How to Mainstream Mindfulness and Operationalize Compassion

05/25/21 • 45 min

This is the Handle with Care: Empathy at Work podcast. I’m your host, Liesel Mindrebo Mertes helping you build a culture of care and connection through empathy at work. MUSICAL TRANSITION Welcome to Season 2. Empathy matters. It isn’t just some squishy personality trait, it is a set of skills and a capacity for connection that you can develop, if you have the desire. And that is what season 2 is all about. I am going to introduce you, in each episode, to a leader that is purposefully building connection and engagement at work. They will share best practices, the ways that have grown and their occasional failures.

My guest today is Scott Shute. Scott is the Head of Mindfulness and Compassion at LinkedIn, which is this great role that sits at the intersection of ancient wisdom traditions and a technology company. He is also an avid photographer, a musician, and, most recently, a published author. His book, “The Full Body Yes” launched in the middle of May. His mission is to change work from the inside out by “mainstreaming mindfulness” and “operationalizing compassion.”

This was a deeply enriching conversation about how to build up mindfulness...and in a year of so many distractions, don’t we all need a little more attention and mindfulness? And how to operationalize compassion, which is right up my alley.

We began talking about his book. I got to read an advance copy and enjoyed a passage so much that I called my 13 year old daughter into the room one morning to read it aloud to her. It was that spot-on.

Scott Shute

I was saying what you just said about response is what has been typical, like what I'm not getting is I send the book to my friends and they're like, oh, hey, cool. Got your book. Thanks. Not getting that. What I'm getting is like, oh, my God, Chapter eight, like, we got to talk about this because blah blah, blah, blah, blah. And and there is at least one story in there for everyone that's been super meaningful and has moved the needle on their life just a little bit or something that resonated with just a little bit or a lot.

Scott Shute

And so that's been super gratifying.

Liesel Mertes

Absolutely. Well, and as someone who prizes the craft of storytelling, I enjoy just all the places that the full body. Yes. Took me from Japan to Kansas to dealing with bullying in your adolescent years and back again. So I enjoyed both the wisdom but also the delivery of it. And I I have some questions to ask about certain sections of the book. I can't wait to jump in.

Liesel Mertes

What is your personal connection to why empathy matters and why it specifically matters in the workplace?

Scott Shute

And thank you for that question and thanks for having me. It matters because we don't work in isolation. We work with others, we live with others. And so to me, empathy, I talk a lot about compassion and I'll separate the two a bit. So I define compassion, is having an awareness of others, a mindset of wishing the best for them, and then the courage to take action. And some people say that compassion is empathy plus action.

Scott Shute

And so if you're talking about these first two pieces, it's first being aware of others and then having a mindset of wishing the best for them or a mindset of kindness. And why that's important in the workplace is, yeah, we don't work by ourselves. We work in teams. And what we've discovered, what science has shown us Project Aristotle at Google has shown us is the number one factor in creating a high performance team is, well, it's not their IQ, it's not what school they went to.

Scott Shute

It's not even the level of diversity in technology or overall diversity. It's psychological safety. This ability to say, hey, can I can I be myself in front of you guys, can I can I fail in front of you and know that you have my back, but actually even harder? Can I succeed? Can I win in front of you and know that you have my back? So if we're on a sales team and I just made two hundred twenty percent a quarter with two weeks to go and my friends at eighty five percent of quarter, are they really going to help me out.

Scott Shute

Are they going to look at me the same way. Am I going to look at them the same way. So this idea of empathy, this idea of being aware of others and having a mindset of wishing the best for them, really putting ourselves in their shoes builds powerful work environments where we end up being more creative. We end up with better solutions. We end up delivering something much better for our customers.

Liesel Mertes

I love that. Just touching on the data points, some of the business case that's there, I'd like to dig a little deeper. Would you tell me about a time in your work experience where you think, man, I was not OK? I was really going through a hard time and this person's care, attention, what they did or said really made a difference and paint that picture for us.

Scott Shute

Sure. G...

Scott Shute

And so that's been super gratifying.

Liesel Mertes

What is your personal connection to why empathy matters and why it specifically matters in the workplace?

Scott Shute

Liesel Mertes

Scott Shute

Sure. G...

Previous Episode

Lament: Embracing Pain on the Path to Healing

- Mark Vroegop

I mean, it's just so private and so painful and so isolating at so many levels. And that's why I said grief isn't tame, because part of the viciousness of it is its unpredictability. Yeah, something can remind you, something can be a trigger. And it's just it's it's not controllable. It's not tameable. And I think understanding that is actually really helpful

INTRO

Grief can rob you of language. The feelings are so totalizing, so big and unwieldy. You don’t know when or if the pain will end and the people around you seem to have little more to offer than trite platitudes like “It’s always darkest before the dawn.”

If you have been that grieving person, feeling so very alone with no one to listen or respond to your cry of pain, or if you have been that awkward friend or colleague, fumbling around for the right words and finding none, than this episode is for you. Because this episode is all about lament.

Lament is a language of pain, of giving voice to the sorrow. And my guest today is no stranger to lament. In fact, Mark Vroegop has written a book on the topic called Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy.

The book is borne out of his life experience and the death of a daughter. But I will let him tell you more about that in the course of our interview.

Mark Vroegop is the Lead Pastor at College Park Church, a church on the northside of Indianapolis. And, on a personal level, Mark has powerfully intersected with my own journey of pain and grief. He was the one who stood graveside when our daughter, Mercy’s, body was lowered into the ground. Sharing our pain and giving voice to our grief. His honest reckoning with his own struggle and, ultimately, hope has ripple effects into my work as a Workplace Empathy Consultant. So I am glad to welcome him to the show today.

And, just to note, Mark’s story is deeply intertwined with his Christian faith. For those of you who do not share his faith, there might be language or concepts that are foreign to you, I welcome you to listen, as we listen to all of our guests, with a welcoming curiosity, embracing the concepts and wisdom that finds resonance with your spirit and letting anything else pass along.

And for those of you that are rooted in the Christian tradition, I believe that Mark’s writing and story could deepen your understanding of how the language of lament allows you to hold both grief and sorrow without having to just plaster a happy, religious platitude over your pain.

A little bit more about Mark: he has taken up roasting his own coffee beans in the midst of the pandemic. He loves the outdoors, although his is quick to clarify that he and his family no longer sleep in tents.

- Mark Vroegop

Yeah, we love the outdoors, love anything exercise related outside of a big park nearby. Here you go. Creeks, my favorite place to go, kind of my happy place. And we are big campers. So when I say camper, think glampers.

- Mark Vroegop

So we have a travel trailer that we now have that we've upgraded from a pop up. And we love just taking that thing out on a Friday, Saturday and enjoying the outdoors and some quiet. And we're looking forward to more opportunities to do that here soon.

Mark is the father to four living children.

- Mark Vroegop

Yeah, so we have four children. We have three boys who are adults, twin boys. Our number one number two are out of college and one is married and two others are getting married soon.

Mark Vroegop

We have a daughter who's in high school and mother in law that lives with us and a dog named Stella.

- Mark Vroegop

So we have a really full and vibrant home with people coming in and out all the time and just love the opportunity to be in their lives and are thankful that they live in close proximity here to Indianapolis. So we can see them quite often.

- Liesel Mertes

Yeah, what a robust household and what a number of transitions you guys are collectively standing on, on the brink of.

- Mark Vroegop

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, we are in the middle of all kinds of transitions, that's for sure.

Yeah. Tell me a little bit.

- Liesel Mertes

We're going to be talking about disruptive life events, the comforters that come alongside as poorly and the moment.

- Liesel Mertes

And I know that your journey into that, both as a writer, pastor, speaker began from a really personal place. Would you set the scene of that story for us?

- Mark Vroegop

Sure. So our first children were twins, so pregnancy wasn't a problem for us. In fact, the problem was we were too pregnant and my wife carried our twins to thirty nine and a half weeks. So she was a college athlete and twins were born six pounds, seven ounces, six pounds, 11 ounces. Kendall came on three days later. Just beautiful, fairly easy pregnancy apart from enormous discomfort. Third sons born, no complications whatsoever.

- Mark Vroegop

Healthy bab...

Next Episode

We Are Humans First: Empathy and International Teams

- Jorge Vargas

And sometimes we forget that at work. We forget that in other scenarios. And at the end of the day, work is important and matters. But but it's work. And we are we're humans and we're people. And we were feelings and we're joy. We're sadness first. And that ends up having a huge influence and work at the end of the day and not recognizing that it's a little bit naive and dismissive of it makes us better workers if we actually are a little more self-aware about how we're feeling, our emotions in general.

NEW INTRO

Today’s conversation is wide-ranging. We explore the importance of engaging with your own emotions, the absence of one-size-fits-all solutions to emotional and social health, and the particular challenges of empathetically managing multi-national teams. I learned so much and I know that you will too.

My guest today is Jorge Alejandro Vargas. He works at the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that supports our favorite research tool, Wikipedia. There, Jorge leads Regional Partnerships, engaging with teams across the planet to leverage both private and public sector partnerships.

Jorge calls San Francisco home. He moved here seven and a half years ago from Bogota, Colombia where he was born, educated, and worked as a lawyer specializing in Intellectual Property and Copyrights.

He recently moved to the Lower Height neighborhood from the Mission.

- Jorge Vargas

I love walking around the city, a good friend and colleague said the San Francisco is a collection of neighborhoods rather than a single city, and each neighborhood has its own vibe and its own thing. And walking around is really nice. I also enjoy tennis a lot, so I try to fit a game of tennis at least once a week. Not that I'm very good at it, but I am trying my best to get that time out in the tennis court.

And as we ease into our conversation, perhaps there are some listeners that will remember the evolution of Wikipedia with me. I remember when Wikipedia was looked down upon. I was DEFINITELY never, ever allowed to use it as a source in high school or college. But somehow, over the years, we have all come to rely upon the shared knowledge that the platform represents.

- Liesel Mertes

Even the turn of phrase, it's almost like like Kleenex, like you Wikipedia something, because that's where you would go for trusted information. And even as my children use it, how much of a go to resource, which as it relates to your work, I feel like, you know, just in the span of my adulthood, I've seen readership grow, you know, participation, access. And it sounds like that sort of movement of building acceptance, you know, getting stakeholders together is what you're doing in these regional partnerships in a way to continue like moving there.

- Liesel Mertes

The influence and the participation of Wikimedia and Wikipedia is that is that like an accurate enough summation of some of the things that you're doing? I realize there's probably way more to it than that.

- Jorge Vargas

One hundred percent. And I think that it's been very interesting that so this year we're celebrating our 20th anniversary, actually.

- Liesel Mertes

Happy 20th.

- Jorge Vargas

Thank you very much. And it's been 20 years human and we call that. And that's kind like the the tag that we've been using for this big milestone of a birthday, because we really acknowledge the fact that Wikipedia is built by humans. It's because of hundreds of thousands of volunteers around the world that we have what we work with. They are volunteers. And the movement as a whole, as we call it, is the fuel and the magic that actually keeps Wikipedia alive with a foundation.

- Jorge Vargas

What I do and the partnerships team as a whole tries to do is support that mission that is highly built by all those volunteers in the world and work with those partners that want to help us in many different ways further that mission and pretty much reach that vision that we have as a movement of imagining a world in which every single human being has access to the sum of all knowledge, which is an ambitious statement. It's a very bold move, but at the same time, that's what we want to do.

- Jorge Vargas

But to do that, the only way is to work with others, and that is the whole spirit and DNA of the partnership's team and the work that we do.

- Liesel Mertes

And what I hear in that is at its best, you know, Wikipedia is democratizing the the spread of knowledge, you know, with the with its kind of participatory platform. And yet still fact checking that people are able to do and getting voices from different sectors and different cultures and languages is so important in that continued growth of that mission.

- Jorge Vargas

That is absolutely right. I think that what Wikipedia has done in the last ten years has disrupted the parroting. That knowledge should sit with with a few group, ...