What Is Essential is Invisible to the Eye – Or Why We Need Compassion to Trust

"Goodbye," said the fox. "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."

"What is essential is invisible to the eye," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

"It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."

"It is the time I have wasted for my rose--" said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.

"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose . . ."  

“What is essential is invisible to the eye” is what I thought when Monica Worline said “there is always pain in the room”. Have I ever entered my classroom with this mantra? Did I see the young lady who was desperate as she did not know how to pay the fees for the term or the young student who was in pain because his grandmother had just died? Did I feel their suffering? And did I offer some room in the class to open up for personal issues to air? No. I did not. But I should as just being able to say “I am sorry” and “I feel for you” would have changed the space between us as research shows: enable more well-being, more resilience, more engagement, and more affective commitment. In addition, compassion has been shown to be a generative force as it alters the way we “see” others – it open us up, makes us belonging to and empower us to see the positive qualities of others and of our organization we work for.

So reading about the three processes of compassion – noticing, feeling, alleviating – but also about the heart- and mind-opening effects of it I was sure that there must be a link to #trust. And there is – but it currently is cleary the road less traveled. My colleague Aneil Mishra is one of the few, who in his ROCC about trust (Reliability, Openness, Competence, Compassion) makes clear that compassion is an essential element for leaders as we are more willing to trust a compassionate person. And I would add that this quality of leaders is even more important in times of uncertainty such as we are in now. In addition Rosalind Searle shows that compassion is at the heart of preserving trust in organizations in times of crisis. Together with her colleagues they studied how four organizations managed to sustain trust in very stormy periods by employing compassion or what they refer to as emotional embodying which “involves prioritizing emotions triggered by the jolt by creating spaces for emotions to be shared, worked through and shifted”.

But I think that compassion could be even more essential for trust building and trust preservation. We have barely scratched the surface here. If we understand working together as a collaborative journey, if we see the hyped “#co-creation” as an act of the magic what only the space between us can effect, then we also need to acknowledge that we become responsible for each other. Just what the Fox told the little Prince about the rose. Trust is enabling collaboration and co-creation but it is also creating the need to feel compassion for each other – two processes intertwined and feeding upon each other.

So are we ready to accept this responsibility? Are we ready to embrace compassion in the workplace, to train and select our leaders accordingly, to allow for, even celebrate what Joan Halifax calls the female quality for lotuses in a sea of fire. Are we ready to have a deep look into ourselves, to understand compassion as a practice and as something we cannot just will upon? And to take up some questions risen this week in my posts: can compassion happen without self-compassion? Do we need boundaries for trust and compassion –and how would such “tough” love look like? And how can we bring another “touchy-feely” concept such as compassion into our organizations? #knightsofchange

For the deep dive

A fabulous ted talk on the regenerative side of compassion, love (and dare I say trust): https://www.ted.com/talks/joan_halifax_compassion_and_the_true_meaning_of_empathy#t-38616

Scholarly deep dives on compassion and trust:

Lilius, J. M., Worline, M. C., Maitlis, S., Kanov, J., Dutton, J. E., & Frost, P. (2008). The contours and consequences of compassion at work. Journal of Organizational Behavior: The International Journal of Industrial, Occupational and Organizational Psychology and Behavior, 29(2), 193-218.

Worline, Monica, and Jane E. Dutton. Awakening compassion at work: The quiet power that elevates people and organizations. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2017.

Mishra, A. K., & Mishra, K. E. (2008). Trust is everything: Become the leader others will follow. Lulu. com.

Gustafsson, Stefanie, Nicole Gillespie, Rosalind Searle, Veronica Hope Hailey, and Graham Dietz. "Preserving organizational trust during disruption." Organization Studies (2020): 0170840620912705.