Compassion

The Compassion and Burnout Reflection Guide is a guided reflection and discussion tool to prepare individuals and teams for candid discussions about burnout and compassion. It includes instructions, reflection questions, and an opportunity to consider how compassion and burnout show up in your life’s many facets.

The Compassionate Leadership Scale is permitted for broad use in noncommercial settings, including but not limited to academically focused research to include dissertations and theses and original works of scholarship and grant activity within the limitations of the publication copyright, so long as this work is appropriately and correctly cited. To use the instrument in a commercial and/or for-profit setting, or for questions regarding permission of use, please contact the corresponding author. Additional materials including the questions contained within the Compassionate Leader Behavior Index are available upon request. The index is copyrighted through the UofL Foundation (Copyright #: TXu002201878).

This case is the story of a college student, Daniel Hodges, who took a summer job working as a maintenance worker in a cemetery. It includes Daniel’s personal reflections on the topic of his compassion, and the lack thereof, while working in this job. The case reviews a series of events that occurred over the summer. Each of the events were opportunities for compassion, and Daniel responded differently to each one of them. Daniel sees himself as an ethical person who values compassion, but the extent to which he exhibits compassion varies from event to event. Daniel struggles to explain why his behavior varies between events. The case provides an opportunity for students to try to understand compassion more deeply, including how psychology, skill, relationships, and context all influence the compassion a person exhibits, and can be used as a way to help students reflect on how, when, and to what extent they will exhibit compassion at work, and also what they can do to help others exhibit compassion. A teaching note can be requested by emailing CPL@louisville.edu.

This tool is from Henrietta Pepper’s book Unbranded: Emerge a Brand New You.

Identify a specific situation or challenge you are experiencing.  Go through this exercise putting yourself as the focal point and/or putting the other person (s) in the situation as the focal point.  Based on the output; plot out some action steps from an empathetic lens.

Some examples to consider:

• You’re starting a new job and feeling apprehensive about forming new relationships.

• A family member and you are having conflict regarding a certain issue.

• A longtime friendship has become dysfunctional.

• You manage a team and collaboration has become difficult.