My sister, an RN in oncology, often speaks about compassion and I assumed it was a “nursing thing” until about six months ago when I truly heard her words for the first time: “what we really have and can give is compassion”. That sentence has been growing inside and today I see, but more importantly I feel, what she means. Compassion is holding a woman’s hand as she moves closer to death but it is also reaching out to someone in good health, someone whose desk is not so far from our own, someone who may have more insecurities/fears/pain than we do. The spirit of the times in the world of business is much more about conquest and competition than communication and compassion; we focus on “being the best” but not necessarily on being good. Maybe it’s a question of courage (from the Latin cor meaning heart): if we had the courage to step away from ourselves, from our “position”, from our persona, we might be able to give something of real value to someone else and realize that the journey to reach our end-of-the-year objectives is as important as the final result. Although the etymology of compassion is to suffer with, it’s not only in that regard that we need compassion in management. In compassion, I see compass: we need to show the way and steer the project and bring everyone home safely. In compassion, I also see passion: as managers we need to share our own passion and also strive to understand the desires and passion of our team members because if we know what gives them the energy to come to work every day, won’t we know how to motivate them better?