I was reading an article by The Dalai Lama this morning on mindful compassionate leadership. He says being warmhearted leads to a happy life, a fulfilled life. If you approach everything in life in a compassionate manner then you will be more peaceful in your response, whereas if you are always approaching life with anger you are more likely to have a violent response.
If we always look for what is wrong with the world, we will always find what is wrong, creating a destructive negative viewpoint of the world. If things are not working a more helpful viewpoint would be how could we possibly make things better.
A warmhearted compassionate approach to life encourages creativity. As Brene Brown would say a warmhearted view assumes everyone is doing their best, and they need compassion and support to improve their performance. What we have to remember when assuming people are always doing their best is that performance is variable. So it may appear that people are not putting the effort in. It might be that there are not putting the effort in, but what is causing them not to put effort in? Having a warmhearted view of them gives them an opportunity to improve, what can we possibly do to improve performance, or what could they possibly do that they would perform better at. If we have an angry response to their poor performance we condemn them and do not get the opportunity to discover the reasons for performance, therefore the likelihood of continued poor performance is increased. Being warmhearted in the end is more likely to get a positive result, either increased performance or the poor performing leaving and finding a role that better suites them.
Being consistent in a warmhearted approach takes practice, so practice.
Connected Coaching 