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Chade-Meng Tan: Everyday compassion at Google
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Google's "Jolly Good Fellow," Chade-Meng Tan, talks about how the company practices compassion in its everyday business -- and its bold side projects.
Chade-Meng Tan - Google Fellow
One of Google's earliest engineers, Chade-Meng Tan is now Google's Jolly Good Fellow -- the head of personal growth at the groundbreaking search company. Full bio
One of Google's earliest engineers, Chade-Meng Tan is now Google's Jolly Good Fellow -- the head of personal growth at the groundbreaking search company. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
00:15
So what does the happiest man in the world look like?
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He certainly doesn't look like me.
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He looks like this.
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His name is Matthieu Ricard.
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So how do you get to be the happiest man in the world?
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Well it turns out
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there is a way to measure happiness in the brain.
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And you do that by measuring the relative activation
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of the left prefrontal cortex in the fMRI,
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versus the right prefrontal cortex.
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And Matthieu's happiness measure
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is off the charts.
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He's by far the happiest man
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ever measured by science.
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Which leads us to a question:
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What was he thinking when he was being measured?
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Perhaps something very naughty.
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(Laughter)
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Actually, he was meditating
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on compassion.
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Matthieu's own experience
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is that compassion is the happiest state ever.
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Reading about Matthieu
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was one of the pivotal moments of my life.
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My dream
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is to create the conditions
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for world peace in my lifetime --
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and to do that
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by creating the conditions
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for inner peace
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and compassion
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on a global scale.
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And learning about Matthieu
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gave me a new angle to look at my work.
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Matthieu's brain scan shows
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that compassion is not a chore.
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Compassion is something that creates happiness.
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Compassion is fun.
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And that mind-blowing insight
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changes the entire game.
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Because if compassion was a chore,
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nobody's going to do it,
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except maybe the Dalai Lama or something.
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But if compassion was fun,
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everybody's going to do it.
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Therefore,
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to create the conditions for global compassion,
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all we have to do
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is to reframe compassion
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as something that is fun.
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But fun is not enough.
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What if compassion
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is also profitable?
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What if compassion is also good for business?
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Then, every boss, every manager in the world,
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will want to have compassion --
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like this.
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That would create the conditions
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for world peace.
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So, I started paying attention
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to what compassion looks like in a business setting.
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Fortunately, I didn't have to look very far.
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Because what I was looking for was right in front of my eyes --
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in Google, my company.
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I know there are other compassionate companies in the world,
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but Google is the place I'm familiar with
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because I've been there for 10 years,
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so I'll use Google as the case study.
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Google is a company
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born of idealism.
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It's a company that thrives on idealism.
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And maybe because of that,
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compassion is organic
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and widespread company-wide.
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In Google, expressions of corporate compassion
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almost always follow the same pattern.
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It's sort of a funny pattern.
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It starts with a small group of Googlers
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taking the initiative to do something.
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And they don't usually ask for permission;
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they just go ahead and do it,
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and then other Googlers join in, and it just gets bigger and bigger.
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And sometimes it gets big enough
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to become official.
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So in other words,
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it almost always starts from the bottom up.
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And let me give you some examples.
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The first example is the largest annual community event --
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where Googlers from around the world
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donate their labor to their local communities --
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was initiated and organized
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by three employees
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before it became official,
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because it just became too big.
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Another example, three Googlers --
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a chef, an engineer
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and, most funny, a massage therapist --
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three of them, they learned about a region in India
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where 200,000 people live
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without a single medical facility.
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So what do they do?
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They just go ahead and start a fundraiser.
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And they raise enough money to build this hospital --
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the first hospital of its kind
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for 200,000 people.
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During the Haiti earthquake,
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a number of engineers and product managers
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spontaneously came together
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and stayed overnight
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to build a tool
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to allow earthquake victims to find their loved ones.
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And expressions of compassion
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are also found in our international offices.
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In China for example,
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one mid-level employee
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initiated the largest social action competition in China,
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involving more than 1,000 schools in China,
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working on issues
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such as education, poverty,
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health care and the environment.
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There is so much organic social action
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all around Google
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that the company decided to form
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a social responsibility team
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just to support these efforts.
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And this idea, again,
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came from the grassroots,
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from two Googlers who wrote their own job descriptions
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and volunteered themselves for the job.
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And I found it fascinating
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that the social responsibility team
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was not formed as part of some grand corporate strategy.
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It was two persons saying, "Let's do this,"
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and the company said, "Yes."
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So it turns out
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that Google is a compassionate company,
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because Googlers found
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compassion to be fun.
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But again, fun is not enough.
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There are also real business benefits.
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So what are they?
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The first benefit of compassion
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is that it creates highly effective business leaders.
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What does that mean?
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There are three components of compassion.
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There is the affective component,
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which is, "I feel for you."
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There is the cognitive component,
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which is, "I understand you."
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And there is a motivational component,
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which is, "I want to help you."
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So what has this got to do with business leadership?
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According to a very comprehensive study
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led by Jim Collins,
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and documented in the book "Good to Great,"
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it takes a very special kind of leader
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to bring a company
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from goodness to greatness.
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And he calls them "Level 5 leaders."
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These are leaders
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who, in addition to being highly capable,
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possess two important qualities,
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and they are
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humility and ambition.
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These are leaders
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who are highly ambitious for the greater good.
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And because they're ambitious for a greater good,
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they feel no need to inflate their own egos.
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And they, according to the research,
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make the best business leaders.
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And if you look at these qualities
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in the context of compassion,
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we find
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that the cognitive and affective components of compassion --
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understanding people and empathizing with people --
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inhibits, tones down,
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what I call the excessive self-obsession that's in us,
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therefore creating the conditions
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for humility.
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The motivational component of compassion
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creates ambition for greater good.
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In other words,
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compassion is the way to grow Level 5 leaders.
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And this is the first compelling business benefit.
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The second compelling benefit of compassion
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is that it creates an inspiring workforce.
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Employees mutually inspire each other
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towards greater good.
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It creates a vibrant, energetic community
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where people admire and respect each other.
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I mean, you come to work in the morning,
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and you work with three guys
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who just up and decide to build a hospital in India.
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It's like how can you not be inspired by those people --
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your own coworkers?
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So this mutual inspiration
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promotes collaboration,
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initiative and creativity.
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It makes us a highly effective company.
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So, having said all that,
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what is the secret formula
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for brewing compassion
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in the corporate setting?
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In our experience,
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there are three ingredients.
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The first ingredient
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is to create a culture
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of passionate concern
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for the greater good.
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So always think:
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how is your company and your job
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serving the greater good?
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Or, how can you further serve
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the greater good?
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This awareness of serving the greater good
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is very self-inspiring
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and it creates fertile ground
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for compassion to grow in.
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That's one.
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The second ingredient
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is autonomy.
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So in Google, there's a lot of autonomy.
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And one of our most popular managers jokes that,
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this is what he says,
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"Google is a place
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where the inmates run the asylum."
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And he considers himself one of the inmates.
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If you already have
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a culture of compassion
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and idealism
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and you let your people roam free,
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they will do the right thing
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in the most compassionate way.
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The third ingredient
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is to focus on inner development
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and personal growth.
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Leadership training in Google, for example,
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places a lot of emphasis on the inner qualities,
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such as self-awareness, self-mastery,
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empathy and compassion,
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because we believe
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that leadership begins
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with character.
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We even created a seven-week curriculum
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on emotion intelligence,
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which we jokingly call "Searching Inside Yourself."
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It's less naughty than it sounds.
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So I'm an engineer by training,
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but I'm one of the creators and instructors of this course,
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which I find kind of funny,
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because this is a company that trusts an engineer
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to teach emotion intelligence.
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What a company.
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(Laughter)
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So "Search Inside Yourself" -- how does it work?
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It works in three steps.
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The first step
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is attention training.
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Attention is the basis
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of all higher cognitive and emotional abilities.
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Therefore, any curriculum
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for training emotion intelligence
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has to begin with attention training.
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The idea here is to train attention
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to create a quality of mind
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that is calm and clear
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at the same time.
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And this creates the foundation
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for emotion intelligence.
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The second step follows the first step.
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The second step is developing self-knowledge
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and self-mastery.
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So using the supercharged attention from step one,
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we create a high-resolution perception
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into the cognitive and emotive processes.
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What does that mean?
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It means being able to observe our thought stream
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and the process of emotion
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with high clarity,
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objectivity
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and from a third-person perspective.
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And once you can do that,
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you create the kind of self-knowledge
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that enables self-mastery.
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The third step, following the second step,
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is to create new mental habits.
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What does that mean? Imagine this.
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Imagine whenever you meet any other person,
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any time you meet a person,
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your habitual, instinctive first thought
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is, "I want you to be happy.
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I want you to be happy."
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Imagine you can do that.
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Having this habit, this mental habit,
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changes everything at work.
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Because this good will
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is unconsciously picked up by other people,
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and it creates trust,
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and trust creates a lot of good working relationships.
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And this also creates the conditions
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for compassion in the workplace.
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Someday, we hope to open-source
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"Search Inside Yourself"
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so that everybody in the corporate world
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will at least be able to use it as a reference.
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And in closing,
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I want to end the same place I started,
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with happiness.
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I want to quote this guy -- the guy in robes, not the other guy --
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the Dalai Lama,
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who said, "If you want others to be happy,
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practice compassion.
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If you want to be happy,
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practice compassion."
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I found this to be true,
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both on the individual level
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and at a corporate level.
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And I hope that compassion
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will be both fun and profitable for you too.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Chade-Meng Tan - Google FellowOne of Google's earliest engineers, Chade-Meng Tan is now Google's Jolly Good Fellow -- the head of personal growth at the groundbreaking search company.
Why you should listen
Chade-Meng Tan was one of Google's earliest engineers. Among many other things, Meng helped build Google's first mobile search service, and headed the team that kept a vigilant eye on Google's search quality. After an eight-year stint in Engineering, he now serves with GoogleEDU as the Head of Personal Growth. One of his main projects is Search Inside Yourself -- a mindfulness-based emotional intelligence course, which he hopes will eventually contribute to world peace in a meaningful way. His 2012 book is also called Search Inside Yourself -- and Dan Pink is a fan.
Outside of Google, Meng is the Founder and (Jolly Good) President of the Tan Teo Charitable Foundation, a small foundation dedicated to promoting peace, liberty and enlightenment in the world. He is a founding patron of Stanford University's Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE). He is also a founding patron of the World Peace Festival, and adviser to a number of technology startups.
Chade-Meng Tan | Speaker | TED.com