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Linda is joined by Angela Chen to talk about suffering and compassion in the workplace.
Caring for others is usually top priority for people working in the health and community services sector. So much so, that it’s often all too easy for us to neglect our own wellbeing. Workplace Wellbeing natters is the podcast that encourages us all to take care of the wellbeing of ourselves and the people we’re working with, whether that’s in primary care, mental health, disability, aged or community services, government, or any other part of the health and community services ecosystem. Hosts Linda and Danielle take you through some of their own insights from working in both the wellbeing, and health and community services sectors, and provide you with evidence-informed strategies to help foster wellbeing in your workplace.
Linda: Before we begin, this podcast talks about mental health and well-being. So, take care while listening. While we hope you enjoy listening to and learning from the podcast, the discussions we have are general in nature and do not take into account your own or your workplaces specific needs and circumstances. Therefore, it is not meant to take the place of specialist advice.
Linda: Welcome to the Workplace Wellbeing Natters podcast. We would like to acknowledge that we are recording this podcast on the land of the Gunai Kurnai people and pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging. We would also like to acknowledge the demand for services currently being experienced by the sector and that this impacts everyone in different ways, including contributing to poor mental health and wellbeing outcomes. So, we encourage you to be compassionate to yourself and others.
Linda: In this episode we are exploring suffering and compassion within the workplace context. We're looking at what suffering looks and feels like within a workplace, contributors to suffering, and what you can do to enhance compassion within your workplace, whatever your role. I'm your host, Linda. And today I have a special guest, Angela Chen, with me. Angela has 17 years’ experience as a human resources specialist in the USA before she moved to Melbourne to complete studies in positive psychology. Angela is now in her last year of her PhD programme, Understanding Compassion and Suffering in Contemporary Organisations. Angela, welcome. I'm so delighted that you have joined us today.
Angela: Thank you, Linda. Thanks for having me.
Linda: So how did you become involved in researching this area?
Angela: Well, I worked in H.R. For 17 years in the US and I saw a lot of suffering in the workplace and sometimes I was the cause of it because sometimes you have to discipline employees or investigate them, or sometimes you have to tell them they're being laid off and that type of thing. So, I wanted to do something to help that situation and I came to Melbourne first to do a Master in Applied Positive Psychology. So, I'm very interested in positive psychology and I felt like it was an opportunity to combine my interest in positive psychology, but also HR practises and management to see what can I do to create a flourishing workplace. And so, the compassion came up because I was at a Buddhist meditation retreat a few years ago, and for some reason, like, it just connected with me that this compassion seems to be really, really important. It's just exactly the kind of intersection with all the stuff that I'm interested in. And so that's what I started to look into it. And then I also noticed that even though there's more and more research and compassion, there really was an understanding of suffering as much that usually the idea is that it's just inevitable in the workplace. And I was like, I don't know, I think I want to challenge that, but let's look at what kind of literature there is. If there's a gap, let me see what I can do from a research perspective to fill that in.
Linda: And I love the way that you've chosen an area of research based on your own experience as well. Tell me about suffering then. So, what is suffering within an organisational context?
Angela: So, you can suffer for different reasons. Like most people understand that that can come from a personal circumstance, like a loss of a loved one, or you get really ill. But when you're talking about organisational contexts, then it's not just necessarily that the organisation may contribute to your suffering. You could just have something personal going on and you're working in the workplace, but then the leader may not understand what you're going through and then they actually exacerbate your personal suffering. So, they actually add on top of it. One of the people I talked to, he is actually a director of a company and his wife had passed away. And so that's the personal situation for him. And he was asked by the board to come to work within a few days of his wife passing away, and they didn't really talk to him at all or acknowledge that that he even had a loss and they just expected him to do a presentation for the board immediately. So, he felt that's the kind of situation where the organisation actually contributed to something that was already painful enough for him and that caused him to have suffering. Like he didn't matter.
Angela: Like all he was just someone that had to do this job, but what happened to him personally didn't matter at all to the company. I want to talk about what suffering actually means because it's a little bit different than pain, right? Because suffering is really more about a threat to your personal identity, like who you are. So, if you feel like you don't matter, because I've heard from some of my interviews, I'm just a cog in the wheel. Like I don't even I'm not even human being. That's the threat to who you are as a human being. Or you're a nurse. Right? And you're trying to do the best you can, and your organisation doesn't provide you the personal protective equipment, right? So, it makes you feel like you don't matter, or you try to take care of your patients and you can't do it effectively. So, who are you if you can't be a good nurse anymore? Right. That's the kind of threat to your personal identity, your sense of self.
Linda: One of the things I wonder about is that the health and community services sector is often under-resourced, and so I wonder if people start to feel they don't matter as much or that particular sector doesn't matter as much, whether it's the alcohol and drug sector compared to the acute sector, you know, all of those sorts of things. But interestingly, in some of the popular media at the moment, we hear about health care workers now being called heroes. So, there's this kind of hero mentality, right? I actually think that's potentially harmful because we're essentially elevating someone to a hero status. And I do believe that people who work in the health and community services sector do an amazing job and go over and above. But once we start calling them heroes, I think there's a different expectation. And I'm actually wondering then if that could contribute to suffering as well.
Angela: If the external world is telling these professionals, you're a hero, they're actually imposing their meaning about who these people are, onto them. And so if they don't believe that, they don't accept it and it doesn't match who they think they are, that mismatch can lead to the suffering because now they feel like, well, who am I if I can't be what I'm expected to be? Right. And I think I've also read a little bit to what these expectations there could be a little bit of resentment because I'm expected to work all these long hours or I can't see my family because I have to take care of these patients or whatever, because I'm supposed to be the hero and yet maybe the organisation doesn't really care about me or these people and the public, they don't wear masks, they don't get vaccinated. And I'm making I'm expected to make these sacrifices because I'm a hero and yet nobody else seems to be doing that. And there's that resentment and that loss of who am I because I don't matter.
Linda: So, it sounds like the meaning we ascribe to things is really important when it comes to suffering. Did you want to say anything about that?
Angela: Suffering is actually very individual experiences, very subjective. So, you and I can experience the same pain triggering event, right? Like there could be some kind of a layoff and you might be like, Oh my God, how am I going to support my family? Right. And I'd be like, Oh my God, I've always wanted to go pursue my dream career. This layoff is great. They're going to give me, like, a severance package, and I'm going to be fine, right? The same event can actually mean something different for each person. It also depends on your background, like your culture, your life experience, your personality, all those things the way you think, all the actions are you do. All those things come into play in terms of how you interpret something. And so, we don't always know how any individual is going to respond to a pain of triggering events because it could be very subjective, and it could be very surprising. So, it's really important to not assume anything about anybody, but actually have a conversation with them and try to ask them questions to understand how are they in particular suffering?
Linda: Absolutely. And I think what you've said is so important there that we can't make assumptions about the impact of particular events on individual people. It is about that conversation and, you know, supervision for organisations within Health and Community Services. That's a really good opportunity to have these discussions about how people are feeling about or responding to particular events and their personal life, but also within the organisational context as well, because organisations can also create suffering for individuals as well, can't they?
Angela: Yeah. One of the people I interviewed who's a nurse at a hospital, they use wheelchairs right to wheel around their patients. And the problem is that the wheels are falling off. And so, they're a hospital, they want to be professional and they want to be able to service their patients really well. So, she was asking her supervisor, can we get new wheelchairs? Right. Supervisor is like well, we don't really have the money for that. Then one of her co-workers is like, Well, let's just go do some kind of Go Fund Me kind of campaign and we'll just raise money so we can just go buy some wheelchairs, you know? And then they were told, no, you can't. You have to go through the OH&S's protocol. You have to go through that department or some kind of catalogue or something to get the wheelchair. So, okay, fine, let's just do that. So, they get they went through that process and the wheelchairs are still crap. They still didn't work this wheelchairs, wheels were still falling off. So, she told me that she felt that they tried their best because they care about their job. Right. They want to do right by their patients. Yet they felt like they didn't matter. Whatever they did, they tried, didn't matter. They didn't care because it's always this money issue. Right. And so, they just stop trying. I mean, there's so many times where she told me the interview, I just stopped trying because it just doesn't matter anymore. It's just it's not worth it. We don't even ask any more for help or whatever, because we know what the answer is. The suffering of I want to be a good nurse, right? I'm competent and I want to look professional and yet I'm not allowed to because the organisations restricting me from being able to do my job to full extent that I want to.
Linda: Absolutely. And I wonder if that contributes to moral injury as well. So, this sense of within organisations, you know, wanting to provide a certain level of service and not being able to do that because of constraints around resources or other organisational constraints, because of their inability to provide the quality of service or care that they want to. It causes it creates the moral injury for the worker as well. Is there a link between moral injury and suffering?
Angela: I think you could say moral injury or moral harm is about a sense of dignity. And so that's where the compassion stuff comes into play because it's really a moral harm. When you're doing something that causes suffering, you're actually harming them. And so, you've got to really think about, okay, is this really the right thing to do because you're hurting another human being?
Linda: And so, tell us about compassion then. We've talked about suffering. So how would you define compassion and what does that look like within an organisational setting?
Angela: Well, typically compassion is about alleviating an individual suffering. It's not just the way the supervisor or the leader interacts with you in terms of, like you mentioned, like being present, the listening, you know, the empathy, that type of thing. But it's also the structures within the organisation in terms of the values, the norms like the expected behaviours, some of the policies and procedures of the culture too. It's all about the symbols that create the structure for the organisation that convey to an employee, okay, we care about you or we don't care about you. You know, I think for me I'm just more focussed really, particularly on practises and procedures in terms of how they get implemented, because sometimes organisations have to do something difficult, right? But it's not just what they do, it's how they do it, it's how they communicate to employees, it's how they're responding. If there's an issue, if they can, if they're willing or able to adjust it a little bit, that's what's really important, I think, in terms of showing compassion.
Linda: I read somewhere that compassion has a number of components, so the first is kind of noticing the suffering, empathising with the person.
Angela: Being present with their emotions, understanding their emotions. That's the empathic concern. Then there's the sense making you have to understand, make sense of the suffering and whether or not they deserve compassion or not. Sometimes someone might say, Well, they deserve it. Whatever's happening to them, I don't really care. And then the final part is responding to the suffering and trying to do something to alleviate the suffering. Those are the sub processes. I think Jane Dutton and Jason Chernoff were the ones that kind of came up with that.
Linda: You talked about kind of cultural norms and you've also talked about practises. So, when it comes to norms and values, there's the espoused values and there's the what actually happens right on the floor. So, you know, organisations can say that we put our workers safety first, but during COVID they might have had adequate supplies of PPE. So, people who worked in the disability field, for instance, or district nursing or within an acute setting might have felt that their physical safety was threatened because of that lack of PPE. These are where we start to see people perhaps having the sense that they don't matter and that there's a bit of a disconnect. Would you agree?
Angela: Yeah, it has come across some examples and some of the people I interviewed at the hospital, they changed the protocols because people walk into the hospital, they can't just go and see their loved ones or whatever that are in the hospital. They have to actually be in the lobby, and they have to go through a screening process. So, what they ended up doing is, I think to facilitate that process. They had this Marshall position where that individual, I think it's like a nurse or somebody would be able to proactively ask the patients, okay, what do you need? And then go and get make sure things are lined up. If they need an interpreter, make sure that happens. So, when they actually go see the doctor or whatever, it goes a lot faster. And so, the compassion part is like that Marshalling role is really quite full on sometimes because it's very busy. And so, understanding if the person's like, Well, I'm really stressed out, I can't do this job right now. What would happen is that the supervisor would be like, Okay, I'll find someone else to do it for you right now.
Angela: They wouldn't force them to stay in that role if they felt like really tired or they just didn't feel comfortable with it. That also kind of happened with like a big I.T. rollout, right? You're changing a system, a computer system. Right. And some people are not comfortable with a new system. They don't like even using computers at all. And they went from a paper to a computer system kind of thing. They put in these roles of people. They're kind of like a Super User. So, they go around, and they talk to people. Okay, do you have any questions about the new computer system? Let me help you kind of thing. So, they understand that there are people that are comfortable with a change in the computer system, that they provide that resource right at the individual level. They also have, I think, a hotline you can call, but there's multiple different ways. You know, there's guidelines they can read. There's different things that are support structures they put in place to help ease that transition.
Linda: Yeah. So, I guess it's also about being person centred, so identifying what the person needs and how they feel best supported and then being able to provide that support in line with the persons' needs and preferences.
Angela: Yeah. The trick is that's a hard one to do as a leader is that you have to it's like how do you respond to someone's individual needs but also appear fair to all the other all the other employees because you don't want to look like you're playing favourites either. But I think that being transparent and open and honest, I think some of the leaders that I've talked to my interviews, they have team meetings, right, where they we talk about issues and they maybe logged stuff and then they show the employees, here's how I've responded to you. So, everybody knows, like if they have an issue that's raised, it'll be responded to. So, everyone has equal opportunity if they have an issue to have it addressed. So, they all feel like they're being listened to even though they may have different concerns. It's the idea is they feel like they're being paying attention to that matters.
Linda: And I guess I'm just trying to think about what systems and processes would be needed in organisations that have shift work or people who work remotely. So if you think about, you know, acute hospitals, people work shifts or within residential settings, whether it's disability or youth or aged care, you know, you might be the sole person, the lone person that's on shift during a sleepover or those sorts of things. So, whilst it seems relatively easy and straightforward in terms of being able to acknowledge and empathise and, you know, notice someone's suffering and be able to respond to that. When it comes to organisations that are quite complex, then I guess it adds that kind of extra degree of difficulty really, doesn't it, in terms of the implementation.
Angela: Yeah. I mean there's going to be the reality is sometimes organisations, they're going to inflict certain amount of pain, right. If they really don't have the money to have any additional people on the night shift or something, there's only one person. I think the important thing is to be honest about it and explain why. I think if there's ways that they can maybe provide some kind of support, and this is where it's important to also ask the employee what ideas that they may have or provide different options for the employees. Okay, we can't do this, but maybe we can do this or this or this. So, the employee feels some autonomy about the situation. They can choose something, even though it's not the ideal. But maybe it's something that the organisation's okay with too, because they've given them different, feasible options. So that's where that conversation, that kind of negotiation would come into play because you can't just satisfy every employee. I mean, that's just that's not going to happen. Right? But there's probably some middle ground that can be reached. But it really requires not just the conversation, but it could also sometimes require the leader or the manager to say, okay, maybe we can change something to have a little bit of courage and say, let's change something that doesn't work. And they may need to actually go to their senior leader to ask for that. And sometimes that's nerve wracking, too. They'd rather just go, Well, we can't do it. This is how I do it. So, it really depends on the situation.
Linda: So, it sounds like involving the person in identifying potential solutions and also giving them some autonomy over that process is really important as well.
Angela: Yeah, because I think suffering is really about the loss of autonomy. The best thing you can do is try to figure out how to get them some sense of autonomy over the situation so they can make sense of it in a way that's not no longer suffering nearly as much as before, for them.
Linda: And so that can be something that co-workers can do for other co-workers as well as managers to employees as well. So, it's something that each and every one of us can contribute to compassion or having a compassionate response within the workplace.
Angela: Yeah, sometimes there's nothing you can do for them because it's an inevitable pain. So, it's compassionate silence where you allow them the space to just process their suffering. Sometimes if it's the pain that is inevitable, the organisation has to do it. Sometimes it's about reframing the situation to create new meaning as well so that the person who's suffering can think about it. Okay, maybe there's another way I can look at it that might actually help me, right? So, I can regain a sense of autonomy. So, it's not always about eliminating the pain. It's sometimes it's about just working with what's going on, just being present with somebody. It was just interesting to me. I was talking to she's a Partner in the law firm, so she's a leader. And she was just saying that one of her young junior attorneys was like, they didn't have a lot of work to do because they just don't have the experience. And so, they're really worried about their career because if they don't have any experience in that learning, then what kind of attorney are they going to be in the future? So, she was trying to arrange for them to get secondments where they would work in, maybe in a different department or something that's still get experience. And initially the young attorneys were like, Well, I don't want to do that.
Angela: Like, how is that going to help me? Right? Or, you know, I just want to stay with my team. And she's like, well, just look in a different way. You're going to learn new skills. It's going to help you down the road, right? So that's the reframing that she did. Then they tried it and then she said a couple of them came back and they actually saw the value in that in the secondments. So, they weren't able to do what they wanted to do originally, which is like work in that department. But they were able to still get experiences they saw valuable later on. So I think it's really important to when we're talking about meaning to really focus on what kind of meaning can you have if you're helping your co-worker, like maybe help them think about things a different way that can help them regain a sense of self. As a leader as well, you could do that based as we talked about too, is that you don't just tell them what to think or what meaning that they need to have. It has to come from that suffering individual. They need to actually have the sense of agency and control over that meaning.
Linda: One example is new graduates. So you might have graduates within the primary care sector, so allied health or even graduating doctors that perhaps they feel that the organisations don't actually have enough time to train them or expose different experiences so that they can develop, you know, their sense of practise wisdom and all of that sort of thing. So that would be, you know, an equivalent type example within Health and Community Services.
Angela: I've just got to say one other thing, because you're talking about the supervision and talking to employees that you said there could be a performance development potential within that conversation or just a performance review. Using that as an opportunity to build a good, high quality connection with your employee is important because if they're suffering and you're trying to help them create new meaning, that might help them. They'll be more receptive to your ideas if you have a good relationship, otherwise they're just going to ignore you. So that's why the relationships and having good ones is such a key component, I think, to helping people through the suffering experience.
Linda: And when we were talking earlier on, you were talking about trust being really important. And I think that's probably what's really important here as well, is that sense of trust between the individuals, irrespective of their roles.
Angela: So that the connection itself being strong enough to withstand kind of the ups and downs, that there's a little bit of, I can't remember exactly the term of it, but it's enough to be able to accommodate the changes because the trust has already been built to create a good bond. When you have a relate to someone in the workplace, it's going to be times where you don't always get along or agree with each other. But if you have a sense of understanding of each other, you know each other, you're going to be able to have more grace or forgiveness towards the other person if they wronged you. I remember one of the interviews that I had. Because of COVID, I guess they were having these check in meetings between the supervisor and the employees and they got to know the employees, like what's really going on in their personal lives. And they knew them more than just as an employee. What happened is that when the supervisor screwed up, right, the employee was more likely to go, oh, it's not a big deal. Like they won't take it as a personal affront. They won't interpret that pain, a triggering event as something that's suffering like there's something wrong with me or they don't care about me. They just let that go because they, they had so many other experiences of positive connections with their, their supervisor that that it just it's just different. So, I just like, well, that's a really good thing to think about, about why a good relationship is important, because it really does shape how you interpret all the things that happen with your supervisor or vice versa, too.
Linda: Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a really good point. What practical strategies would you give managers, employees in workplaces in terms of being more compassionate? So, both kind of on the individual level when it comes to those relationships as well as some of those structures or norms or routines within organisations that we spoke about as well.
Angela: One of the things that I would say for leaders is that be aware of your own suffering and what's going on in the organisation that you may think could pose a threat to your own identity. I think sometimes what I see with at least in like in the business world, the managers, rightly so, they want to perform well, they want to be seen as they want so they can get a raise or promotion or something like that. And so, if they do something that goes against what is expected of them, then they worry that, okay, I'm not going to get that whatever raise or promotion or I'm going to lose my job. They won't have the courage to change things because they just want to stick to whatever they're being expected to do. So, I think of a leader as more present with their own suffering and what they see as a threat to themselves. There's maybe an opportunity for them to change that right, create a different meaning, like, is that really a threat to me? I think on the on the flip side, it's important for employees is to understand that leaders do suffer. It's a hard job to be a leader, a manager, a supervisor, your caught in all these different things you're expected to do. All it's to satisfy the senior leadership as well as the employees and all this other stuff. So, I think it's important to be aware of that. It's a hard place to work if you have such little forgiveness and such high expectations of people that are really just human beings.
Angela: So, we're trying to figure out how do you get to the point where you have an understanding of each other, right? That everybody suffers, right? Whether you're a leader or you're not, and that that's what's our commonality, our shared humanity. Another thing that I would say is mindfulness is being present with your thoughts, because this interpretation we're talking about like a pain trigger event and you interpret it in such a way that it's threatening to your sense of self that sometimes if you're mindful and you are present with those thoughts, you can maybe detach and then not automatically identify or automatically think that way and go, let's just take a step back. Is that really what's going on? Maybe there's another way of looking at this, another meaning that might be useful for me or you talk to somebody else. Right? Okay. What do you think about this? Maybe. Maybe I need to see a different way, right? So that kind of helps you to kind of process what's going on that's creating your suffering. I think we already talked about the having good connections with each other, understanding each other. I mean, that's really that's not rocket science, right? So, but it's really about if you understand someone and how they may suffer, understand them, you may actually anticipate how they may suffer, which is kind of important. And we talked about the reframing. It may help facilitate reframing as well because they trust you to give them suggestions on how to think about things differently.
Linda: Thank you so much for sharing your insights into suffering and compassion within organisations with us today. I know I've certainly taken away a lot from our discussion and I'm sure our listeners will too. So, thank you so much for being a guest on Workplace Wellbeing Natters.
Angela: Thank you Linda for having me. I actually really enjoyed it. Having a conversation with you and I hope that your listeners and some of our discussion will be useful to them in some way, so.
Linda: I'm sure they will. Thank you so much.
Linda: Okay. We've covered a lot as usual today, so let's do a quick recap of our nattering’s. Firstly, we talked about suffering in an organisational context, so we differentiated between pain and suffering and noted that suffering is different for each person. We can't make assumptions about another person's reactions and responses to a pain triggering event. It's really about having that conversation and of course critical to having that conversation is having a good relationship or a high quality connection that's built on trust and transparency. We also identified that our language and actions, either intentionally or unintentionally, can add to others suffering. So, we explored the topic of compassion and how having a caring, compassionate response can alleviate suffering. So, based on that good relationship or high quality connection, having a bond to help people through the suffering experience and a bond that can really accommodate those ups and downs that are a natural part of relationships. Also helping people to reframe their experience and create new meaning from the pain triggering situation or event can assist in alleviating suffering. Acknowledging that everyone suffers. So irrespective of your role in the organisation and as a leader, being aware of your own suffering and what is happening in the workplace that could contribute to that. Also being mindful. So being present with your thoughts and having the ability to just take a step back and reinterpret the situation can be helpful in having a compassionate response and alleviating suffering as well.
Linda: So, we have so loved connecting with you and sharing our insights into suffering and compassion. In our show notes, we will have the link to the article that Angela recently co-authored on Suffering and Compassion in Organisations and of course any other links that may support your journey towards workplace wellbeing. As always, we want to know what you think have been inspired by any questions you would like answered or contributions you would like to make to the podcast. So, leave a review or contact us via matters@workplacewellbeingnatters.com.au if you would like to explore how we can help you on your journey, submit a case study or comment for us to include in our podcast. We look forward to next time. Thanks for joining us and bye for now.