THE COMPASSION ADVANTAGE

Hollingsworth champions the value of empathy in the workplace in this business guide.

In her nonfiction debut, the author (the founder and CEO of Hollingsworth Consulting) reminds her readers that, as a society, we have all lived through one of the most traumatizing events in modern history in the form of the Covid-19 pandemic—and the after-effects haven’t stopped. “We can’t seem to catch our breath,” she writes. “Political unrest, the economy, racism, the mental health crisis, climate catastrophes, school shootings, global conflict: it simply doesn’t stop.” All of this tumult inflicts increased stress on everybody; for this reason, Hollingsworth stresses the importance of her “Human Being First” approach. Per the author, this perspective should be applied to all aspects of the corporate experience. A sales director is reporting low quarterly numbers? Time-off requests are piling up? Communication blunders causing problems? Always remember: “Human Being First.” Discussing how leaders should handle conflict, the author cites what she refers to as the 5P=1N Rule: For every negative comment or interaction with Person X, there should be five positive ones, in order to avoid defining people by their missteps. Underpinning these concepts is Hollingsworth’s vision of compassionate leadership, which is composed of four elements: self-compassion, awareness, empathy, and action (actually doing something “to help mitigate unnecessary suffering amongst those you lead”). Chapters flesh out these elements with numbered and bulleted points based on research supporting the position that companies prioritizing love and human connection in hiring and management out-perform companies based on “baseline HR principles.” The book also includes discussion questions and several pages of endnotes providing further sources.

Readers with any familiarity with the working world may approach the author’s central ideas with a good deal of skepticism; a glance at any day’s business news seems to show that the corporate world is largely governed by petty tyrants obsessed with personal advancement at any cost. On every page of her book, Hollingsworth insists there is a better way: “Courageously vulnerable” leaders can set a very different tone. “Remember,” she tells her readers, “leaders set emotion norms in organizations.” The author’s detailed analyses of various aspects of leadership in times of crisis are all fascinating, particularly when she’s discussing the intricacies of navigating collective trauma. This involves leaders understanding what she calls their “Window of Tolerance”—appreciating how new social data or bad news can push them out of that window, and how attempts to “cultivate attunement” can yield positive results. Hollingsworth is consistently upbeat conveying her belief that trying times require even more sympathetic leadership—she reserves her most negative commentary for leaders who engage in what she adroitly refers to as “maladaptive perfectionism.” “If resilience is the ability to recover swiftly and gracefully from mistakes and difficulties,” she writes, “then maladaptive perfectionism is pretty much the total opposite of resilience.” What ultimately emerges from her clear, compassionate prose is an appeal for business interactions (and by extension all human relations) to proceed from a place of greater collective understanding. One can only hope the notoriously heartless corporate world is paying attention.

A compassionate vision for prioritizing empathy in business.