Benefiting at work from Brain Based Insights

When Henk, a middle aged guy most people took for granted,  grew gravely ill with a thyroid condition, others rallied around to support him, did his work, and encouraged Henk to take time off.

As it turns out, people come to work with an inborn capacity for compassion.

Does your workplace cultivate a compassionate climate? Brain based business draws from intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligences for easy ways to help employees develop empathy, kindness and a sense of support toward peers.

Yet with so much violence and turmoil on the news and in the world today, it seems more important than ever to cultivate a peaceful climate that solves conflicts with human kindness in tact. Daily language and habits either cultivate or diminish that capacity.

Temperament plays a role. Some workers are naturally more tuned into other people’s feelings or difficulties, while others seem oblivious at best. Either way, the work culture created can foster people’s ability to empathize.

Here’s how to cultivate kindness, in daily doses, with the brain in mind:

1. Promote a caring tone – which is the body language of good will.
2. Speak without meta messages and build goodwill even among those who disagree with you
3. Reject cynicism or sarcasm and encourage humor that leaves more people laughing
4. Say you’re sorry often to build neuron pathways beyond blame
5. Play light music that inspires cooperation at work

Try any of the above and the human brain’s plasticity, rewires for even more compassion at work. What do you think?