In Kind Company: Kindness in Action with Dr. Natalie Gruber
This podcast explores how kindness shows up in real life, drawing on research and practical insights to inspire more compassionate, connected living.
In Kind Company: Kindness in Action with Dr. Natalie Gruber
Micro-Moments, Mega Payoffs: Transforming Workplaces with High-Quality Connections with Dr. Jane Dutton & Dr. Monica Worline
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How do simple, 10-second interactions completely transform our workplaces, our stress levels, and our personal lives?
In this episode of Kindness in Action, Dr. Natalie Gruber sits down with pioneering organizational scholars Dr. Jane Dutton and Dr. Monica Worline to unpack the science of High-Quality Connections (HQCs). They discuss how micro-moments of life-giving interaction serve as a direct manifestation of workplace kindness, cost absolutely nothing to implement, and dramatically shift team adaptability.
Dr. Gruber also connects these principles to interpersonal neurobiology and shares a vital framework on why true kindness must always start internally—especially when navigating corrosive or toxic workplace dynamics.
What We Cover in This Episode:
• The Definition of an HQC: The three core elements of Vitality, Mutuality, and Positive Regard.
• The Organizational Payoff: How micro-connections directly drive psychological safety, foster adaptability during tech disruptions, and protect your physical body from stress.
• Actionable Micro-Practices: Inexpensive, powerful ways to "till the conversational soil" of your team during onboarding and the first 5 minutes of meetings.
• Self-Compassion & Boundaries: The crucial difference between healthy kindness and dangerous appeasement, and how to protect yourself from the long-term physical and mental harm of corrosive connections.
• The "Spillover Effect" of a Compassion Culture: A deep dive into a study of a Michigan hospital billing department where learning to "love at work" fundamentally transformed employees' roles as mothers and community members.
Key Takeaway: The Compassion Spillover
We often think workplace culture stays at work. However, Jane and Monica share a profound study of a compassionate hospital billing department where a culture of playfulness, great leadership, and high-quality connections allowed employees to thrive under pressure. The most beautiful finding? This workplace compassion directly upgraded their personal lives, making them more present, loving mothers and neighbors. Workplace kindness is never contained; it ripples into our homes and communities.
About Our Guests:
Dr. Jane Dutton and Dr. Monica Worline are pioneering scholars in the field of organization studies and Positive Organizational Scholarship. They are the co-founders and leading voices of the Center for Positive Organizations at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, and co-authors of the foundational book, *Awakening Compassion at Work*.
• Connect with Dr. Jane Dutton on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jane-dutton-2212484/
• Connect with Dr. Monica Worline on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monica-worline-2119a5/
• Explore their research hub: Center for Positive Organizations (https://positiveorgs.bus.umich.edu)
Connect with the Show:
• Follow Dr. Natalie Gruber on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalie-gruber-edd-731bb81a2/
Enjoyed this episode? Please leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify—it helps us spread more kindness in action!
About Dr. Natalie Gruber
Dr. Natalie Gruber is a clinical social worker, researcher, and mindfulness-based coach who integrates neuroscience, compassion, and mindfulness to support healing and transformation. She is the founder of In Kind Company, helping leaders, healthcare professionals, and teams cultivate presence, resilience, and authentic connection. Through her signature KIND practice, Natalie guides individuals and organizations to harness kindness as a resource for growth, creativity, and well-being.
🔗 Connect with Natalie:
Website: https://nataliegruber.com/
Coaching & consulting: https://inkindcoaching.com/
Instagram: @drnataliegruber
Newsletter: In Kind Words
Podcast: Kindness in Action
Welcome to Kindness in Action with Dr. Natalie Gruber. I'm Dr. Natalie Gruber. And today we are exploring a powerful episode of Kindness in Action. We're looking at how simple everyday interactions can completely transform our workplaces, our stress levels, and our well-being. To guide us through the data and the practice, I'm thrilled to welcome two pioneering scholars who established an entirely new field of management. Let's begin. As humans, we all possess a natural capacity for kindness. Kindness is so integral to who we are as a species that we are hardwired to experience physiological benefits to giving, receiving, and even witnessing kindness. It supports our physical health and serves as an antidote to stress. Kindness also promotes mental health. It feels rewarding, energizing, and uplifting. And it also helps to enhance relationships, the number one predictor across the board of our health, longevity, and life satisfaction. Kindness truly illuminates the best in us. But many of the people I work with come to me with a desire to experience more kindness, including within their workspaces. Place is an especially important and at times challenging place to experience and express more kindness. Under stress, kindness, connection, and regulation are often the first things to go. Today we will explore a concrete research back set of behaviors that enhance social connections, increase positive energy, and ultimately promote kindness in a very concrete, sustainable way. These behaviors foster what organizational scholars call high-quality connections, positive, energizing interactions characterized by a set of behaviors that foster a greater sense of well-being, psychological safety, and even lead to better outcomes of our work. These behaviors can be engaged in proactively to create positive work environments and relationships. And when suffering arises, which it inevitably does, there are important ways that people within organizations can notice and respond to it with more compassion. We are incredibly fortunate to be learning from two world-class scholars who quite literally wrote the books on these topics. I am absolutely thrilled to be in conversation today with Dr. Jane Dutton and Dr. Monica Warline, pioneering leaders in the field or positive organizational scholarship. First, I'm so excited to introduce Dr. Jane Dutton. Jane is the Robert L. Kahn Distinguished University Professor Emerita of Business Administration and Psychology at the University of Michigan. Her legendary expertise lies at the intersection of strategy management and psychology. Specifically, Jane examines how high-quality connections and identity processes increase capabilities for both employees and organizations. Her pioneering research on compassion, resilience, and energy in the workplace helped establish an entirely new subfield of management in 2001 called Positive Organizational Scholarship. In 2002, she co-founded the Center for Positive Organizations, and this is actually where I first connected with this work. I completed a fellowship there in 2009, and I can tell you firsthand it had a profound and lasting impact on how I viewed my work. Then, as a young clinical social work graduate from the University of Michigan, Jane has published over 100 articles, edited 13 books, and written two seminal books for leaders: Energize Your Workplace, How to Build and Sustain High Quality Connections at Work, and Awakening Compassion at Work, which she co-wrote with Monica. Jane earned her PhD at Northwestern University, has received the highest honors and awards in her field, and continues to consult, run workshops, and teach modules on positive organizational scholarship at the Ross School of Business. Joining Jane is her longtime collaborator, Dr. Monica Warline. Monica is the faculty director of the Center for Positive Organizations and a faculty member at the Michigan Ross School of Business. For over two decades, she has dedicated her research, writing, and teaching to understanding how we can cultivate courageous thinking, compassionate leadership, and forms of organizing that bring people's best work to life. Monica is the co-author of the groundbreaking book Awakening Compassionate Work, The Quiet Power That Elevates People and Organizations, and she leads the Compassion Lab, a global research community focused on compassion in workplaces. Her award-winning work has been featured across countless multimedia outlets where she loves inviting people to become architects of their own thriving organizations. Monica completed her doctoral work in organizational psychology at the University of Michigan and earned her BA with honors and distinction from Stanford University. She has served on the faculties of Stanford, Emory, and the University of California, Irvine. Her current research focuses on a powerful social architecture framework, essentially designing flexible structures that build human and social thriving directly into the DNA of organizations, reliably producing excellence grounded in extraordinary human well-being. Welcome to Jane Denton and Monica Warline. Thank you so much for joining me here today to have a conversation about kindness and action in the workplace. I've read both of your wonderful books. One of the things that I love the most is that they are so concrete and filled with actionable steps and behaviors that we can all take to build high-quality connections and compassion. And the case illustrations of just getting people to think about what that looks like and then reflect on their own experiences, I think is so valuable. And I want to say that when I'm teaching kindness in the workplace, kindness at work, I rely on the high quality connections book because it makes what I view, kindness, so actionable in the workplace. So I wanted to maybe begin by asking you to just describe what are high-quality connections.
SPEAKER_01Well, I'll give you the definition, Natalie, and then we can turn to Jane and she can add anything that I left out or that she wants to add. But the way that Jane and other researchers defined high-quality connections is a momentary interaction that has three characteristics. It's full of vitality, it is uh full of mutuality or it's mutually responsive, and it conveys positive regard. And Jane has wonderful ways of taking these academic definitions and bringing them to life. So, Jane, when you're putting it in your own words and helping an audience of non-academics know what a high-quality connection is, how do you describe it?
SPEAKER_02Well, I'll add just to that. So you know when you're in a high-quality connection by just literally almost how lit up and alive you feel. And the word connection is really important because in the field of study that Monica and I are in, um, organization studies, when people would talk about human-to-human connection, they would often talk about more enduring relationships. And what we're we've been really interested in is the transformative potential of these small moments. So connections are kind of the micro bits of a relationship. So you could talk about creating a high-quality connection with a stranger, you know, just someone you bump into or someone that you are on a short phone call or Zoom call with. Um, or you could talk about high-quality connection moments in a more enduring relationship, whether that's a friendship or a some familial relationship, a marriage, whatever. So it's it it gets you down to the sort of the core element um that composes a human-to-human connection. And um I'll just say because I know, then I think the next question is sort of how did we get, how did we find this concept or how did it reveal itself? And you know, at some level, it's just so basic. And so it came up in multiple research studies that we were doing, and we didn't have a way to describe these moments of connection. So one study, for example, was of hospital cleaners. And well, we were really, Amy Rosnewski and Golda Beba and I were really interested in how people coped at work with actually toxic connections or the hard work that cleaners were doing where they're often disrespected by people around them. And again, the real surprise in that study was how these small moments of life-giving connection between the cleaners and the patients, or the cleaners and the patients' families, were so nourishing to the cleaners. And we didn't really have a way to describe that. And so that I think is one of the important original sort of empirical studies. And then I'll just say one other thing. I was teaching a class, a PhD class on relational perspectives and organizations, and I was really affected by work that was being done at the Stone Center in Wells at Wellesley College, which was basically looking at how we grow, how humans to humans grow each other. And which was a really different story of human development than the, you know, the more independent you become, you know, the more you're growing, the more you're growing, the more independent. This was more about, no, you're interdependent, and the more you develop, actually, these life-giving connections, the more you grow. So it was sort of the convergence of this empirical context. It was so powerful for us. And like trying to position, seeing this hole in our quote-unquote literature about how to describe the power of these micro moments of human connection.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's so beautiful. And it's it is amazing how those micro moments can just shift somebody's whole inner and outer experience, how your outlook can shift and become more positive as a result of engaging in a high quality connection moment. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01One of my favorite quotes of Jane's is that uh every interaction gives you a chance to leave the other person better off, which I think is a beautiful way. If you want to think about pr practicing high-quality connections as a part of your kind of daily practice of enrichment of the world around you, it's a beautiful way to think of it always as an opportunity.
SPEAKER_00That is so beautiful. And I think of kindness as a commitment you can develop too, right? That I think that's what you're saying, like this orientation of how you show up and relate to others, this unconditional goodwill of kindness.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah. No, I love that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. What do you think about framing high-quality connections in this way? That it's a manifestation of kindness, potentially.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I I mean, I think it's really generative. And by generative, I mean it's got all kinds of possibilities. I think there's just a beautiful intersection of, and they both point to what is the good that we can create in human connection, especially not just in the immediate human-to-human connection, but in the aftermath, like the orientation and the goodwill and the other kinds of potentialities that are unleashed. Like I kind of what I love is part of in part of what you've been doing, Natalie, is it's it's a mindset. And when we're we've been teaching about high-quality connections, when people talk about what's the impact of it, the lasting impact of that kind of training, they often talk about what just shifted how I how I see things, you know, and how I imagine possibilities for myself, but also for others.
SPEAKER_01So I think that's the part of the shift from that your work, Jane, and others that that were working with you helped like emphasizing the momentariness, right? And the the way that these interactions are growth-filled and that they're that they convey positive regard. Or Natalie, the beautiful thing that you said of that that, you know, that intentional investment in the good of others, that could happen just in a 10-second interaction. It can pass in how you know how we pass in the hallway without even speaking to one another, right? But we have so much capacity to convey worth and imbue others with worth. If we think of this as an intentional, you know, commitment to kindness. So, yeah, we along as Jane said, it's very generative.
SPEAKER_02When you might be getting there, you can see, like, once you get us started, Natalie, we're like the thing that gets me so excited about this is, and you know, we haven't really talked about the thing that gets me so excited is this doesn't not cost money, you know. And so when you're training, like in our world where we're training leaders, which I think is in your world too, Natalie, you know, the you know, this is really about believing that the payoff from having this mindset and investing in these small moves is actually really worth it. And I think the medical evidence about what it does to human bodies, you know, but also the business evidence about what it does to the collective body in terms of capabilities and capacities that get unleashed, make it like, duh, like why don't we do more of this? This is crazy. It's like gold or assets that just have not been released.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, building on the human capital. Maybe maybe you would say that in a different way, but it doesn't cost anything. And it doesn't, even in terms of time, right? Like you're talking about these micro moments that have the ability to tremendously shift things.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and when we talk a lot about trajectories, and this is where part so what is what is the possibility from the first time you interact with someone, first time that you're aware of their presence? And if you are kind, for example, in that first moment, it if you can imagine just a channel of possibility, potential assets that are released, the payoff is really high, not just in terms of the immediate impact, but because of this potentiality or this trajectory of the capacity of the relationship or the connection over time. It's just it keeps on giving.
SPEAKER_01You know, another thing that I think an emphasis on connection as an aspect of kindness or a way of bringing kindness to life is I was working with a group recently and someone told a story as we were talking about why high-quality connections matter at work, of coming to work every morning with this commitment to sort of greet people with a hearty hello and the deflation that occurred when other people didn't reciprocate the hello. And um, I think that part of what emerged in that conversation was that when you know, when the the lap of mutuality decreases the quality of connection, and the person was experiencing that first thing in the morning every day of coming to work, it seemed too small to matter until we opened up this conversation about high-quality connections, and all of a sudden it was like that's why it's feeling so bad. And it's having this cumulative effect of every day feeling bad, but in our kind of hustle culture, right? This person was just dismissing, like that shouldn't matter, right? It was feeling bad, but the person was trying to dismiss the effects, and having the language of high quality connection and the recognition of why momentary interaction can be so powerful and change the way of seeing, like why this first moment of work in the morning might be so powerful.
SPEAKER_02Well, and again, as organizational researchers, where we're thinking a lot about we're studying about how organizational practices can make a difference in this, and because first moments matter, like what happens in the first X seconds really matters. What happens in meetings? Like there's just so much lost social and human capital by poorly run meetings, and especially what happens in the first five to ten minutes of a meeting, where again, if you can help people, even on a Zoom call, acknowledge each other, see each other, you know, see the best in each other, which would really be wonderful. You know, the possibility of what happens in that meeting, the capacity and capability is unleashed. So I also get excited, not only just by the fact that this does not cost money and it generates all kinds of good, but how can we institutionalize practices and structures that increase more kindness, more high-quality connecting so that it has an enduring quality and it doesn't just count, doesn't require one particular leader or one particular person because it's built into the fabric of how we do things around here.
SPEAKER_00And it seems like having institutional practices like that would encourage more mutuality and more for people to have it more on their radar, as Monica was saying, in terms of understanding the value of these high-quality connection moments and that they are, they are dependent on mutuality, just like anything with energy, right? Like to sustain the energy of the positive high-quality connection, it would need to be mutually reinforced, right? What are some of your favorite ways to build high-quality connections in organizations?
SPEAKER_01Gosh. So just thinking about like what's happening in the eye muscles and the smile muscles. Yeah. So if you're on a video conference or you're on a video podcast, right, like there's something about facial expression that matters so much for connection. Uh it also, of course, matters in person. Also, this research about vocal tone, right? Like if you scrambled our words but listened to our tone, people would still be able to detect something about the quality of the conversation that we're having and its connection through the tone that's conveyed, which is also something that's helpful whether you're working remotely or in a hybrid work or you're working in person, which is really useful, I think. Um, but there are so many fun favorites, Jane. What's one of your favorites?
SPEAKER_02Well, I was gonna say, I was thinking about again, first moments matter. And so one of the most generative clusters of practices in any organization is about onboarding. Is sort of what are the first moments that an organization engineers or not for people? And so much can be done actually before a person is physically or any other way connected to an organization and the people in it to actually facilitate or till the ground for a higher quality connection or for more kindness. So, for example, if the first communication sent out about a new person joining a group, a team, or the whole organization has within it stories about the unique value. Of that person, you know, their strengths or their experiences, or, you know, it's not just a resume. They're giving them some sort of meat, you know, about the specialness of that person. It actually orients everyone before that person is arrives on the scene to want to, to have the motivation to reach out and to see the best in the other. So I feel like so much can be done on onboarding before a person gets on board, but also in the for the the what happens in the first day. Like what we would always have a what a graduate of our program come in and talk to our class about this, and she would talk about root consulting and how root consulting set up a person's desk so that they felt valued like the moment they went in, you know, not in just in terms of having the equipment and P.S. So many of our MBA students would go into internships and not have the basics about what to allow them to do their jobs, but also the customization around, you know, the name tag and the color. I mean, that organizations can do really simple little things that says, I value you. And if it does that to you, then again, you're tilling the ground. So other people value you. So you're more oriented towards the high-quality connecting. So I love onboarding as a whole cluster of, again, inexpensive but really powerful ways to um till the ground for high quality connection and for kindness, because if yeah, I should also say that part of the tilling is not just about how the a person's capabilities and strengths. But if you individualize those people by giving personal information about the person, then um it also gives people enough of a context that if something happens to a person, they people can understand a little bit why someone might. We've seen this a lot in the compassion work, that uh people it really benefit from knowing some of the circumstances around a person's suffering. And I'll just mention Ashley Hardin, who uh you may or may not one of our also one of our wonderful graduates from Michigan, her research on personal information shows that the more that people know about each other, like personal stuff, again, the more they humanize them and how they treat them, where kindness I think is a really also a really important part of hum the the humanizing of each other.
SPEAKER_00Being able to see the whole person and yeah, have that context. I love what you said about the specialness of that person who's coming in and shifting other people's or or just widening their perspective about who's coming in. And of course, if you're inviting someone into your organization, you would value them. Otherwise, you wouldn't give them that invitation, right? But emphasizing and being specific about why that person is there and making them feel welcome makes so much sense. I mean, this is just so human, right? Like valuing other people, valuing the people that we're inviting into our workspaces.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, there's just so much that you can do to set the scene, you know, so that people see the best in each other. And the thing is, we're born to want that, to see that. The problem is that often, you know, we our brains pay attention to the negative information. So unless you're feeding, you know, the what the you know, the good in the other, the way our brains work, and the way or many organizations which are more deficit focused than asset focused, is that you your mind is more filled up with, you know, the goofs that someone made or the mistakes or the weaknesses or the all those things.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely, yes. And just to um, you mentioned earlier how what the payoff is within organizations when they invest in these kinds of uh behaviors, whether it's onboarding or talking to people about how they nonverbally relate to each other, or even emphasizing play, respect, trust, and helping behavior, those being four major aspects, right, of high-quality connections behavior. What have you seen in terms of payoff for organizations? Okay, Monica, you want to start?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm gonna start with one that I think is especially valuable right now. So one of the you know, bundles of evidence about high-quality connections supports at both the team and the organization level more adaptability, uh, right, more capacity to generate novel solutions and and to handle changing circumstances. And given the level of technology disruption that most organizations are encountering right now, and the number of things that so many of us are being asked to learn and change as a part of organizations right now, I think it's really helpful to think of investing in high quality connections as one way, like Jane will often talk about, and we have talked in relation to compassion about high-quality connections as fertilizing the soil so that the soil is rich when you need other kinds of things to grow, right? And when we need people to be able to be adaptable and handle changing circumstances and cope with uncertainty and think of new ideas, the web of connections that they're embedded in is such an important part of being able to handle that. And it's not one of the ways I think that people are thinking about investing in AI-enabled change, right? They're talking a lot about, you know, technology training or something like that. Um, but increasing the quality of connection and the thinking about the connections in the organization as soil from which that kind of adaptability can grow, I think is a really interesting way to think about learning and handling change. But there's so many we could choose from, Jane. What's one of your favorites?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean two, two that start with safety and stress. So, you know, there's such compelling evidence about psychological safety and the difference that makes for team performance. And the number one predictor of high of psychological safety is the quality of the connection between people. So if you want psychological safety, invest in this. The second thing is stress. Is that what so one of the things that Emily Hefey and I did, Emily, Emma, actually Emily, again, another wonderful former graduate student, she led the she led the work that we did on in reviewing all the medical evidence about what happens to humans' bodies when they have these short-term interactions. And it was stunning, Natalie. It was like, oh my gosh, the immediate effects on people's vascular system, their immune system, their endocrine system. I mean, it's like, boom, it's like this jolt of health building that happens. And so, again, going back to a world of AI or a world of just rapid change and uncertainty and fear that is actually in so many workplaces now. High quality connections is like an investment in stress reduction and well-being increase. So I think it's, you know, just I mean, it delivers so much value. It's again, I go back to this is a no-brainer. You know, that that leaders are everyone. I mean, it doesn't have to be leaders and organizations. It can be um, you know, people and families, it can be, you know, places of worship, any or any collective that you're part of, being mindful about how do you deliberately try to enhance people's genuine connection with each other. Uh genuine positive connection with each other, yeah, genuine vitality enhancing connection with each other just has so many positive ripples and payoffs to it.
SPEAKER_01And one that's kind of right here in our own backyard that matters for all kinds of organizations, but for teachers and classrooms and for higher education is learning. And uh it's really, you know, as all kinds of schools confront, you know, lots of student mental health challenges and this sense that students are having trouble coping with the circumstances of life, and it makes it much harder for them to be in a learning environment in a productive way and to learn and grow the way we hope that they will. One of the ways that we can foster learning, whatever the subject is, is by connecting the students to the students in a higher quality way. And that was something that I was just reminded of really powerfully in the the last couple of semesters as a university instructor, that that's such an important source of being able to learn and and you know, do all the work that we hope students will do.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Yeah, learning is inherently social and emotional. And across the board, we need these conditions to help us really thrive as humans, regardless of environment or context, is what you're saying, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I I mean I love the way you know we played with ways to start out a class, for example, but it doesn't have to be a class, it can be at, you know, again, any human gathering, where again, first moments matter. So you really want to orchestrate what happens in these first times that people come together. And we had one of the what little practices we did was we had people share, pair up and share what are the gifts that they hope to bring to the class, which puts people in a contribution mode, which is a very is a other-oriented motivation. And then people introduce each other into the class in terms of the gifts that their other classmate wants to give, which already again puts people in a in a mindset of you know, human connective giving, human generosity, which again is back to the soil metaphor, you know, the soils being tilled to think like, oh my gosh, if my neighbor wants to give this to the class, what does that mean I could give to the class? Or you hear a whole classroom of people offering up the potential gifts that people are gonna orient. I mean, that is so different than saying, okay, introduce everybody by where they what their hometown was, and you know, their the accomplishment that they're most proud of, you know, which has again a more of an individual competitive, who's higher better, blah, blah, blah. So again, just a tweak, a tweak in how you orient people to each other. They have this deep hunger to connect. But institutions like schools, educational hospitals, I mean, there's so many places where the business of the organization is human good, but the practices are working against unleashing the human good.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Hunger for connection and be acknowledged as having something special and valuable to contribute, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03This is such beautiful work. I want to uh thank you.
SPEAKER_02Well, it's not I mean, that's the thing that the thing is that well that we've you know, the beauty is uh something so the term high quality connection, I'm sure it's been used a lot of different places, but we had uh the advantage of kind of having it I don't know, like the the name matters. It already states what the aspiration is. You know, so I guess we've been really surprised by how much people in working in different aspects of human community have picked up that term as as a workable way of orienting people towards what they can do collectively and individually.
SPEAKER_00I'm so struck by how much all of this fits into interpersonal neurobiology. It's a it's a theoretical framework that one of my mentors, Dan Siegel, developed. And essentially, individuals can become more integrated, which is really a state of health where the separate parts of, let's say, your brain are functioning optimally and developing connections and communicating well between each other, and then body systems are thriving. And then because we're hardwired for relational connection, we tend to become more attuned in our communication to others. And a lot of different outcomes happen as a result of these processes where we become more integrated. And mindfulness is a really powerful way to do that, but also secure attachment in parent-child relationships where you're feeling seen, safe, soothed, really valued for the individual that you are. But we can also have integration within our relationships, where we're honored for our uniqueness and our specialness. And then there's a care and connection between the individuals. And then systems can become more integrated, where again, the separate parts are honored for their distinction, but then there's care and connection between them. And the outcome of that can be exactly what you were describing earlier, too, Monica, in terms of the soil of the organization being supported and nourished, that a state of integration, even in an organization, allows people to be flexible, adaptive, coherent, energized, and relatively stable to be able to adapt to situations as they arise and learn. And so I'm just so struck by how all of this work and everything that we've been discussing is also really deeply integrated on an individual, relational, and systemic level.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I agree, Natalie. Really well said.
SPEAKER_01So we wrote about compassion, as you said in the introduction. And one of the ways of defining suffering that some people use is disintegration. Right. And so if you think of the way you just beautifully articulated the integration of different elements of a whole system, and that the the power of integration is something that's health enhancing, that's life-giving, then you could also see how high-quality connection becomes such an essential source of compassion when people are suffering. And that's a part of why I think in the work, in the contemporary workplace, right, where or learning, right, or disintegrated community where people are hungry for a different kind of being together, right? That that is a is in itself a form of suffering and high quality connection then in is in itself a form of compassion, right? A form of alleviating that disintegration and pr providing a way of restoring more of a sense of wholeness and participation in the life of the whole.
SPEAKER_00And this person really oriented towards kindness, towards others very naturally. But she realized, this person realized that it was actually themselves. The kind model that I've developed always starts with checking in with yourself to know how you're feeling and offering yourself kindness first before directing it out to other people. And she realized she was the one who needed her own kindness. And where her major suffering was coming in at work is she really had a pretty cruel boss. And she would, in an effort to appease this person, just offer up kindness, kind gestures, and more and more, it wouldn't work or be reciprocated or received by that person, and the behavior would continue. And then she would just instead try to do more kind things. Or, or I've also heard people say that they've tried to offer information about themselves personally, and then maybe it gets turned against them. That becomes a source of vulnerability in the workplace. So, what was fascinating about the woman who was trying to appease her boss is we talked about how that was making her feel, but then how disempowered she really felt by continuously giving all this energy away to this person, and really felt like she needed to take some of it back and become more empowered and sort of shift the way that she related to this person and was more kind to herself as a result, honoring her own needs. So I just I wondered if I know there's corrosive connections are discussed in Energize Your Workplace, uh, just what some of your thoughts are about when kindness is not reciprocated or a high quality connection gesture and what people could do about it.
SPEAKER_01Well, it's unfortunately really common, right? So I think trying to guess what which of uh what Jane wants to talk about, but I think your part of what you're articulating in the compassion world would be what Kristen Neff has called self-compassion. We often think of it, if you think of compassion as a social process where you notice distress, you generously interpret that the person or people in distress are worth your time and your energy and your empathic concern, and then you feel concerned for them and are moved to action. You can include yourself in that circle of concern and noticing more of our own distress, right, and giving ourselves the generous interpretation that we are worthy of concern and value. And therefore we can feel concern, right, empathic concern for ourselves and our own well-being as well as other people, and then we can act in ways that will alleviate our own distress, right? It's just it's a different set of language for the same thing that you're pointing to, I think. And the self compassion model is different again. But I think people could pick up any of these models and think about going back to the theme of integration, right? Like we're not separate from that relational system that we're embedded in. And when that relational system is creating distress. Right, a part of the compassion and the care has to be has to include ourselves in it. And so we learn compassion offers us then lots of lessons about buffering ourselves from forms of distress, about what are appropriate and healthy boundaries, right? What does that mean? And what does it mean in various stages of life? What does it mean in various kinds of contexts? And also can we buffer ourselves and think about, you know, setting those boundaries appropriately? Um, and can we, you know, soothe ourselves and strengthen ourselves in terms of what we know and appreciate and value about ourselves, and then, you know, make choices about putting ourselves in contexts that are good for us. But this is such a huge topic. I mean, we're we could have another hour about this.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. And I think I think it's so easy for people to get stuck in a shame or self-blame when kindness is not reciprocated without the awareness of of compassion, what you're of self-compassion, inner compassion, caring for oneself. I think that we expect, we often expect people to just naturally reciprocate kindness. And I think it can just be really painful for people when it isn't reciprocated. And and have and then having ways of responding to that. So then it's time to come back to yourself and offer the the kindness or the compassion internally, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I just wanted to add that in my years of teaching around corrosive connections, sometimes the corrosivity came from unreciprocated kindness, but it was often from a variety of sources. I feel like the most important thing that I would do as a teacher was help people understand the damage of being done, that they needed to change the situation. Many times it again, the shame and the blame would put people in a paralyzed kind of mindset and they didn't do things. And so I would try to overwhelm them with medical evidence of the harm done by this, so that they needed to, if they couldn't leave the relationship, they needed to buffer, you know, themselves or strengthen themselves, you know, as sort of the counterpoint to bear the weight of the toxicity, you know, or try to transform the relationship. So, but none of that would happen unless they understood that just putting up with this was not was doing them harm. And and it was doing harm on their bodies, you know, I often taught 20, 20-year-olds to 35-year-olds. And again, being in my 70s, I can say, like with the medical evidence, is it doesn't show up until you're in your 40s and 50s. But if you're caught in a toxic kind of connection for five, you know, the a couple of these key growth years when you're younger, it it is inflammatory. All kinds of systems get messed up, and it really shows up in really severe problems later in your life, not just in the immediate, really terrible consequences of stress immediately. So, so that that is, I felt feel like in addition to how do you deal with it, it's just like, no, don't like acknowledge it and say, I gotta do something about this. You know, that's really important.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. And then also the effect, and maybe this is harder to measure, people, whatever happens to people at work carries over into their personal lives too, right? So if you're carrying high levels of stress or being treated chronically in a corrosive way at work, the spillover into relationships, family relationships or intimate relationships, it certainly is possible to wear and tear on ability to relate in a way that would be more genuine for that person and less influenced by high levels of stress.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00That's such a good point.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. We like to think about spillover working in both directions. So I think, you know, we often think about the negative spillover of work stress to home and family, because we give a lot of attention to negative stuff, and there's a lot of stressful work environments. And I'm not denying that. But uh another thing that the research shows us is that actually work great workplaces, workplaces that are compassionate, that help people learn things, like how do I relate to myself more compassionately? How do I build better quality connections with people? How do, you know, investing in training and development and helping people learn these kinds of things in work environments positively spills over into home or community environments too, because often we can develop skills and habits of mind and habits of heart in adult workplaces that are separated from our family or our community dynamics that give us room to be a little bit different, show up a little bit different, or help others in our environment in a way that's very empowering. And so I want people to hear both the urgency of changing the corrosive connections at work because it does have a negative spillover, but also that learning these kinds of skills and setting boundaries and investing in high-quality connections in work can actually also positively spill over into other domains of life.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, Natalie, you had asked us about one of the most powerful places we studied with Monica and other members of the compassion lab. We studied this unit in a billing department in a community hospital in Michigan. Oh my gosh. I mean, it was so surprising that that was the hospital, that was the unit everybody thought was the most compassionate. And the the women who worked there, it was mostly women that I think it was all women actually, that worked in the billing department would talk to us about how they learned to love at work and that that made them better mothers. That was just so powerful. I feel like we became better people watching them, watching this group of people do this work that was really hard, not pleasant work. You know, you're calling doctors and or you're calling patients and saying your bills are overdue. You know, it's really, really tough work. And yet the way they were interacting with each other and the human connective tissue was so beautiful that they were taking what they learned there and and uptaking it into the lot, you know, into their the other aspects of their lives. It was it was a privilege to study to study the bill. We've learned so much from this group of 35 people.
SPEAKER_00That example really stayed with me in compassion at work, just to hear about their creativity, the way that they celebrated, the way that they found opportunities for advancement when typically there wasn't advancement in that kind of a role, and how monotonous that work can be, and how so they just organically came up with this. They had a great leader.
SPEAKER_01They had a great leader. They they had a leader who n had wisdom about investing in practices so that it wasn't dependent on any one person or an and yeah, I think they had a lived experience of the need to work, and the that if the work environment was not just a source of financial sustenance, but was actually a place of joy and playfulness and meaning and friendship that it fueled their capacity to live like different qualities of life. And so the leader was instrumental in organizing things and making things happen, but the whole system was just alive with ideas and you know, buzzing with investment in trying to sustain the things they had created because it was there was it was so valuable to them to work in that kind of a context.
SPEAKER_00Such rich soil there. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Well, and many of the people working there, it was not only a low, relatively low-paying a job, but there were, I forget the number of people on the waiting list who wanted to work in that department. I mean, people didn't leave, but the word was out that this was the place to to live, to work. And many of them were struggling with domestic violence at home. So it wasn't just low wage work. It was, you know, some really trying circumstances. And yet they would they just were a healing, high performing. They were number one in the state. Is that right, Monica? They were incredible in terms of the amount of time it took them to collect a dollar.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, they were on the industry.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so it was high performance in terms of the work that they did, but also again, this gorgeous uplift that happened to them as humans.
SPEAKER_01And that was you mentioned, Jane, some four pathways for building high-quality connection in an organization, helping, trusting.
SPEAKER_03Respectful, engaging and playing.
SPEAKER_01When I wanted to emphasize playing because that uh this this work context, the billing department that we study, you know, we were asking, we were studying compassion, but part of what we found that was so um powerful was that they were so playful, right? And the playfulness really fueled the quality of connection, right? Uh enriched the soil and and set the stage so that when something terrible happened, right, there was a lot of capacity in the system to wrap around what terrible thing had happened and to try to take care of those involved and to try to flex the work and all the other things that needed to happen to mobilize resources for compassion. And there had been very little emphasis on what's the connection between compassion and playfulness, right? And this this route of playfulness fueling high-quality connection that then enables a system to really mobilize quickly and move, you know, all kinds of relational resources, emotional resources, financial resources, you know, social support resources, like wherever they are needed at the time that they're needed. Um, it was really magnificent. And play so I think playfulness is one of the most under-recognized routes to high-quality connection in work organizations.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. And fun, innovation, creativity, all of those things go together, right? That's helpful. Well, this has been a illuminating conversation for me. I've learned so much from the two of you, and I'm so grateful that you shared your expertise with me, and that I will be able to share it, send it out into the world and share it with others. Before we wrap up, if you're open to it, what what does it if you if you would answer this question? Uh, what does it feel like to you to be in kindness or a state of a high quality connection with others?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you asked us to think about this. So I actually had to think about it. I mean, and I didn't really have a lot of words, but I was thinking about what is when someone acts kind to me, how does that feel? And all I could think of it feels like a human hug. I mean, it's a a moment of love that comes from a stranger or someone that you know that has an enduring uplift. It's like a vitamin, it's beautiful. So I don't know. That was what human hug, love, love moment. That's beautiful. Soft words for something that's so powerful.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I feel the same way that the the word the words to put around the feeling are hard to find. I I guess that I have you kind of a felt kind of buzz, you know, like not a destructive, but just a gentle kind of like aliveness, right? Like a buzzing of aliveness. Um, but also this nonverbal, the hug I like a lot. But there's, you know, there's research that shows that if we just do a gesture of putting a hand, right, like to our own heart or giving ourselves a gentle, loving touch, that it can shift energetically and biophysiologically to what our experience is and it can help us re-regulate and all the kinds of things you were talking about before, Natalie. But also that what part of what has started to happen, which I love, is that if someone else is in distress, people who notice that have started to go like this, right? And that you you don't need words to indicate to someone, whether you know them or not, whether on a video conference or on a sidewalk, right, that you care about their well-being and that you want that you don't want them to be in distress. And I think that is my that's my nonverbal way to convey what I feel, right? Like in deep kindness.
SPEAKER_00So beautiful. I'm I'm touched. I can feel it in my heart as you're both describing your experience of kindness. Yes. Well, thank you so much for sharing all of this incredible wisdom and compassion. And uh it's really been a pleasure. Thank you.
SPEAKER_02We wish you the best with your work. Your work is so important. So we'll be anxious to hear as it evolves all the various practices where you're bringing this to the world. So thank you, Natalie, for giving us a platform for telling us.
SPEAKER_01Thank you for doing what you're doing, Natalie.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01Okay, be well. Bye, thank you.