We sometimes avoid compassion for self-interested reasons. Yet this study suggests that turning off compassion might work against self-interest by undercutting two things that we hold dear: our moral self and our moral standards.

We all have been held by a powerful relationship in our lives at one time or another, and those of us fortunate enough to experience that relational power in a business setting have usually seen the results that were delivered to be beyond what would have otherwise been possible.

My hope is that the G.R.A.C.E. model will help you to actualize compassion in your own life and that the impact of this will ripple out to benefit the people with whom you interact each day as well as countless others.

What's critical to compassion is that it unites this understanding of others' distress with the motivation to alleviate that distress. Helping behavior further requires the cognitive and behavioral resources to act on that motivation.

Think about compassion like a radio dial. We can tune our compassion up or down, but where the dial lands will depend on our concerns about being overwhelmed and on how well we can control our emotions.

Compassion covers a broad range of emotional and behavioral constructs. We see compassion in the workplace daily, whether through helping a manager finish a task after hours, giving a new employee help, or offering banked sick time.

In what cities is a needy stranger more likely to receive help? What sort of community teaches a citizen to withhold compassion toward strangers? Dr. Robert Levine has spent much of the past two decades systematically exploring these questions.