Compassion in the Workplace: Going the extra mile...or 26

Often the people you work with become part of your community or your circle of friends and you share in their successes and challenges. You hear about their family and the things going on in their life. A while back one of our reviewers' wife was training for a marathon, however, when the time came to run the race, she was obligated to be out of town on business.

It seemed anticlimactic for her to devote hundreds of hours to training without being able to run the race. So we decided, along with her supportive family, to set up a race course and check points so she could run the race on her own.

Her husband mapped the course out and cheer stations were set up. And even though she had to face the challenges of running a personal race she wrote in her diary that "I didn’t stop because I knew a bunch of you were planning on coming up and cheering me on. The thought of that kept me going. At the next water stop my first cheerleaders were there – Natalie & Shirley (the women Jonathan works with). They’d watch me run toward them and would keep glancing at each other as I got closer.When I was finally about 5 feet away they would give each other some signal and then start cheering. It cracked me up in spite of everything."

She was hoping to finish the marathon is less than five hours and ended up crossing the "finish line" at four hours and 58 minutes. Good job Janet.