There is a new Harvard Business Review article on leading with compassion. It is a great article, and anyone interested in being more compassionate and the benefits of compassion will enjoy reading it. Here are (see below) a few statements from the article which resonate for me.

I was particularly drawn to the statement about the number of opportunities for expressing compassion in one day. Doing the math, if each one takes 40 seconds or so, then the total time is six minutes a day! Not that there should be a time limit or we should think of a time limit in terms of compassion, but in the time it takes to make a pot of tea…

• Compassion is a vital component of effective leadership.
• Compassion is different from empathy. The authors define compassion as empathy + action.
• Compassion leaders focus less on being in charge and more on taking care of those in their charge.
• … A Johns Hopkins study found giving just 40 seconds of compassion can lower another person’s anxiety in a measurable way. 
• A University of Toronto study found, in everyday life (e.g., the workplace) we have, on average, nine unique opportunities for compassion every day. 

Thanks to Kelly Sikkema for making the featured image available through Unsplash.