The Power of Not Knowing
I’m learning to crab walk. I decided to try something new to combat my reduced physical activity that began with working from home a few years ago. I chose an exercise program that includes a lot of familiar activity, and a little bit of unfamiliar activity. Most of the unfamiliar activity came naturally to me, but the crab walk seemed to break my brain at first. I found myself connecting this to some of my worries of late. As the geopolitical contexts of our lives are changing drastically and rapidly right now, I’ve been worrying that the approaches we’ve been taking toward our relationships and communities and visions of shared healthy peace will not be enough.
The Monsters in the Curtain
Systems came out of the imaginations of people and are created through millions of everyday actions of people (including everyone reading this blog), and that means it is possible to imagine other realities into being. This is not the way things have to be. Humans have imagined and then created all sorts of different systems, and that can continue, but only if we don’t fall into the trap of thinking the way things are is the only way.
Don’t Underthink It.
Knowing what we hope for in any given situation – or undertaking, or conversation, or relationship – plays a big role in whether that hope will be realized. And yet there is a common way of thinking about this which assumes it only applies to momentous, major stuff – there’s no need to be mindfully intentional about the run of the mill, moment to moment minutia of life. Even those with mindfulness or meditation practices may relegate the practice to non-working time.
In workplaces, this might look like carefully crafted values statements, formal retrospectives on projects, and shared agreements for meetings, but… no intentional practices around informal, in-the-moment ideation or feedback.
The Urgency Audit.
The organization may stop encouraging or rewarding needless urgency, but if it hasn’t mapped out and implemented the corresponding structural or process supports (resource allocation, incentives and performance metrics, accessibility supports, roles, workflows, policy) to enable this shift, it will either become less effective or it will continue operating in perpetual urgency.
Leadership Behaviours For Regenerative Power
Power is not in and of itself a bad thing. However, in social change spheres we tend to notice how power causes harm and reinforces injustice and inequality.
Check out this framework for shifting leadership power away from the dominant ways that power shows up in the workplace, to a set of behaviours and mindsets that are more regenerative and restorative.
How I Discovered The Simplest Thing That Is Making A Big Difference
Orienting to joy and pleasure is a core part of the work to support change, work together better, and feel better while doing it. Not as an add-on or a distraction, but as an absolutely essential source of capacity and connection.
Psychological Safety, Two Ways
Psychological safety is very important but figuring out how to create it can feel like a big and confusing topic. This blog post offers an explanation and comparison of two frameworks for assessing and measuring psychological safety in the workplace to help you figure out the best approach for your context.
This is Your Brain on Work Relationships
People need a sense of belonging and purpose, and we thrive through connection and mutual trust, but our workplaces are not set up to encourage trust-based relationships. We can change those workplace structures and cultures by integrating greater practices of trust into our work.
High Conflict vs. Generative Conflict
Conflict does not have to be as bad as it often feels. Conflict is a source of energy for change, and it always has the potential to lead to new possibilities and deeper relationships. But for this to happen, we need to build the skills and determination to avoid the lure of high conflict whenever possible.
This is what is meant by the idea of generative conflict.
Why We Gossip About People at Work
Leaders often try to get people to stop gossiping without a deeper understanding of what is driving the behaviour. Is there conflict that needs to be addressed? Are there systemic issues that people are upset about? Getting people to stop the behaviour is very hard if we are not addressing the root cause.