I was lucky enough to be brought up in a large, compassionate, first and second generation Italian American family.  Most of my family lived in New York City and on Long Island. I live with my wife, Jean Anne, and our family of three children has lived in North Carolina for twenty-two years. I am the product of the love, devotion, teachings, and wisdom bestowed on me by all of them.

The values I express in my book, "Humanity at Work: Encouraging Spirit, Achievement & Truth to Flourish in the Workplace", came to me from the cultural, political, social, economic, and religious environments in which I have lived.  Like you my environment bestowed on me certain fallibilities which I will also share with you, with a smile.

I have noticed for instance, I am harsher on myself than on others.  Something many leaders share. The mercy and kindness we find for others, too often dries up when it comes to caring for ourselves, making an arid path of self-judgment - crispy beneath our feet to walk on. With an interior climate that is harsh and dry it is hard to truly flourish. We can compete, we can perform, but do we flourish?

It is the work of a lifetime to learn to have mercy on ourselves. Self-kindness and self-mercy are a work in progress that will continue on until our last earthly breath.

A balancing force against our self-criticism is the nurturing of the many helpful relationships, as I learned growing up. My large Costa-Amato family taught me that material achievements, while important for generating self-confidence and self-esteem, are a poor, hollow substitute for caring and enduring relationships. The blessing of relationships—the love and respect of others—will be your sacred companion when you leave this bodily life. What else could you take with you? What could you ever substitute that would be more powerful than kindness?

I was also taught from childhood to believe that “All great things are done for their own sake,” as Robert Frost writes. I learned from my parents that we are influenced positively by directly and specifically experiencing the altruistic deeds and behavior of another.  General lessons and generalities evaporate in our minds like morning mist. Only the specific deeds of others, as seen in life, in the media, and in colorful stories, stay with us as pictures in our imaginations. Only they can motivate us to treat ourselves and others at work humanely and allow us to sense the spirit that runs through all life—including our life and our coworkers’ lives. Only by thinking, feeling, and behaving humanely will we achieve what we want. Only a humane attitude allows us to act truthfully, without fear.

In my book and in the talks I’ve designed are detailed, interesting stories that will ‘send home’ for you, your business colleagues, and your coworkers the deep, true “How’s” of cooperation, collaboration, trust, and teamwork. Who you are in work is who you are in life.   The stories I use to illustrate my points show that only our deeds, whether holistic and helpful or self-centered and fearful, express our life intentions and then, in fact, become the life we end up living. The choice is there; ready to be made by each individual every day.

I was blessed with parents who knew only one kind of love—unconditional. As a result, I learned that a “true dialogue” with others is one that allows us to come within, to see, the essence of their being, mind, and heart.

Only through transparency of intention do we create trusting relationships of that kind. If we expose to others our innermost values, we are transformed from a person others merely have an opinion about to a tangible, living example of worth and self-esteem—“a real person.” As leaders, if we trust our coworkers with our true values and feelings about a decision or problem at work, oddly enough we don’t appear weak to them but instead we are transformed from a person they merely have an opinion about to a tangible, living example of strength, understanding, and mercy.

That may seem to be a difficult place to stand. Therefore, several of my talks show leaders how to trust and like themselves enough to have the courage to put themselves into this successful relationship with their coworkers. The letters I wrote to my fellow employees at Quintiles Transnational Corp. are an example of how a leader can both reach out to coworkers and open up his/her being to them. These letter-essays are among the thirty-six I have collected in Humanity at Work.

My Costa-Amato family is an emotional family, and that allowed me to accept, and then embrace the key role emotion plays in decision-making. Being able to accept this fact came to me rather late in life, but it was one of the most liberating realizations I have ever experienced. I was taught that the outward expression of feelings, particularly love and affection, is good. As behaviors to be nurtured and valued, they cannot be viewed as signs of weakness.

Inner strength and the outward expressions of that strength begin with accepting that our emotions are a gift of our humanity. With that acceptance, good leaders can become true leaders—candid, modest, thoughtful (in both senses of the word), and willing and able to communicate with their coworkers about the business and the workplace. No longer defending themselves against their own and others’ emotions, they will inevitably be stronger, wiser, and more successful. Plus, they will come out of their offices and have more experience of the business and life at the workplace, increasing their understanding and educating their decisions.

Every project team, every department, every division, and every company will thrive in the open, emotionally healthy climate of humanity at work.