Compassionate Management

A few years back, I worked as an interpreter on an HR seminar where the keynote speech was delivered by a doctor-turned management consultant named Philippe Rodet, whose presentation focused on the thesis of his book ‘Le Management Bienveillant’. A singularly inspiring and empathetic man, Dr Rodet sketched out his vision for a style of management that doesn’t attempt simply to squeeze the last drop of productivity out of employees, but rather seeks to create an environment where workers are respected and encouraged to push their limits, without being thrown into situations where they are out of their depth.

Although the content of the presentation was very interesting — as well as giving me the challenge of correctly pronouncing Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s name — I was immediately confronted with the problem of how to translate the word ‘bienveillant’. The words that most readily come to mind — benevolent, kind, gentle — didn’t really seem to work in this context. Studies using the term ‘benevolent management’ have been published, but they appear to be written by francophone authors; ‘benevolent’ seems more appropriate when referring to the behaviour of a ruler or institution. One of the consultants at the event suggested using ‘love’ to translate 'bienveillance', but like variations on the words ‘kind’ and ‘gentle’, it didn’t really seem to fit with the theme of business and management.

After initially considering using a circumlocution like ‘human-centric leadership’, more context enabled me to flesh-out the concept and I toyed with ‘judgement-free’, ‘caring’ and ‘considerate’ management, before finally settling on ‘compassionate management’, which I later discovered was a popular term in Silicon Valley, advocated for example by former LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner as a way to improve employee-employer relations. Weiner made ‘compassionate management’ a core value at LinkedIn during his tenure, and there are now many articles on its benefits and how to implement it.

And yet it seems that many people I know believe that harassment and psychological abuse at work are inevitable — a natural consequence of capitalism even; surely this doesn’t have to be the case? The kind of sexual harassment that was commonplace not that long ago has become completely taboo as a result of changing norms, so why can’t the same happen for bullying and other kinds of abusive management practices?

In his book, Bad Men, David Buss argues that although there are predictors of sexual violence (status loss or mate-value discrepancies) the majority of such acts are committed by a small subset of men with certain traits — narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy — known as the ‘dark triad’. Likewise, in a now-famous 2010 paper, Paul Babiak et al. showed that, although psychopathy is more prevalent in senior executives than in the general population, that figure is still only 3.5% (vs. 1% in the general population). This implies that the majority of the most egregious behaviour is being committed by a very small number people, so what explains people’s impression of widespread workplace bullying?

The fact is that although a single tyrannical manager can do a lot of damage, a bad work culture and counter-productive HR policies can do just as much harm by perverting incentives, rewarding bad actors, and pushing people into positions they are not comfortable with. The Peter Principle, a concept developed by Canadian educator Laurence J. Peter, explains how “in any hierarchy, an employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.” In concrete terms, this means that employees who are good at their job are invariably promoted ahead of their colleagues, eventually reaching management positions where the skills required are unrelated to the skills that enabled them to reach that position in the first place.

A review in the Asclepius Open Medical Journal also suggests that an overly competitive corporate culture can lead low-performing or unpopular employees, or simply those with low self-esteem, to lash out against colleagues that they perceive as presenting a risk to their status or professional success.

There are a plethora of HR strategies, policies and tools that can help to avoid these pitfalls, but Jeff Weiner suggests that fostering a culture of empathy and mindfulness can be part of the picture. He relates an anecdote in which he realised that he treated certain subordinates with passive-aggressive contempt due to frustration with their performance, before realising that if they were under-performing, it was his fault; as a manager, he was in a position to change their role, coach them, or adapt his management style to get the best out of them.

Moreover, promoting a healthy corporate culture doesn’t only have to be top-down, it can be bottom-up and lateral. When you are talking to a belligerent colleague, it is easy to assume malicious intent on their part, but they may be upset about something completely unrelated. Likewise, it is quite easy to react defensively to another’s perceived aggression when your emotions are being pulled around by stress, fatigue, hunger or some maladaptive evolved psychological response. Our capacity for compassion is dependent on our capacity to be mindful and empathetic; you cannot put yourself in someone else’s shoes unless you are able to interrogate your own feelings — and mindfulness practice can help you become more self-aware of your reactions to this type of situation. We are instinctively aware that most people are not ill-intentioned; most people aspire to the same things as us; most people would rather help their fellow man then harm them — we just sometimes need a little reminder.

It is easy to view the concept of compassionate management with cynicism — happy, flourishing employees are more productive, more loyal and less likely to move on, so there is a clear benefit for employers — but a recent study found that over two thirds of employees claim to be under a high level of stress, which can have an impact on their health and well-being outside of work. Former President of the French Institute for Strategic Analysis (IFAS), Eric Albert, once claimed that compassionate companies do not exist. "[bienveillance] is an ideal that can never be reached," he said, "[but it] can become a guiding line that inspires and permeates everything we do, every day." He identified four levels at which this can be done, including working conditions, rules and compensation, of course, as well as certain 'soft factors' like respect, politeness, and kindness.

Surely it is worth keeping an open mind to compassion, empathy and mindfulness if it could help improve the condition of workers, if only a little? What's the worst that could happen?