Compassion: How it makes you and your team smarter.

1. Compassion: How it makes you and your team smarter.

2. Complete the “Group negative behaviours” checklist. This was distributed during the lecture. It is also on slide 20.

3. Compassion could solve these issues. • Take a minute with your neighbours to decide what the two components (psychologies) of compassion are being demonstrated here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTg5VGbzTq8

4. Compassion • ….is defined in neuroscience, anthropology, group psychotherapy and clinical psychology as: • Noticing distress or disadvantaging to yourself or to others and doing something to reduce it.

5. There are no barriers to this except those we are told to make. • The point of power is in the present: you can bring these communicative barriers down today amongst you all. You may be able to see others in their multiple identities. They are what makes us deeply connected to each other in the best ways possible. Not sure? Have a look at this: • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD8tjhVO1Tc

6. A meeting of miracles

7. Getting on to your team work • The micro skills of compassion for raising your individual and collective intelligence: • Google’s US$5 million study: Project Aristotle (Duhigg, 2016)

8. Two concepts ‘Safeness’ ‘Critical thinking’:

9. High self esteem. How do students maintain that?

10. Self esteem may not be a helpful goal (Kingston, 2008)

11. Compassion under the research microscope • Compassion is agreed across psychology, anthropology and neuroscience to be definable as noticing the social or physical distress of others and taking action to reduce it. This is not the same as sympathy or empathy. • Compassion is cross cultural (Goetz et al, 2010; Immordino-Yang et al, 2009). Moreover, it reduces feelings of threat to yourself and to others, and so is associated with reduction in stress levels (Page-Gould et al, 2008).

12. Compassion facilitates safeness: When threat systems in the brain can be calmed down, this allows for individuals’ thinking processes to be more efficient (P. Gilbert, 2005; Page-Gould et al, 2008; Cozolino, 213). It is therefore a more appropriate response to stress than trying to increase self-esteem which is a problematic concept (Kingston, 2008).

13. Working with others • Try to watch interactional processes in your team as these unfold in front of you. (McDermott, 1989)

14. The relationship between ‘Safeness’ and ‘Critical thinking’ • In a study at the university of California by Page-Gould et al (2008) students from different cultures who did not know each other had to meet in pairs. They were asked to share news and information about their lives and they quickly became closer, more comfortable and felt safer with each other. The study found that you can work most easily with new people, if you trust each other and feel comfortable and relaxed with each other as soon as possible.

15. Eye contact when working in your teams. What do the disciplines tell us about this when we combine their findings? McDermott (1988) Linguistics Bion (1961) Group psychotherapy Vertegaal (2002) Computer science

16. Working with others When you speak in a group, try to use inclusive eye contact. That is, look at everyone in the group, as though the whole group was just one person: • S29: I felt not as one person but I felt as a person within an entity and the entity was my group… I felt that I was part of the group and I didn’t feel like an individual at that point. It didn’t make me feel like I’m focused on it. It made me feel like we’re all focused on it.

17. What can you do if you find you are helping an over talker?

18. Could you try this? If someone is looking only at you when they speak – Gently break eye contact with the speaker a few times and look at the others in the team instead. The speaker may start to look at them too. That means you have helped the speaker to become more inclusive.

19. Team strategies based on listening and compassion Initiate and sustain inclusive eye contact (Vertegaal et al, 2002; 2003) and use this strategically to: • interrupt alpha pairs (c.f. Bion, 1961) • interrupt monopolising behaviours (Yalom, 1985) • draw out a more equal spread of participation around the group (Vertegaal et al, 2002; 2003) • Validate each other (Leahy, 2005) “Yes – I’ve had that experience too…” (= you are not crazy; you are not alone) Moments of overlapping, or shared understanding can occur at unanticipated moments as suggested by Complexity Theory (Law and Urry, 2004) and explored in anthropology by (Scott, 1990).

20. Team strategies based on listening and compassion • Proactively invite comments from quieter students, verbally and/or non-verbally, and then protect reasonable silences in which they can think and respond (c.f. Turner on students’ spoiling silences, 2002). • Question for you: Are you strong enough to be patient?

21. The check list of negative group behaviours • Talking a lot so that others do not get many chances to speak. • Talking in silences when the shyest students are getting ready to speak. • Fixing eye contact with the tutor only, or just one student and forgetting to look at all the other people in the group.  • Using difficult language; not explaining difficult words or expressions so that other people in the group cannot understand • Not listening carefully to other peoples' ideas • Not helping other people when they are getting into difficulty while they are speaking. Instead taking control and their chance to speak away from them.  Talking over them. • Not inviting others to speak; not thanking others for their contribution. • Not speaking at all; becoming ‘too shy’ and so giving nothing to the group. • Not even reading a little bit in order to bring something to the discussion. • Letting other people talk and talk without interrupting them.  • Letting them use difficult words or expressions. Allowing them to speak too fast for everyone to understand them. • Not asking for more explanations when understanding is becoming too difficult.

22. Remember to witness yourself : . . Communicating efficiently to agree on methods, goals and story content The final production of an interesting solution and your ability to identify a short, appropriate and effective title Listening and ensuring everyone gets involved • Contributing to a relaxed, respectful atmosphere within your team • Being engaging, inclusive, encouraging, supportive • Considering suggestions from peers constructively to develop ideas • Asking questions to analyse a certain case study and make it more insightful

23. Enhancing social and learning experiences– Team work question 1 In what ways do your team members enhance your social and learning experiences in this group work that you most value in them? 

24. Enhancing social and learning experiences– Team work question 2 : In what ways do you enhance the social and learning experiences of you team members that they most value in you?

25. References Bion, W. (1961). Experiences in groups. London: Tavistock Publications Cozolino, Louis. (2013). The Social Neuroscience of Education. New York: WW Norton & Co. Duhigg, C. (2016). What Google learned from its quest to build the perfect team. The New York Times Magazine. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google- learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team . Gilbert, P. (2005). Compassion and cruelty: A biopsychosocial approach. In Gilbert, P. (Ed.), Compassion: Conceptualisations, research and use in psychotherapy. (pp. 9 - 74). New York: Routlege. Goetz, L., Keltner, D. & Simon-Thomas, E. (2010). Compassion: An evolutionary analysis and empirical review. Psychological Bulletin, 136(6), pp.351-374. Immordino-Yang, M. H., McColl, A., Damasio, H. & Damasio, A. (2009). Neural correlates of admiration and compassion. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 106 (19), 8021–8026. Available at: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid Kingston, E. (2008) ‘Emotional competence and drop-out rates in higher education.’ Education + Training, 50(2), pp. 128-139. Law, J. & Urry, J. (2004). Enacting the social. Economy and Society, 33(3), 390-410. Leahy, R. L. (2005). A social-cognitive model of validation. In P. Gilbert (Ed.), Compassion: Conceptualisations,research and use in psychotherapy. (pp. 195-218). London: Routledge. McDermott, R. (1988). Inarticulateness. In D. Tannen (Ed.), Linguistics incontext: Connecting observation and understanding. (pp. 37-68). Norwood: Ablex Publishing. Page-Gould, E., Mendoza-Denton, R. & Tropp, L. (2008). With a little help from my cross-group friend: Reducing anxiety in intergroup contexts through cross-group friendship. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(5), 1080-1094 Scott, J.C. (1990). Domination and the arts of resistance: Hidden transcripts. New Haven: Yale University Press. Turner, Y. (2009). Knowing me, knowing you, Is there nothing we can do? Pedagogic Challenges in Using Group Work to Create an Intercultural Learning Space. Journal of Studies in International Education, 13(2), 240-255. Vertegaal, R. & Ding, Y. (2002). Effects of eye gaze on mediated group conversations: Amount or synchronization? Proceedings of the 2002 ACM Conferenceon ComputerSupported Cooperative Work. (pp. 41-48).New Orleans. Yalom, I. & Leszsz, M. (2005). The theory and practice of group psychotherapy. (5th ed.). New York: Basic Books.