[Vnbiz] Leadership -- Expanding on Core Elements: Compassion

[Tran Dinh Hoanh]

Dear CACC,

In the previous messages we have had an exercise of randomly mentioning the
leadership qualities, and then concentrating them into a passion, manageable
number of 4 core elements:  Vision, Compassion, Competence, Honesty.  And I
have mentioned previously that in any study subject, the subject's core
elements serves as the North Star, everything else flows from it.

>From this message, we will expand on these 4 core elements, to examine what
flow out from them.  Today, I will examine Compassion.

In management classes, compassion is also be known as "caring."  You have
compassion for your people, or you love your people, or you care about your
people, they all mean the same  thing in our current context.

Your compassion comes into play in almost every act and decision you make
every day concerning your clients or your employees. Compassion along with
honesty determine the culture of your organization.

Do you feel about your employees as "your employees" or as "your friends" or
"comrades"?  That would make a lot of difference in your employee policy.

Do you feel about your clients/customers as friends or simply as someone who
may give you money?  That makes a lot of difference in how you (and your
employees) treat your customers, and consequentially a lot of difference
in whether or not you will be successful.

Note:  In management school, they tend to teach "employment policy" and
"customer policy" out of nowhere.  That is fine.  School is not equipped to
teach matters deep in the heart.  Actually, most courses on leadership
today cannot be called leadership courses, because they stick with easy
things on the surface, like organizations, communication (written, oral)
skills, managing your time, etc.

Things that really matters, things deep in the heart that control
our thinking and our actions, are not mentioned at all.  The result is that
people have gone to courses after courses on "leadership," and still don't
understand what leadership is, not mentioning mastering it.  I am sure that
many of you have this experience.  Brother Thien mentioned that previously,
himself.

Leadership starts with you, your heart, your thinking, your behavior.  So in
practice, we need to realize that policy comes from our heart.  Say, if you
copy a "great customer policy" from someone else, while in your heart you
constantly feel that customers are just the fat cows for you to squeeze some
milk, then that "great customer policy" will just be useless and will be
ruined by you.  Policy is not just a document out there.  Policy, both the
policy language and its execution, comes from our heart.

At this juncture, we should go over some of the compassion measures and
Shane has mentioned previously.

1.  Never ask your followers to do things you are not willing to do
yourself.  This is obvious. I often ask "Were Johnson, Nixon, etc. willing
to go to Vietnam and fight the way they sent people's children there?  Was
Bush willing to go to Iraq and fight himself?"

It is easy to sit in an office and decree that many people go to their
death.  But if we are truly compassionate to our people, we never ask them
to do things that we are not willing to do ourselves.  (The opposite is true
with mafia and other unethical leaders.   The leader would send an associate
to do the crime so that the leader can keep his hands clean for the law).

2.  Be fair to all of your people. No favoritism.  It is practical.  Because
if you favor one group over other groups, you may split your organization in
pieces some day.  This also means fair in reward and punishment.

3.  Taking care of the organization and preventing from being destroyed,
even if you have to sacrifice a group of your people.  Anh Shane told the
story of the ship captain deciding to seal of a compartment of the ship,
killing 4 sailors inside, to prevent the fire spreading from that
compartment to the entire ship.  This is great example of making hard
heart-wrenching.  (My God!  I hope that I will never have to make a choice
like that).

Same thing with firing an employee or a group of employees.   It is always
heart-wrenching and head-aching to fire an employee.  You are hurting
someone's career and paycheck and, sometimes, life.  Except for some
sadists, I don't think anyone of us enjoys firing people.  In addition, some
other employees may even get upset when you fire someone.  But if you have
to do that to prevent the organization from being damaged, then you just
have to do what you have to do.

But here is also the most abusive problem in leadership throughout history.
Many leaders have crucified one group of people in the country, in the name
of saving the entire country.  In recent history, Hitler ruthlessly killed
the Jews in the name of the Aryan nation.  The Communists are legendary in
inflicting miseries on the merchants, the property owners, the capitalists,
the bourgeois, in the name of making the entire people more equitable and
more happy!   (Sorry for the Communist brothers/sisters.  I now that
Communists today is not those of the old days.  But I just have to use
recent history examples that everyone knows, to make my writing clearer).

Harassing, jailing, torturing, killing millions of people in the name of
"saving the nation," "saving the people," "moving the people and the nation
forward" etc. have been the slogan of mass murderers throughout history.

The problem is that many of these mass murders really believe that they were
helping their nation and their people while cutting other people's throats!


Why?

Because many people do not know that their mind can deceive them into a
monster.  Some dumb political theory, some extreme zeal to save the
world, some self-aggrandizing allusion, or some sadistic impulse may easily
turn some guys with unchecked power and without a solid foundation of
ethics, i.e., humbleness and compassion, into a monster.

Great virtues--compassion, humbleness, honesty, loyalty--always act as a
solid foundation for us humans to stand on to keep our bearing at all time.

How do we not fall into the mental trap of "serving the whole while
destroying the part"?  This is a very tricky issue.  When a surgery to cut
your arm is good for your body, when cutting the arm simply weakens your
body without any benefit?

My intuitive answer is:  Cutting the arm is never good for my body.  I don't
want to cut my arm.  If you tell me I should cut my arm, I will ask for a
second, a third, a fourth medical opinion, and try anything possible not
to cut it, until I know that I have absolutely no choice.  (Of course,
taking the time factor in consideration, such as the ship fire in anh
Shane's example).

In politics (or business) it is translated into "I will do anything I can to
keep this group of 'trouble makers' with me, until I know that I have
absolutely no choice but cutting them off."

And I only have the strength and patience to work to keep them if I have
true compassion for them.  *I care for each of them individually in my
heart,* I care for them as I care for my own arm.  I don't treat them just
as "a group of trouble makers" that I have to get rid of in order to "save
the nation."  Each of my trouble makers is my citizen with a name (Xuan or
Hoa or Thinh) and a face, s/he is my brother/sister, who has a life, a
family, bills to pay, children to raise, job to keep.  Any misery I may
inflict on any of them also hurts their spouses, parents, children,
brothers/sisters and also hurts me in my heart.  So I will try to reduce
misery for them as much as I can.  I will try my utmost to work with them,
and bring them into the family.  I will NOT cut them off unless I am
absolutely sure I have tried everything else and I have no other choice. And
if I have to cut them off, I will try to reduce their miseries as much as I
can.

Only when we have the intense compassion toward each CONCRETE person
individually, and not just compassion toward the ABSTRACT idea of "the
entire people" or "the entire nation," we will have the mental clarity to
keep us away from the trap of becoming a zealous mass torturer, and to do
what is best for everyone under the circumstances.

Compassion means compassion for each person walking the street.  Not
compassion for the abstract "people" only.  "The People" is a concept that
does not really exist.  What really exists is many concrete humans walking
the street.

I'd like to conclude this message by thank you and Shane for the great list
and by reminding everyone about what great masters of old have said over and
over again throughout history: Our mind is a monkey, very easy to get out of
control.  A humble spirit, a true compassion for others will always act as
the great mechanism to keep our mind calm and in check.

Have a great day!

Hoanh
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