The past week in the United States has revealed and re-confirmed how broken, biased, and harmful our cultural and political systems are and can be. My social media feeds are filled with outrage, pain, and calls to action. The noise coming from my TV is an endless cycle of "he said, she said," or righteous indignation.
In the aftermath of insurrection (or was it just the beginning?), some people are angry and afraid. Others are becoming more conscious of and grappling with their privilege, potentially for the first time. Still others are rolling their eyes, fed up with having to explain that the events at the Capitol last week are just another manifestation of injustice (historical and current, implicit and explicit, conscious and unconscious) that is not new.
This is a moment of reckoning that should have come sooner. It should not have taken a violent riot against our government for our leaders' eyes and ears to be opened to the profound division and immense suffering of human beings in our country, to the pervasive inequity of our systems, to the vitriolic, coercive, and dangerous leadership that has fed such profound hate, division, and violence.
What does this have to do with Reloveution and our mission of transforming the world of work?
The truth is that our workplaces are often microcosms of the larger world--replete with the best and worst that our world has to offer. While our institutions can be spaces for daring innovation, powerful human connection, joyful productivity, and unparalleled resilience, too often (read: the majority of the time) our workplaces are weakened and scarred by harmful systems, widespread suffering, and unfortunately unprepared, ineffective, and flawed leaders. Many companies have been grown in the same cultural soil as our country, resulting in fruit often bruised by fear, pain, isolation, anger, disengagement, and inequity.
Did you know that 80% of Americans are dissatisfied and unhappy in their jobs and that this statistic has remained stagnant for more than thirty years?
Consider your company.
Consider your boss.
Consider your team.
Consider your workplace culture.
Consider yourself as a worker and leader.
How and where do you see or feel harm being done?
How does this harm (real or perceived) manifest with your team and impact your workplace’s results and effectiveness?
Is your workplace or institution heading towards or already experiencing subtle or indirect “insurrection” in some way?
If we intentionally choose to peel back the layers, it often becomes clear that neither our boardrooms nor our Zoom rooms are entirely free from the dynamics that we are seeing play out in our government and larger world (toxic leadership, fear of "other", mistrust of institutions, white privilege, and abuses of power to name a few). It is not surprising that discontent amongst American employees is so prevalent, and while “insurrection” may be a strong word, rebellion, push back, rejection, and disengagement are common.
You might see it in the form of high turnover, feel it in the conversations at the watercooler, hear it in gossip, naysaying, or rumors. You might be experiencing "insurrection" through too frequent interpersonal conflict, rejection of hierarchy, griping about workload, or depressingly low morale. These dynamics and behaviors may not look or feel outwardly violent, and they are also regularly dismissed as inevitable or even “par for the course.” But the fact that so many employees feel unsafe, fearful, isolated, and unvalued when they are at work, points to implicit and inward violence happening in our midst that we must address at a systems level.
The question is: what will we do and how far will we go to quell (which is not to say silence, repress, or ignore) that violence, heal from it, and move forward with power and purpose?
I invite us to do the hard and long-term work of digging up blighted seeds and replanting. I invite us to reimagine our gardens and nurture human beings with compassion and HEART (humanity, empathy, authenticity, relationships, and trust). I invite us to see that this work is integral to our companies reaching their boldest goals and all workers reaching their highest potentials. These efforts can’t wait and are a part of moving our larger world towards becoming the just, equitable, and compassionate place we know it can be.
Reloveution has game-changing tools and strategies for leaders and workplaces at all stages of this transformation journey, and we use our expertise in workplace transformation and leadership development to listen, assess, diagnose, teach, and catalyze sustainable change for businesses AND the human beings that embody them.
Three Ways to Join OUR Reloveution this Month
Join or sponsor an employee to join our eight-week Promotion to Purpose Program, running from February through March. This is not your typical leadership development program, and our unique approach builds extraordinary leaders and managers who are prepared for extraordinary times.
Invest in a HEART Audit for your organization or team to uncover the dynamics, patterns, and systems that are most powerfully impacting your employees, their work, and ultimately your results.
Attend our upcoming workshop, Foundations of Groundbreaking Decision-Making to learn different decision-making methodologies/strategies (including our proprietary framework) and the impact that each type of decision-making has on employee morale, buy-in, understanding, and overall workplace culture.
Ready to reloveutionize your workplace? Let’s find a few minutes to chat in the next few weeks. Until then, stay well, be safe, and thank you for continuing to show up in this crazy world! As always, please reach out to share your experiences, to ask questions, or just to chat! We are stronger together!
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