Compassion has been described many ways, from understanding and trying to alleviate the pain and sorrow of others to being kind, merciful and considerate when dealing with the suffering of people who cross our path.
However you define it, compassion is hot these days – especially in corporate America.
Tuesday’s New York Times singled out Walmart for training 2,200 managers on how best to personally relate to employees and customers. Each week, the company flies in fifty of its staff to its Bentonville headquarters in Arkansas for a training camp it calls “Manager Academy.”
“The intent of the academy is to walk away knowing what are our values, what are our expectations of leaders, how do we operate effectively with the view of putting our people first?” said Donna Morris, Walmart Inc.’s chief people officer.
Walmart’s hardly the first company to conduct such training, and the “Academy” isn’t even the company’s initial effort. “The Walton Institute” began back in the 1980s, and featured sessions with the company’s founder, Sam Walton. Since Walton’s death in 1992 makes his attendance impossible, managers now meet the retail legend via a hologram at the company’s heritage museum.
Companies and organizations appreciate the value and importance of regularly reemphasizing their founding ethos. There is ample evidence that when the memory and bedrock principles fade, so does the quality and reputation of the organization. As just one example, Focus on the Family commits considerable resources and effort to maintaining and building upon the vision and commitment first articulated by the ministry’s founder, Dr. James Dobson.
But maintaining orthodoxy and first principles is different than teaching the basic elements of emotional intelligence like compassion, empathy, self-awareness, self-regulation and general social skills.
Recently released research from the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) concluded that most top leaders fail not due to technical incompetence but instead basic emotional bungling. Simply put, people are struggling to get along on the most fundamental interpersonal levels.
Why? What’s transpired over the past few generations to elicit this cataclysmic slide?
The ongoing collapse of the family coupled with the rise of social media are paralyzing the younger generations. Add to the mix the fact that faith in God and church attendance are plummeting to all-time lows, the majority of the workforce is missing its traditional means and forms of social education.
If the old adage is true – that we become the average of the five or so people we spend the most time with – to whom are young professional turning for guidance and direction? Not regarding the professionals “know-how” in their career – but the all-important personal behaviors that determine success or failure.
Perhaps friends who know as little or less than they do? Bombastic, reprobate social media influencers? From movies, music, and other questionable sources that champion worldly and secular values?
It’s no wonder Walmart and other corporations are feeling it necessary to reaffirm the morals and values taught in healthy homes and churches.
The consequences of the social and sexual revolution extend well beyond the obvious markers like marriage and birth rates. It’s not coincidental or surprising that we’re seeing the rise of the woke force in the work force. That’s the inevitable outgrowth of ignorance and the lies peddled and disguised as counterfeit compassion to vulnerable individuals hungry for truth.
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