can Red Cross because he had given of himself and his company’s re-
sources, not the usual ‘‘arms-length’’ dollar donation. People felt his
kindness and compassion firsthand, and that’s how he wanted it: ‘‘My
Mormon grandfather said, ‘the best thing you could do was giving ser-
vice to other people.’ And it’s good business.’’9
COMPASSION FOR THOSE IN TROUBLE
The Bible has many examples of leaders who advised and/or exercised
compassion for those in difficult straits: the prisoner and the oppressed
slave; the victims of natural disasters; war refugees; the halt, blind, and the lame (today referred to as the disabled) and even the dead, who,
56
THE BIBLE ON LEADERSHIP
with compassion, might be restored to life. (And many a ‘‘dead’’ corpo-
ration has been resurrected by leaders like Lou Gerstner at IBM and Lee
Iacocca at Chrysler.)
Daniel courageously prophesied to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylo-
nia: ‘‘Oh king, renounce your sins by doing what is right, and your
wickedness by being kind to the oppressed. It may be that then your
prosperity will continue.’’ (Dan. 4:27) He was warning a mighty (and
decadent) ruler that a nation founded on injustice and lack of compas-
sion contains the seeds of its own destruction.
A number of modern managers (if not all kings) seem to have heard
and acted on Daniel’s message. Isaac Tigrett, the founder of Hard Rock
Cafe, hired some of society’s outcasts—street people, bikers, and others
who were on the fringes of society and probably would not have fit
well into more traditional organizations. He called his organization the
‘‘Rainbow Coalition’’ because of its diverse group of social and ethnic
groups. He eliminated ‘‘staff meetings,’’ calling them ‘‘family meetings’’
instead. He instituted an equal pay policy and profit sharing.
Says Tigrett, ‘‘I didn’t care about anything but the people. Just cher-
ish them, look after them, be sensitive to their lives.’’10 A hopeless idealist whose business was doomed to financial failure? No, a successful
businessman who sold his business a few years later for over $100 mil-
lion.
Joseph Rebello, the CEO of Citizens Financial Group, is certainly
not your typical banker. Although realizing the importance of profits,
he also has exercised a considerable amount of compassion and kind-
ness. And like Ryder Systems’ Burns, he has been out in the front lines
of philanthropy, not just doling out money from his penthouse office.
Says Rebello, ‘‘If we just make money, we fail.’’
How has this executive avoided ‘‘failure’’? First he donated half of
his $2 million salary to his alma mater. Then, prior to accepting his
CEO job at Citizens Financial Group, he took a leave of absence to
work in a shelter for abused children. He encourages his staff to do
similar charitable works and has been criticized for having ‘‘too much
heart’’ (a criticism leveled at many of the managers and leaders men-
tioned in this book). He accepts this label gladly and replies, ‘‘Ulti-
Kindness and Compassion
57
mately, what matters is the good that we do.’’11 This is one banker
who has been able to combine compassion and kindness with financial
success.
Hal Rosenbluth of Rosenbluth Travel was motivated primarily by
compassion, not profit, when he decided to move his data processing
and customer service center to Linton, North Dakota. Rosenbluth,
from his corporate offices in Philadelphia, had heard that much of the
northern Midwest had experienced a severe drought, causing many
crop failures and foreclosures on farm mortgages.
Performing further research, Rosenbluth found that Linton was the
hardest-hit city in the hardest-hit state. Eschewing any further profit-
ability analysis, he quickly hired about 200 people in the Linton area to
perform the data processing and customer service work for his com-
pany. This was a tremendous economic and psychological boost to an
area whose major source of income—agriculture—had been severely
threatened by natural disaster.
Disaster often brings out generosity and compassion. After the Sep-
tember 11 World Trade Center attack, a number of corporate leaders
gave economic assistance to the rescue and clean-up effort. The new
CEO of GE, Jeffrey Immelt, gave a corporate donation of $10 million,
an amount that soon became the corporate standard for a large com-
pany.
As a consultant to a major insurance company several years ago, I met
a supremely compassionate manager. The company was undertaking a
joint venture with another financial services company, and the opera-
tions were not merging well. The ‘‘partnering’’ company, located half
a continent away, was not familiar with insurance operations and had
hired very inexperienced people to process claims. The result was a
total backup in the claims process and total demoralization in my client
company, which had until then taken great pride in the prompt and
knowledgeable response to every claim.
My job as a consultant was to travel to every branch office and speak
to the branch director and employees to ascertain exactly what had gone
wrong, and to get their suggestions for remedying the situation. I was
particularly impressed with the compassion one particular branch man-
58
THE BIBLE ON LEADERSHIP
ager had for his employees. Before we met with the entire employee
group, he insisted on taking me to lunch privately, where he proceeded
to brief me not so much on the operational issues but rather on the
emotional toll the merged operation had taken on himself and his em-
ployees, who had also been threatened with a downsizing. He confided
that he was so disheartened that he had difficulty sleeping at night and
had asked his doctor for an anti-anxiety medication. This manager’s
tenderhearted concern for his employees reminds me of the lament of
Jeremiah: ‘‘Oh that my head were a spring of water. I would weep day
and night for the slain of my people.’’ ( Jer. 9:1)
The story of King Saul and David, who succeeded him as king, is an
example of compassion in the face of hostility. Saul’s anger was inextin-
guishably engendered when he first heard the people singing, ‘‘Saul has
slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands.’’ From then on, he
pursued David with a vengeance, hurling a spear at him in the royal
palace and pursuing him throughout the countryside.
Fortunately for David, he had the friendship and compassion of Saul’s
own son, Jonathan. Jonathan warned David to flee from his father, and
David returned this compassion with compassion toward Saul. David
was hiding in a cave when Saul entered. David could have killed his
vengeful adversary, but instead merely tore off a piece of Saul’s robe as
a sign that he had the power to kill him, but had not.
David’s compassionate sparing of Saul was a major step in his peaceful
accession to the throne. He even buried Saul after he was killed in
battle. But David’s compassion extended even into the next generation.
Shortly after assuming the kingship of all Israel, David asked if there
was anyone left of the house of Saul, his former tormentor. There was,
a man named Mephibosheth, Saul’s grandson and Jonathan’s son, who
was ‘‘crippled in both feet.’’ David summoned Mephibosheth, who un-
derstandably, as a member of Saul’s household, feared the worst. After
all, he was totally incapable of running, and he realized that as the sole
surviving member of Saul’s household, he could be the target of all of
David’s revenge.
But David’s compassion was greater than his vengefulness. He re-
membered the kindness of Jonathan and chose to overlook the treacher-
Kindness and Compassion
59
ousness of Saul: ‘‘Don’t be afraid, for I will surely show you kindness
for the sake of your father Jonathan. I will restore to you all the land
that belonged to your grandfather Saul, and you will always eat at my
table.’’ (2 Sam. 9:7)
SHARING THE WEALTH
In both biblical and modern times, we have had inequities of wealth.
Jacob had great numbers of cattle and sheep, while many of the other
tribesmen had few. An investment banker may make fifty times as much
as the back-office operator who inputs the trades.
It is probably impossible to eliminate all the inequities in any society,
be it biblical, feudal, communistic, or capitalistic. But it is highly possible to maintain the attitude (and corresponding actions) that wealth and
resources should be shared. John outlines this premise in a very straight-
forward passage from Luke 3:11: ‘‘The man with two tunics should
share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the
same.’’
Our modern world is more complex, but the principles of sharing
remain the same. One industry that has never been particularly known
for its ‘‘sharing’’ mentality is investment banking. A friend of mine who
worked on ‘‘The Street’’ once described his coworkers as ‘‘monetary
titans and spiritual dwarfs.’’ But an exception (at least in its leadership) is Bear Stearns. Ace Greenberg, the chairman, requires that all 300 of
his senior directors give away at least 4 percent of their gross income to
charitable causes every year, a sort of corporate tithing. And amazingly