Grace, Dignity, Compassion

I’m Andy Temte and welcome to the Saturday Morning Muse! Start to your weekend with me by exploring topics that span leadership, business management, education, and other musings designed to support your journey of personal and professional continuous improvement.

Since late 2008, I've relied on three words to help shape my interactions with strangers, friends, colleagues, clients, and family members. Those words are Grace, Dignity, and Compassion. They served me well as we navigated the turbulent waters of the Great Recession and are proving to be particularly important during the current state of social unrest and extreme political polarization.

I'd like to take a few moments of your time to explain why these words are so important to me, and ask that we all adopt a similar mindset to tamp down on the seemingly meteoric rise in divisive, demeaning, polarizing, and in some cases dehumanizing language we routinely see deployed in our society.

I fear that we are becoming anesthetized to what would be considered vicious, uncivil, unacceptable, and unproductive discourse to a prudent, independent observer.

Grace, Dignity, and Compassion Defined and Interpreted

From Merriam-Webster:

Grace: "The quality or state of being considerate or thoughtful."

This definition is clear and needs no interpretation other than what your mother or father taught you: “Treat others as you would like others to treat you.” This is the Golden Rule that is found nearly universally across philosophical disciplines and religious orders. Let’s take the Golden Rule seriously.

Dignity: "The quality or state of being worthy, honored, or esteemed."

I apply this word both internally and externally. Certainly, I want to carry myself in a manner that exudes worth and esteem, but more importantly, I want others to feel like I hold them in the same regard. We will make greater progress in creating a more diverse, inclusive, and tolerant society if we hold others with the same esteem that we hold ourselves. There are countless examples from our history we can learn from when we dehumanize populations or believe we’re better than someone else. Almost invariably, really bad things happen when there are perceived differences in worth across populations.

Compassion: "Sympathetic consciousness of others' distress, together with a desire to alleviate it."

Empathy and compassion are related concepts but the latter is the stronger of the two in that compassion encompasses the ability to understand another human's pain AND the desire to help. Personally, I turn that desire to help into philanthropic activities pointed primarily at education and hunger-related causes. You don’t have to be wealthy to give back. Time and talent are equally important currencies for most worthy causes. For more on how to bring the concept of compassion to life, see my Muse on The Case for Compassionate Leadership from May of this year.

Think Critically and Rationally—Continuously Improve

I must speak up. I must make my voice heard. Am I perfect? No - not by a long shot. Do I strive to continuously improve? Yes. Mistakes are an opportunity for reflection and growth. I periodically catch myself being overly judgmental toward a person or group. When this happens, I ask myself how I could have done things differently and how I can become a better version of myself in the future. I ask myself a series of ‘why’ questions to explore the root cause of my behavior.

This muse is not a political statement, but is instead a plea for rational, logical, and productive public and private discourse and debate. Caustic, divisive, and purposefully denigrating rhetoric is wildly unproductive and has no place in our society. Dehumanizing others leads to violence and chaos.

To make matters worse, we live in a particularly dangerous time in which our ‘always on’ social media tools and partisan news and information sources become huge echo chambers that continually feed us mis/disinformation that magnifies our differences, making it appear that the other side of a debate is evil and that we’re under attack.

Changing how we speak to one another and opening our minds and hearts to the consideration of other points of view will help us move forward. We will make greater progress, enjoy more economic success, and be the shining stars on the global stage we deserve to be if we change our tack. 

In my opinion, the first step to break free from a fixed, unyielding mindset toward the adoption of an agile, growth mindset is to build the skill of active listening. Here’s the link to my Muse from late June of this year on developing this critical skill.

It’s excruciatingly clear to me that our current-state polarized way of working is not yielding the results we’ve hoped for, and is making the American Dream of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness less attainable for us all. 

So I leave you with this today. Grace. Dignity. Compassion.