Keeping Score

Keeping Score
January 28, 2021

First, From the Heart

If you were born in most hospitals in the past 70 years, you were likely given a score 1 minute after birth, and another at 5 minutes. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, the Apgar Score, named after Dr. Virginia Apgar, has stood the test of time to help health care providers assess critical metrics for newborn survival and transition to life outside the womb.

We are deluged with measurement and scoring throughout our young and adult lives, with school grades, test scores, sports scores, 360-degree human resource reviews, and how we are performing against plan. Assessment and scoring has its place in modern life. Yet not everything can be easily summed up in a numeric or ranking when we enter the world of kindness, care, and the heart. Find a mix of methodologies that feel right for you to navigate your own compassionate leadership journey.

Best of the Blog

Keeping Score

The evidence is compelling. Leaders who act with compassion preside over organizations with lower turnover, more committed employees, and create the opportunity for greater creativity and innovation. Point your compass in the right direction, measure the things within your control, and trust the process. Everything else will follow. Read more.

Research Worth Sharing

Test How Self-Compassionate You Are
by Dr. Kristin Neff, PhD
on Self-Compassion.org

Compassionate leadership starts from the inside out, with self-compassion. Here's an assessment you can use, and you don't have to share the score with anyone but yourself. Take the Test.

Practice Matters

Equanimity

The stillness, the essence, and the presence. There is a state of being we find in the quiet that is at once energizing and calming. Where we embody full awareness of all there is. We are not overstimulated, activated, or triggered with fear. Nor are we withdrawn or hiding.

Goldilocks got it right. Not too big, not too small, but just right. This is the state where we are at our best, alive in this moment. From this centered place, we have the capacity to give and receive in response to what is in front of us. Our next step might be in any direction we desire – we are free to orient towards any possibility that beckons. Practice leads us here, and always brings us back when we need to return.

When can we practice? Always!

Photo Credit: Ray Hennessy on Unsplash.

Upcoming Events

Compassion in Therapy Summit
Attend online January 30 - February 3

Even if you are not a therapist, we know you will discover valuable perspectives to fuel your own compassion in this upcoming summit.

Registration is free. Enjoy talks from many of our favorite teachers including Drs. Dan Siegel, Chris Germer, Kelly McGonigal, Thupten Jinpa, and Kristen Neff. Find out more.

Leadership, Evolved.

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