REIMAGINING WORK: A NEW TOOLKIT FOR A NEW ERA OF WORK
Friday pm is probably not the best time to share a blog post. But the "brand" of this post isn't about the "should's" and the "supposed to be's". And well, if Mariah is about to share her secret grunge album with the world, now's a better time than ever to share my first blog post. So here it is!
The manual for work has stayed by and large the same for decades while the work itself - and the worker - have changed. Technology is transforming how we work, the workforce is more diverse than ever, and just think about how work has changed even in the past two years alone. The Great Resignation and Quiet Quitting are symptoms of this mismatch between work and reality; they’re big flags to us that the manual for work needs an update.
The old professional toolkit is no longer enough. The old toolkit serves a much more homogeneous workforce with a dominant culture that leans hard on the left brain, tends to see things in right versus wrong, equates emotion and vulnerability with weakness, and pays a premium for efficiency. It develops important ‘doing’ skills like setting and achieving goals, managing time and projects, communicating effectively, and influencing others. The old toolkit will serve you well but will only get you so far. If burnout doesn’t force a change, this new generation of workers will. They already are.
For racial equity, inclusion, psychological safety, and well-being at work, we need a new toolkit that amplifies our skill of being. We need our being to drive our doing. We need to look more closely at ourselves, show up, and connect to each other. It means slowing down, creating space, and working with purpose in a way that results in better collaboration, communication, decision-making, fulfillment, and balance.
Our current context demands more. It calls for an integrated leadership. Integrated leaders understand that optimal growth happens when professional development works in partnership with inner development. They pursue and possess a conscious intelligence. Self- and other-awareness, empathy, emotional intelligence, emotional availability, healthy boundary-setting, embodiment, and assertiveness are some of the skills in their toolkit. We’re going to need this toolkit - and more integrated leaders - more than ever as we are called to navigate more ambiguity, complexity, uncertainty, change, and difference with humanity, flexibility, adaptability, and creativity.
What can we do to better align work with our current reality? Three things to start:
Assess the gap between your old toolkit and the new one that’s needed.
Evaluate and update your competency model.
Make this new toolkit available to everyone.
Up until now, it’s likely that senior and executive staff have access to elements of this new toolkit, and/or you’ve had to explore these topics on your own time and dime. My intention is to make this toolkit available to everyone. The workplace and our world need it. If this new toolkit is of interest to you and you want to read more about it, sign up for my newsletter below and we can reimagine work together.
Questions for reflection:
What does “the old toolkit” mean to you?
How does “the new toolkit” feel for you? If they make you feel uncomfortable or skeptical because they are too soft, feminine, fuzzy, weak, amorphous, not concrete, maybe even ‘woo woo’… why do you think that is?
What aspects of “the new toolkit” are missing in your workplace? What else can be done to align work with our current reality?
Who comes to mind when you think of an integrated leader?