From the course: Career Advice from Some of the Biggest Names in Business

Rose Marcario on growing compassion

From the course: Career Advice from Some of the Biggest Names in Business

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Rose Marcario on growing compassion

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- Know that you are well-known for being a, really thinking through compassion and empathy with your employees, and you have talked about the fact that you, at the beginning and end of every day, you meditate. What's been the, how has this hit you personally, how has it changed how you lead, and how you think about listening to your employees and customers? - Well, like I said earlier, you know, there's no sort of end to the suffering in a public health crisis. And you know, people are dealing with deaths in their family that are related to COVID, people are dealing with joblessness. Every CEO I know who's been, their business has been materially affected, has had to tell a lot of bad news to their employees. And you know, we love our employees. We love our colleagues. It's very, very hard to face, you know, putting them in a situation where they're suffering because they're worried about will they come back to work and what will that look like. And the only thing I can say about that is just, you know, I try and use everything to grow, right. Even the difficult situations, you have to try and use everything to grow. And this is a situation where you really have to grow your compassion and you have to give your whole attention to it, your whole self to it, your whole sense of curiosity so you can sort out what are the right actions to take. And sometimes that might feel like a conflicting priority because you've got to save the business. And then in saving the business, you're hurting people that you care about and that have been your colleagues. And I think that's, you know, for me, meditation has been sort of my groundwork for dealing with cultivating my compassion. Some people might do it by raising children or doing sports or any other, you know, forum. But that's the forum that I use. And I find it very helpful in a time like this when we're dealing with a lot of adversity.

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