In his role as Head of Mindfulness and Compassion at LinkedIn, Scott Shute is charged with building mindfulness and compassion into the very fabric of the company. He’s working on ways to include those principles into how they develop products, how they sell, how they service. His main goal is to weave this into a way that serves his employees as well as our customers.
To start, Scott explains the need to implement compassion into the framework of the company, saying, “When a company or organization has compassion in its roots, it will be more aware of the impact that it has on its customers and the world at large.” But to do this you need to educate your team.” Operationalizing compassion and mindfulness starts with training leaders and having them lead by example. There are several resources including learning courses, apps, and workshops available for companies looking to add these practices into their workplace culture,” he adds.
Here are some of the ways that Shute shared to get started in developing a compassionately led company.
Create “Mindful Moments”: To help employees effectively manage stress, promote creating a more profound source of personal happiness, and even increase resilience, we created Mindful Moments. Some ways you could do this in your office include:
- Mindfulness Rooms — We have mindfulness rooms in our offices across the globe to encourage employees to take a break from screen time. We often use them to host regular meditation sessions in some of our offices as well. Set aside a part of your office for a mindful moment and encourage your team to take a few moments for themselves throughout the day.
- Fun Challenges — Get people moving and engaged outside of their typical roles and responsibilities. We host fun challenges such as the 30-Day Mindfulness Challenge, which nearly 1,500 employees signed up for. We also have regular challenges such as “Movement Milestones” and a wellness rewards program, where employees receive points for participating in our various mindfulness and wellness programs.
- Speaker Series — Our Linkedin Speaker Series is one of our favorite ways to support our mission of making professionals more productive and successful. It’s a great way for us to gain exposure to inspiring ideas and innovative thinkers from around the globe. We’ve had speakers such as Fred Kofman, Deepak Chopra, and Dan Goleman as guests. We also invite speakers from other companies to share their insights with us. You can do this in your own office with interesting, relevant leaders in your community.
Communicate with compassion: Compassion is all about trying to see things from others’ viewpoints and putting yourself in their shoes. Leading with compassion helps create a culture where employees can do their best work and stay engaged. An organization with engaged employees doing their best work creates an incredible strategic advantage.
Make it a daily routine: With mindfulness, we’re building employees’ capabilities around decreasing stress and burnout, resilience, self-awareness, and a growth mindset. Mindfulness allows us to be better versions of ourselves. Whether it’s starting a 10-minute meditation practice each day or blocking time in your calendar to go on a walk, there are many ways we can promote mindfulness at work to increase employee happiness and productivity.
The company is taking things a step further by developing a Compassion in Leadership Summit to foster deeper communication and understanding about compassion, especially the importance of compassion in business. Their intention is to fuel the conversation about compassion — to codify it, to celebrate and amplify the efforts of amazing people around the globe.
Shute’s final thought: “One of the biggest skills needed to achieve that vision is compassion, and especially leading with compassion. At LinkedIn we believe that compassion is not just a better way to live, it’s a better way to build a team and it’s the best way to grow a business.”
Follow us here and subscribe here for all the latest news on how you can keep Thriving.
Stay up to date or catch-up on all our podcasts with Arianna Huffington here.