Awareness Or Density to Reality?

Last week I invited you to consider whether your organization is ready to embark upon a formal Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Decolonization (EDID) program of training workshops and coaching. I shared that I have been encouraging leaders to first, get their teams functional before embarking upon this important and very challenging work.  This week let us look at how to start getting ready for doing EDID work in your organization.

Sometimes it is not easy to admit the shortcomings associated with your leadership. You may think after the requisite orientation your new hires, no matter the level they occupy in the company, should start ‘showing you the money.’ Okay, maybe you expect them to definitely ask fewer questions, take more initiative and help move ‘the needle forward.’

Daniel Goleman in his work on emotional intelligence, reminds us that the more demanding the job, the greater the need for leaders to be emotional aware and expressive.  Demanding jobs run the gamut of an organization. From working behind the scenes to keep a City’s power grid functional, to direct contact with customers, to leading the team that keeps your organization running as a well-oiled machine.

Some leaders are willfully or truly blind to the various signs of burnout.  If there seems to be constant engagement in destructive conflict and of course, operating at an overall level of mediocrity-it is time to invest in building your people’s knowledge, skills, and abilities to work effectively together.  I recommend you do these two things first:

Check the Organizational Pulse

My first recommendation is to use a variety of ways to increase awareness of your people’s psychological health and safety as a top organizational commitment. Doing this immediately helps you create more awareness rather than perceived density to the reality of your people’s well-being. Check the pulse of your organization via conducting an organizational assessment. One of my favourite tried and proven organizational assessments, that checks for employees’ overall psychological and psychosocial health and safety, is Guarding Minds at work: https://www.guardingmindsatwork.ca/

Manage Emotions to Meet Commitments

I recommend taking the second step to help your people become even more self-aware to the reality of understanding how their wiring and that of their coworkers, impact organizational and inter-personal human relationships.  This translates to how work gets done, the quality of work relationships, such as who gets included and excluded,  and the overall ability to feel a sense of belonging. Of course, all these impact on your people’s ability to meet their commitments.

Imagine, first getting your people’s internal needs taken care of before asking them to consider messy and uncomfortable topics such as equity, diversity, inclusion, and decolonization?  My experience shows you have a greater chance of success with your EDID efforts, when you operate from a foundation deep self-awareness versus density to self and others. 

If you work with people, we offer you a number of seminars, tools, and techniques such as  AADCA Questions, to support you harnessing the full human potential of those in your charge - register here or check out our offered courses.