MARTIN PDF

Compassion at Work: Mentorum E-­‐Mentoring The Science of Compassion, Telluride, Colorado Daniel E. Martin, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Management California State University East Bay College of Business and Economics Visiting Associate Professor Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education Stanford University

Why compassion at Workplace?

• • • • •

Do you know anyone who has suffered at work? Negative emotions have significant financial, psychological, and social costs for organizations and employees.

Stress is one of the largest areas of workers compensation claims.

Biting We see compassion at work daily, whether through (1) emotional support, (2) providing time and flexibility, or (3) giving material support, but it is not made salient.

Compassion can positively engender cooperation in organizations via: • Trust • Positive emotions • Increasing the quality of interpersonal connections • Facilitating an understanding of shared values • Development of interpersonal skills (e.g. active listening. emotional awareness and conflict resolution)

Mentoring may facilitate compassion in an environment that is lacking it.

Mentorum • Mentorship: Exchange of knowledge and experience in dyad • Mentoring does not suffer significant biases associated with the majority of Human Resources decision making (selection, compensation, etc.)

• Compassion: 1) noticing suffering, 2) empathically feeling the suffering, and 3) acting to address the suffering .

• We’ve built a flexible mentoring/research platform that embraces mentorship in: •

Academic, Peer to Peer and Organizational (private and public) environments

•

Drives awareness of suffering/needs, offers interpersonal tools to facilitate caring, and address the suffering or needs (all meeting business needs).

•

Application of Psychometric Matching Tool and Gamification

Mentoring and Compassion Why would a high power manager waste their time w/ a protégé?

Recent reviews of helping behaviors suggest benefits: 1. Lowered levels of depression 2. Experiencing greater personal happiness 3. Life satisfaction 4. Self-esteem Giving help is also related to higher levels of positive mental health, life adjustment, lower feelings of hopelessness and depression. In other words, it pays to be a compassionate mentor (even if you are evil).

Mentoring Outcomes •

Mentorship has a positive, long lasting impact on career, social and financial standing.

•

Benefits •

•

Protégés have more job: • Satisfaction • Career mobility/opportunity • Recognition • Higher promotion rate then non-­‐mentored

Mentor also benefits with: • Greater career satisfaction • Sense of fulfillment • Understanding junior employee/new technology © 2010-2012

© 2010-2012

© 2010-2012

Measuring Impact • Value for organizations (remember this is a sheep in wolves clothes)• Easy tool to reach all constituents • Measures impact of the relationship, enabling metrics to show utility of the intervention: • Jobs • Internship • Financial returns • Resume review • Realistic job previews • Knowledge management • Corporate social responsibility © 2010-2012

Compassion Research • We are extending current use of mentoring programs to establish: 1. The impact of mentoring on compassion for both self and other for mentors and the protégés (pre/post).

2. The impact of individual differences on mentoring, 3. The likelihood of protégés carrying forward compassionate engagement as mentors to future protégés, and 4. Providing participants with feedback to understand the relationships impact on well-being, progression and productivity.

Next steps: •

Data collection is ongoing in universities, government and corporations

•

Weave compassion into the effort this summer/fall.

•

Being translated into Spanish, Hindi and Chinese this summer, Arabic soon.

•

Working on other interventions with my lab and Dr. Yotam Heineberg to facilitate modular scalable interventions (for use as Employee Assistance Program) that can be embedded in the platform. We are piloting in universities, school systems in Hong Kong now , and in London (soon in Japan as well with our collaborator Takashi Kido) soon.

•

Feel free to contact me here (or in CA) with great research ideas or to learn more: Daniel E. Martin, Ph.D.: Daniel.martin@csueastbay.edu •

Thanks so much!

© 2010-2012