Description
TLC Zoom
Wednesday 20th March 2024 @ 18:00 GMT
Why Compassion is Good for Business (and How to Embed it!)
Dr Fiona Meechan
Compassion is not a term often associated with workplaces. In relation to work, we’re used to talking about performance, competition, efficiency, effectiveness and profit. These are of course still critical concepts in business, but they don’t capture the whole picture. At the heart of most workplaces are the people who ‘do’ the delivery, and losing sight of the human element of organisations can have catastrophic effects, not only on the wellbeing, morale and motivation of the staff, but also on the bottom line.
Sadly, many organisations are still ignoring the importance of being a decent human being in work, and with absence from work being at the highest level for 10 years, with stress as a significant factor in this, failing to cultivate compassion in work can be self-destructive for businesses.
Over the past 30 years, I have worked in a range of roles in a range of organisations and have become ever-more curious about why people act in the way that they do when they find themselves in senior roles in organisations. My curiosity led to me completing a PhD in Business and Management, investigating how managers learn their people leadership craft, and how this translates into practice, with a view to improving organisational outcomes.
In this session, I will share my findings around why compassion is important in work, what happens when we don’t have it, why compassion requires grit and courage, and how we can cultivate it to benefit individuals, organisations and ultimately customers and service users.
Biography
Dr Fiona Jane Meechan has worked at Director level in the Police and Local Government. She has also studied and taught leadership for a number of years and was the Course Director for the Police Strategic Command Course in 2021 and 2022.
She is an Executive Education Associate with Alliance Manchester Business School, a Member of the Institute of Directors, a Fellow of the CMI and an Associate of the CIPD.
Fiona has Masters degrees from the University of Cambridge and Manchester Metropolitan University, and a PhD from the University of Manchester and is the author of the Compassion at Work Toolkit which you can find here: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Fiona-Meechan
