The Crazy Wisdom Community Journal • May - August 2012 • Page 25
The Crazy Wisdom Community Journal • May - August 2012 • Page 24
Professor Jane Dutton’s Passion for Compassion
By Michelle Pafford Helms Photography by Gregory Fox “Compassion is not so much what you do, as much as who you are and who you allow yourself to be.” — Jane Dutton Most would agree that compassion — sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress, together with a desire to alleviate it — is inherently good and needs no justification. Compassion crosses many societal, cultural, and religious traditions, and has been a common thread connecting humanity throughout the ages. Why, then, has this timeless virtue not fully made its way into our 21st century workplaces? In corporate cultures, why do the words Aristotle espoused, that “Compassion is good in and of itself,” seem inaudible next to the Darwinian-inspired idea that “Only the strong survive”?
“I didn’t sleep the whole night before, because I was so nervous,” Dutton said. “They cancelled the talk, obviously, because of the events that unfolded. But because I was supposed to give that talk, we had a new Dean [Robert Dolan] who learned I was doing research on compassion. There was no way otherwise that he would have known.” According to Dutton, the dean contacted her that night asking for input on how he should respond to 9/11 in his leadership role. Dutton then wrote a memo and later spoke with the dean’s leadership team. Having found that information useful, Dean Dolan asked if he could send it on to other deans throughout the university. That prompted the quick creation of a website called “Leading in Trying Times,” which was filled with advice for leaders from Dutton and her academic contemporaries on making a positive difference within the workplace after a time of trauma or crisis.
A number of these books are currently available at Crazy Wisdom Bookstore, or they can be ordered through shopcrazywisdom.com 1. Acts of Compassion by R. Wuthnow (1991) Princeton University Press 2. The Compassionate Instinct by D. Keltner, J.Marsh and J. Smith (Editors) (2010) W.W. Norton Publishers 3. Caring by N. Noddings (1984) University of California Press 4. Visions of Compassion by R. Davidson and A. Harrington (Editors) (2002) Oxford University Press 5. Moving Beyond Self-Interest by S. Brown, R.M. Brown and L.A. Penner (2012) Oxford University Press 6. Exploring Positive Relationships at Work by Jane Dutton and Belle Ragins (Editors) (2006) Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers (Editor's Note — Jane Dutton indicates that this book is not about compassion, but it is edited by her, so we thought we'd include it.)
A Strong Message from the Universe Dutton and her husband, Lance Sandelands, Ph.D. — who is also on the faculty at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business — first arrived in Michigan in 1989. They came from academic positions in New York: he from Columbia, she from New York University. A central moment in Dutton’s career came into focus at U of M, when she became interested in studying compassion as the result of research she was involved with in the late 1990s, on people employed as hospital cleaners.
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“I was interested in how people cope with being in devalued work. And one of the big surprises, which was really life-changing [for me], was how incredibly caring the hospital cleaners were for patients — and how they were contributing to the compassionate care of the hospital,” Dutton said. The study confronted her and her colleagues with the question: “How do we bring about a discussion of everyday caring, not just in hospitals, but with lots of different kinds of jobs?”
Last fall, when the Occupy Wall Street protest movement grabbed the attention of many of us, pieces of it made their way into my psyche and positioned themselves next to information I was already processing — from the stream of media stories on the decline of business ethics in parts of corporate America. Increasingly, I began to wonder: Was there a counter-balance to all of the negativity surrounding the business world?
Dutton…describes compassion as a process that includes noticing, feeling, and responding to pain. “Leaders are really in a position to magnify the noticing, because everyone is looking at them — especially under conditions of stress and anxiety. People usually give up control and look to the top.”
It was then that I remembered the work of Jane Dutton, Ph.D., Robert L. Kahn Distinguished University Professor for Business Administration and Psychology at the University of Michigan, who studies compassion in organizations as part of the Stephen M. Ross School of Business’s Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS). In my mind, there couldn’t be a better time than now for Dutton’s research on compassion as a healing force for corporate culture.
From that point on, Dutton decided one way to answer the question was to begin by studying compassion. Her decision was later affirmed by a colleague, Peter Frost, Ph.D., who shared an interest in researching the topic with her.
“Things like compassion or forgiveness, or all of those virtuous human capacities, are good in and of themselves. It doesn’t matter what they produce.”
Jane Dutton's Recommended Books on Compassion
The Center for POS was officially founded in 2001, when it was developed by a group of Ph.D.-educated scholars teaching at the U-M Business School alongside Dutton, including: Kim Cameron, Bob Quinn, Gretchen Spreitzer, Wayne Baker, and Lynn Wooten. Dutton was made the associate academic director for the center, which now has ten faculty members.
I had the opportunity to interview Dutton at the beginning of the new year of 2012. To prepare, I spent time over the preceding holiday break reading one of her books and studying her online compassion lab to learn about her rather rare field of study. Then, after e-mailing Dutton the questions ahead of time, I was put at ease with her modest response: “While I don’t have answers to all of your questions, I’ll enjoy puzzling about them with you.”
Until the POS Center’s establishment, Dutton was exploring an unconventional path. “Before Positive Organizational Scholarship, my colleagues were jokingly calling me the ‘Hallmark Card Lady.’ It was seen as so weird to be studying compassion,” Dutton said. However, in the summer of 2001, a small group of faculty from the psychology and business schools met to see if they could explore ideas from the positive perspective that were emerging simultaneously in the fields of psychology, political science, social work, and education.
During our interview, Dutton’s welcoming manner was apparent as she explained her extensive body of work on compassion, which she calls “the seed that connected me into the garden of Positive Organizational Scholarship.” The following explains how that seed has taken root in Ann Arbor and is creating possibilities for re-imagining work organizations all over the world.
Based on that meeting, the group invited 30 academic leaders from around the country to come to Ann Arbor that upcoming November to continue the discussion. As a lead-up to that meeting, Dutton was scheduled to give her first talk to the business school faculty about her work related to compassion on the fateful day of September 11, 2001.
“That was pivotal in changing people’s receptivity to ideas about compassion…We got 12,000 hits on that website really fast. It was this really strong message from the Universe that this way about thinking about management could be really helpful to people,” Dutton said. “So 9/11 was this huge catalyst to convince us, as a community, that this way of thinking about organizations could be really valuable.”
The Science Behind the Virtue According to Janet Max, POS projects coordinator, Dutton is thought of by everyone on staff as “the heart of the center.” “She is passionately dedicated to making it be all that it can be... She just really believes, down to her soul, in what they are talking about here and wants the world to know,” Max said. And while she may be known for her heart, Dutton’s studies are scientifically based. According to Dutton, it is helpful to describe compassion as a process that includes noticing, feeling, and responding to others’ pain. “Leaders are really in a position to magnify the noticing, because everyone is looking at them — especially under conditions of stress and anxiety. People usually give up control and look to the top,” Dutton said. “What leaders choose to notice in those moments, how they express how they feel, and how they respond — little things and big things can be hugely consequential.” In terms of how leaders within business organizations can respond in the most compassionate way, Dutton said that the most important thing is being there and showing that you notice. The second is to provide resources that can be emotional or material, and the last thing is to offer flexibility. Continued on page 26
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