Spreading Compassion In A World Full of Drama

With what’s going on in the world right now it can be hard to find hope. As we’ve connected with our clients and friends impacted by these conflicts, we sometimes wonder, is the darkest side of humanity winning?

And yet there’s hope all around us. Here are just a few reasons to be hopeful.

Last month, Rob Wert and I attended a conference in San Fransisco dedicated to compassionate product design hosted by an amazing organization, Compassion2.0. If you are an organization wanting to bring more compassion into your culture, I encourage you to attend one of their upcoming events.

We were amazed to hear from Jenova Chen, a legend in the gaming industry, about his video game, Sky, which invites 15 million subscribers to experience awe instead of hate, and guides people to respond to vulnerability with empathy and collaboration instead of revenge and violence. It invites us to ask; what diet of images and experiences are you feeding yourself and your children online?

We were inspired by Josh de Rox, photographer turned anthropologist, who is launching an app that populates AI with data representing the best of who you are rather than the drama-based personas curated by profit-driven social media. Questions to ponder; How do you show up online? Is your relationship with emerging technologies helping you become a better human and create a more compassionate world?

Our mission at Next Element is to bring more compassion to every workplace. We do this in three ways:

1. Develop and teach practical methodologies for implementing more compassion at work.
2. Certify and train others to use our assessment and training tools to spread more compassion around the world.
3. Partner with others to amplify the message of compassion.

This year we’ve gotten involved with the Changing Work Collective, a community of conscious business enthusiasts who are on a mission to change work from the inside out. If you are disillusioned with the state of work these days and want to change things, I encourage you to check out this group. They are launching new resources and opportunities for involvement every day.

For 15 years we’ve been measuring the impact of our efforts, particularly our Compassionate Accountability® assessment and training programs that are delivered by a global network of over 120 coaches, consultants, and trainers in a dozen counties around the world. I was reviewing our global outcomes data the other day and am so encouraged by what I saw:

Our Compassionate Accountability Index measures the ratio between a person’s capacity to respond with compassionate accountability and their propensity for negative drama. Globally, across more than a dozen countries and thousands of people around the world, our current ratio is 1.42. This means that compassion is 1.42 times more frequent than drama in these people’s lives. This is before they complete our compassionate accountability communication and conflict training! In some instances, we have seen as much as 40-50% increase in drama resilience after training.

Overall, our clients report 60-70% improvement in personal communication skills, professional communication skills, leadership skills, and teamwork. We hope that the improvement in these people’s lives translates into a cascading impact in their sphere of influence. That’s our goal.

We are so encouraged by the incredible response we’ve had to our newest book, Compassionate Accountability, and the surge in sales of our other books about conflict, compassion, and inclusion. There is an appetite for a third way that doesn’t compromise relationships for results.

For all of you out there who get up every day looking for ways to bring more compassion into the world, thank you for your efforts. You are making a difference. We are grateful for you.

Copyright Next Element Consulting, LLC 2023