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According to British Columbia’s Compassionate Systems Leadership (CSL) site (https://www.compassionatesystemsleadership.net/), “the CSL approach comprises an integrated framework for the development of capabilities and knowledge that strengthen the capacity of individuals and collectives to effectively progress systems change initiatives. CSL builds skills and practices in three interconnected domains: personal mastery, reflective or generative interactions and systems thinking. CSL draws on practices that are effective in building individual insight and well-being and extends them to include the strengthening of interpersonal relationships while deepening the understanding of how the whole system contributes to outcomes.” 

According to Mayerhoff (1971), care is a process of helping another (a living being or an idea) grow and actualize oneself through mutual trust and through deepening and qualitative transformation of the relationship. Organizations need to show their employees that their company authentically cares, which means providing for well-being in ways that do not require people to add “one more thing” on to already-full plates but, rather, include the provision of meaningful, caring support as part of the workplace norms and culture. A 2019 article from Forbes makes the case for why helping your organization provide care for its people makes good business sense as well as being the compassionate way to work together.

Collective care refers to viewing the emotional well-being of the people in a group as a collective responsibility rather than the purview of each individual to manage through self-care. The resilience literature is clear:  we need connections to supportive, healthy people to stay healthy ourselves. A 2018 Briarpatch article describes the ways in which collective care is important in helping to prevent burnout in activist work; the lessons are transferable to any work that we do as humans working with other humans.

Participatory Narrative Inquiry (PNI) is a way of helping groups work with complexity. Questions of how to work together effectively in ways that build and/or support trust and psychologically safe workplaces predicated on collective care are great questions to address using PNI. More information on the specifics of this approach can be found at Working With Stories.