and impactful than “I was really impressed by your work on the marketing campaign yesterday - the breadth of creativity you showed was incredible.”
You could even take the time to do this over a virtual beer on a Friday afternoon, or go one step further and recognise colleagues who are showing great care and compassion to others at this time.
3. Challenge your colleagues well
Things that might have been addressed if colleagues were working side-by-side in the office, are now in danger or going unaddressed, or getting lost in the void of a group video call.
While there should be extra room for understanding each other’s needs right now, challenge and confrontation is a necessary part of building a team well. I would even argue that challenging someone in the right way is being compassionate.
Patrick Lencioni, author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team outlines that honest critique, delivered without judgement or attack, can actually increase productivity. So where you can, bring grievances up with your colleagues, and allow compassionate confrontation to become part of the language you use in calls.
Build something that lasts beyond this crisis
It has already been predicted that the way we work during these next few months will shape how we work in the future. We also know that reputational impressions formed of companies are based on how they react in times of crisis.
The call to be compassionate is an invitation to go beyond your self interest, to build trust, and to foster courage and genuine relationships in your teams. So embed compassion into your calls and language over the next few months, it really could be one of the best things you’ve ever done.