compassion

Business, like art and science, has been revealed and conceived through the intellect and imagination of people, and it develops or declines because of the intellect and imagination of people.
In fact, there is no business; there are only people. Business exists only *among* people and *for* people.Seems simple enough, and it applies to every aspect of business, but not enough businesspeople seem to get it.Reading the economic forecasts and the indicators and the ratios and the rates for this or that, someone from another planet might actually believe that there really are invisible hands at work in the marketplace.

A few weeks ago, one of the senior managers in my group told me about a very difficult critique session he'd had with one of his women employees. He had hired her, with great expectations of an outstanding performance. Instead, she had not adjusted well to her new job, and her performance was lackluster. An appraisal and perhpas a "caring conftontation" were in order. When he told her she was not doing the job well enough, she began to cry. She knew, she said, she was letting him down, and her own disappointment in herself embarrassed her. Thus she cried. "What did you do?" I asked. "What could I do? I felt terrible. I cried too," he said, and I couldn't help thinking about the big-time management consultant and his box of Kleenex. In my view, that manager demonstrated two things: He cared enough about the work that he was willing to confront someone he had a special interest in, and he cared enough about her to be hurt that she was upset. But let me make something clear: *I'm not talking about management for and by the wimps.* In fact, I am talking about the most difficult management there is, a management without emotional hiding places. You just can no longer be the tough guy, and you also can't come on as the impassive, icewater-in-the-veins "cool head." On the other hand, the kindly parent who listens-and-understands-but-does-nothing approach also won't work. No, in every situation, you must lead with your real self, because if you're going to be on the leading edge of management, you sometimes must be on the emotional edge as well.

"When someone is full of Love and Compassion, he cannot draw a line between two countries, two faiths or two religions."

We ache at the violence, pain, and hunger in our world, and inside us is a will to help. But 'help' only helps if it is an active expression of love. Otherwise our attempts to help, limited by narrow self-concern, become rigid and too easily discouraged.

If our motivation for serving others is tied to a strong desire for specific outcomes or for praise, our potential is limited. Because we can never completely control the results of our efforts, we may become easily frustrated and disheartened.

When individuals and groups do not experience being loved -- when whole communities lose hope that anyone cares -- fear and violence are often seized upon as seeming protectors in the form of gangs, mobs, and communal hostility.

It takes community to maintain a human.

If we only practice compassion on the mind level, we run a great risk of our compassion being just talk. As we know, talk is cheap. To develop true compassion we have to put our money where our mouth is.

Training in compassion is a mental activity. but our mind should also be brought to the level where every action we take is influenced by compassion. That means engaging ourselves in compassion in action.

Within the short space of my own lifetime, the impact of science and technology on humanity has been tremendous. Although my own interest in science began with curiosity about a world, foreign to me at that time, governed by technology, it was not very long before the colossal significance of science for humanity as a whole dawned on me---especially after I came into exile in 1959. There is almost no area of human life today that is not touched by the effects of science and technology. Yet are we clear about the place of science in the totality of human life---what exactly it should do and by what it should be goverened? This last point is critical because unless the direction of science is guided by a consciously ethical motivation, especially compassion, its effects may fail to bring benefit. They may indeed cause great harm.