legal sanity

I’ll be offline for a bit as my sister, Debbie, is getting married this weekend. Debbie, who has a JD-MBA from New York University, is someone I admire a lot for her ability to follow her passion while sharing compassion with others. A few years ago, she left the long-familiar terrain of New York City and relocated to Colorado, where she knew only a couple of people. There, she stepped off the corporate track, became a yoga instructor, met her fiancée and (among other ventures) started a non-profit that aims to introduce yoga to disadvantaged kids. Just the ramblings of a proud sibling on the eve of a special day, you say. Well, maybe. But I also share this personal anecdote as a way of highlighting the nexus between our life's work, the passion with which we pursue it and our capacity for compassion. I’ve previously discussed the spokes of this network here, here and here. Over at his blog, a clear eye, Tom Asacker adds to the discussion with a great post built around a question he’s pondered for a while: “Which attribute [is] more important to success in business: passion or compassion?” The question’s answer came to Tom as he wandered the floors of Cleveland’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: “Passion and compassion are simply opposite sides of a successful business coin. It works like this: when communicating one-to-many, passion rules! When communicating one-to-one, compassion rules! This rule applies to everything from advertising, selling, PR, speeches, customer service, employee communication, negotiation, etc.” I think it’s a terrific answer for all of us trying to build our skills, success and satisfaction in the law or any other vocation.