organizational flourishing
creates top and bottom line ROI
WHY DO PEOPLE CALL COMPASSION A SOFT SKILL?
There is a myth out there that Compassion is a “soft-skill” and from an organizational perspective a “nice to have” concept. The thinking goes that in times of great difficulty from a business perspective that these “soft-skills” and the investments needed to create them, are unnecessary. Furthermore, the company has to ‘buckle down’ and discard these frameworks in order to get “real business done.”
Nothing could be further from today’s truth. Compassion requires a basis of great strength and resilience in order for it to be present between people. Modern organizations need to create the space for this strength to unfold.
we are hardwired for pro-social behavior. Literally.
Our evolutionary path took us from the baseline instincts of fight or flight and added pro-social behavior. We learned that being part of a group, and the supporting skills necessary for that, allowed us the opportunity to survive by working together. This isn’t what some might call woo-woo nonsense, but scientifically validated and measurable, but somewhere, somehow, in the face of our fears, and current extractive organizational and economic thinking, the prevailing thinking is that discarding the skills developed to work together - Affective Empathy, Cognitive Empathy, and other skills that create Psychological Safety and other organizational environments - are not valid or “soft-skills” that are “nice to haves.”
COVID changed this, the level of VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity") has gone up 10x and people are more than ever looking for a place that is supportive. That place typically is now the work place, and those employers that figure out how to provide that for the people that work for them will have an ongoing competitive advantage and will also be doing the right thing for their people.
"Empathy is not a soft skill," Nadella said in an interview with Axel Springer CEO Mathias Dpfner on Tuesday. "In fact, it's the hardest skill we learn — to relate to the world, to relate to people that matter the most to us."
flourishing environments create safety and growth.
People who are safe will be engaged and ideate.
We call these the “Elements of Individual Flourishing.”
The elements "map" the companies - products, services, interventions - that provide what is represented. Organizations then have a framework to engage those companies to introduce those elements into their culture to develop flourishing. Depending on the company's goals/culture, the elemental focus is dialed in to provide interventions/products/services appropriate for that company in that moment. Over time, the culture will change, and new elements will be added to continue to support that change.
We are working with Organizational Development Psychologists, HR practitioners, and more, to drill into the ROI frameworks that result in Flourishing frameworks. We are identifying and bringing the models forward that illuminate how Flourishing organizations perform better and how that hits the top and bottom lines. As many “HR” practices focus on the bottom line incremental improvements of reduced sick days, or fewer insurance claims, we are mostly focusing on the top lines and where scale can occur.
If you are interested in participating in the development of the Framework or are interested in learning how to bring a Flourishing culture to your organization, please contact us.
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