On Monday, we introduced the concept of ‘meaning at work’ with a wonderfully engaging video from Emily Esfahani Smith, the author of the book ‘Power of Meaning’.

Today, we want to share with you some of our analysis around how majority of us in leadership roles – consciously and unconsciously damage our workforce’s path to finding meaning at work everyday.

If you walk into any traditional organization small or large scale and ask “What’s the number one purpose of business?”; you are most likely to hear “It is to make profit.” Whether that’s the number one purpose of business or not is certainly one argument; but the one we are about to make today is more related to how business drives profit then after.

Though many senior executives would not question the correlation between a business’ mission and the need to drive profits, many people leaders routinely undermine the inner work lives of their workforce by overlooking the correlation between one’s need to find meaning and one’s ability to sustain creativity, productivity and commitment at work. Majority of our people leaders literally act in denial of the constant flow of thoughts, emotions, behaviors that constitute our life experiences day to day.

According to one study, beyond affecting the well-being of our employees, our inner work lives affect the bottom line of all organizations. We experience more inspiration, higher sense of safety and joy when we are able to have more positive inner lives at work.

Recognize finding meaning at work is different than the work (itself) being meaningful to us. Of course, we all want meaningful job definitions; but meaning at work is slightly more than that. Meaning at work also includes things like how we experience the environment, whether we can bring our whole selves forward, whether we can be authentic in our relationships, whether we can work in ways that’s natural to us, and more…

In our recent analysis, we found a variety of behaviors demonstrated by today’s leaders preventing first themselves and after, those around them from enriching inner life experiences day to day.

Unclarity of purpose.

This is probably the most obvious of all our fallings short. Majority of today’s corporate ‘leaders’ – us – live our lives not knowing what we stand for. We work eight to twelve hour jobs in search of prestige, status and financial freedom – to have a house large enough, a car fast enough, a purse big enough, diamonds shiny enough, for example; yet, at the end of day, when we reach that prestige, status, and freedom, we feel unfulfilled. This is in part due to the fact that majority of us have a view of ‘success’ developed through other people’s reflections. We ‘think’ we want certain things – like a title or a reward – but deep inside, those things are not what makes us ‘happy’ or ‘fulfilled’.

And when we finally find our true calling or develop a mission to live by, it seems we fall short of exercising courage to live up to our very own values on a day to day basis. One way or another, we end up locking ourselves inside our heads, not being able to see beyond traditional measures, eventually ignoring the connection required to our hearts, to our bodies for creation of holistic experiences.

Do you have any sense what this sort of unintentional living does to us individually or to others around us?

It steals the opportunity of breath, our spiritual fulfillment away. It disconnects us from our true sense of ‘being’ (live). It also strips our sense of security because when no one exercises courage to live by their true values, we find the ground to be not transparent and inconsistent underneath our feet. People leaders, who are unclear on their WHY and unable to demonstrate their values through their actions not only become perceived as ‘uninspiring’; when they become clear on their passion and struggle to show the will to exercise courage, they start being viewed as a potential ‘threat.’

Work without purpose is often seen as hard labor, where work with purpose is referred to as joy.

When we know why we do something and what we do matters to others and/or how it is connected to something bigger (what the organization does, for example), it gives meaning to our effort.

Connection to purpose provides inner meaning; jobs with a purpose encourage commitment; and purposeful leaders encourage safety.

Not building a sense of belonging. 

We all know creating a positive corporate culture is not easy, yet it is essential for all companies that want to excel. Again, we find in our research majority of today’s people leaders don’t see building a sense of belonging as their sole responsibility; therefore, they don’t assume full accountability in culture building and/or for making an employee experience harmony. They think they are inside an organization to drive results, which they are – however, very few consider how they are going to drive results and to what cause…

Imagine for a second, having to send our children to a school, where they are expected to grow a sense of belonging without the support of anyone; and teachers seeing it their responsibility to only make our children learn math. How would we feel about that?

Belonging is an active endeavor, not a passive one. It requires work enduring over time and yes, it is tied to shared values.

In our review of multiple studies, we find there are three critical parts to building a sense of belonging:

1. Story telling, which is a way to create a narrative around what our organizations are trying to do. By defining and communicating clearly the company’s purpose, its beneficiaries, stakeholders and how one person is critical in bringing that overarching value forward, it can really help us develop an emotional connection.

2. Validation, which ensures people leaders are able to see and accept each and every employee for who they are, their given gifts and for their unique contributions. Globoforce recently released its 2017 WorkHuman Research Institute (WHRI) survey report, finding that the majority (66%) of respondents reported they are the same person at work as they are at home. The report surveyed 2,700 full-time U.S. employees with the goal of finding out what really motivates people at work. It turns out, employees want to bring more life to work.

3. Rewarding, which publicizes and reinforces people’s contributions while further building on story telling (by shedding light onto the encouraged behaviors.)

Being able to develop a sense of belonging encourages creativity and performance and more importantly, it drives our physical and psychological well-being.

Unauthentic connections.

We used to think of workplace as a place to get the job done and not to socialize. As our lives get more and more integrated, that’s no longer the case. Further, when people are united in mission, they often find affinity with one another. Unfortunately, it seems through the data that majority of today’s people leaders are either ‘faking’ their connections or genuinely struggling with the level of emotional insight necessary to form the authentic connections.

Either way, do you know what happens in absence of authentic relationships?

We feel without a choice, isolated and lonely.

And do you know what happens when we remain in those states for prolonged periods of time?

We become physically and emotionally exhausted. We become sad, anxious and sometimes, depressed.

Authentic connections allow us to freely ‘be ourselves’: to have a voice, to express disagreement, to show what we really care about, and know we will still keep a bond despite all the differences. It gives us a ‘home’ to return to.

Dr. Susan David of the book Emotional Agility talks about this in part as structural support, which is “the ability to ask someone to cover for you when you’re in a bind,” and in part as emotional support, which is having someone who can talk you through stress, change, or anxiety.

Our ability to build authentic connections motivates inclusion and trust inside our organizations.

Inability to care, nurture and grow in the right way.

If we were to think of our workforce as a place of garden, how would we prescribe to care and nurture for it? Or, when we close our eyes and imagine our physical, mental, and emotional health in terms of a garden, what do we find it look like? And if it is not as green, colorful and lush as we want it to be, how would we exercise different care?

In today’s busyness of life, we find less and less ample time to slow down, to genuinely care for and to nurture our employees. In a recent Coming of Age Digitally report by MIT Sloan and Deloitte, it is reported corporate learning still far behind; 90% of respondents say need to update skills yearly, yet, only 34% satisfied with organizational support.

There is an aspect to this about upgrading our mindsets (to growth mindset) and our learning & development strategies; but according to our finding, there is yet another aspect, which is around leaders exercising wisdom and compassion.

Wisdom is more closely tied to building acceptance around our need for diversity and compassion around self-care and care of others.  It is important we differentiate the fact that we are not required to inject care, nurture or growth, we are rather responsible to genuinely consider which seeds develop and blossom naturally and which could use more attention. Once we discover those needing more focus, we can then direct our thoughts, energy and support to making these seeds burst into beautiful blooms.

Caring, nurturing and growth is about helping someone discover or re-discover unique gifts available to them so they can progress in their evolutionary journeys.

While wisdom motivates inclusion; compassion motivates fairness and equity inside organizations.

For us to transform our work experiences, we have to allow ourselves to be transformed as individual leaders. And for us to be transformed as individual leaders, we have to allow for the incompleteness and for the complexity of (human) beings and start to understand what we’re trapped inside of and how we can contribute to our experiences differently.

And we firmly believe we can… We can!

In the United States alone, we spend on average 35-40 hours working every week. That’s some 80,000 hours during a given career—more time we will end up spending with our families?!!

Beyond providing as a source of income, what does work give us?

Naturally, we all have different sources of fulfillment in life and certainly different environments provide different experiences for us; but what does it mean for us to find fulfillment at work?

Meaning at work is a real concept. Studies across a number of institutions (from Berkeley to MIT) show employees will provide increased motivation, loyalty, creativity and productivity to organizations that help them find meaning at work.

Recognize by ‘meaning at work’ we are referring to a person’s experience of something meaningful (of value) that work provides. This is not the same as ‘meaningful work‘, which we often use to refer to the experience a set of tasks provide inside a given ‘job’.

Our work experiences can be meaningful; but we first need to get clear on the definition of ‘meaning’ and then, understand the distractors.

Today, on a wonderful definition by long term researcher of ‘meaning’, Emily Esfahani Smith, who graciously shares the four pillars of meaning.

Enjoy!

As we start to analyze findings of our collaborative research with Stanford University’s CCARE, what we are seeing very clearly is enduring leaders truly emerge from their whole selves.

Those leaders who drive vision, inspire and enable people of all diversities over long periods of time engage in constant soul-searching and are willing to test their uniqueness through their life experiences with a growing hunger to become a better version of themselves.

Over the course of last week, through our social media accounts, we have been sharing tips around how to grow authenticity; today, we share the complete list. Kindly consider reading and reflecting when you have mental capacity to connect to the material and please consider sharing with others if you want the material valuable.

Tip 1: Reframe your life story. 

Across all our analysis, we found enduring leaders taking charge, creating a choice in moments to develop self-awareness through their journeys. 

Our life stories not only provide context for our experiences, our consciousness actually begins when our brains gain power over our personal narratives. In simpler terms, our brains love stories because a) stories help us hold our attention, b) they help us develop a sense of ‘being’. It is important we recognize the facts matter less than the narrative we build around it. This is not to delude our selves or others, it is to find transformative effects of our lived experiences (good and bad) as ways to discover self-identity through meaning-making.

Tip 2: Understand who you are.

We all talk about self-awareness and yet, we are so easily colored by our desire to establish ourselves and “impress”, we often (consciously and unconsciously) hold back our unique thoughts, emotions, actions and desires. 

Knowing our authentic selves require for us to (1) connect to our core purpose, (2) exercise courage to be who we are and (3) find ways to gather honest feedback in support of our journey… Only then, we are able to connect to our true values and develop sustainable operating principles; our authenticity is actually developed through stress-testing. Our research confirms we are most authentic when we can ensure alignment in the way we think, say, feel, act, and consistently. 

Tip 3:  Aim to live with intention.

This is both about knowing and acting alignment with our values and about balancing our intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. Although majority of us would have a hard time to admit this we tend to build our definition of ‘success’ around others’ expectations. ? It is nothing to be ashamed of… We enjoy the recognition of titles, money, prestige; we all do! The external validation feeds one of our primary motivations: self-interest. Yet, we need to remember we have other motivations, too! Our need for connection and our need for living meaningful lives are equally important.

The enduring leaders we have studied managed to find balance between their intrinsic and extrinsic motivations and create integrated life experiences. This takes enormous disciple – especially around staying connected (grounded); yet, it is possible…

If we want to evolve our ‘being’ as leaders of 21st century, we have to move away from fractions and consciously work towards unity. This requires us to grow self-compassion, the ability to observe ourselves without judgment and make conscious choices to fulfill our highest potential one decision at a time, every time…

Tip #4: Build a reliable, trusting support system. 

In our study (and in compatible studies), we found enduring leaders grow their capacity through others.

These leaders have colleagues, family members, friends, mentors, coaches to rely on for hard facts, for challenging their opinions, for providing honest feedback and to step in (to cover) when necessary. In return, they empower their “people” to step up and lead. The two-way nature of the relationship makes it stronger and lasting. Pick your allies carefully, allow yourself to show your ‘ugly’ and ‘incomplete’ sides, build intimacy and do go the extra mile for those who are there for you…

Tip #5: Remain open to growth and learning.

Enduring leaders differ from competent and inspiring leaders in that they understand and connect to what they are good at, what they are not and how they can work with others to build on their development areas.

They are willing to learn and look for people and opportunities who can play a mirror role in helping them reflect on how they show up and how to do. Further, they work to create environments, where people can compliment one another’s strengths and offset each other’s weaknesses.

None of us can grow authenticity by imitating someone else. Over the years, our workforce has built an enormous amount of mistrust with today’s leaders. It is evident we need a new kind of leadership (in definition and in attributes) to be relevant and to bring value in 21st century.

And THAT starts by self-authentication!

We have been thinking, talking, writing about leadership for centuries now. Collectively, there must have been over a 1000 studies conducted to determine the characteristics, competencies or ‘special gifts’ of enduring leaders over the years. Thank goodness, we have not singled this down to a one ‘perfect’ formula (just like parenthood) because I bet you we would all try to copy/ paste it into our realities, a recipe for a potential of disastrous experiences in our lives.

Our research findings with Stanford University’s CCARE on leadership only concur what we have been gathering from our readings and discussions over the years: Great leadership is about authenticity!

Before we go into how one can develop authenticity though, I really want to dig into the concept of ‘greatness’ because what we find in our study is that people often associate appreciation, recognition and success with admiration from others. Let me provide an example… If a friend uses a vacuum cleaner, for example, and tells us “it is great!”, we feel compelled to buy it, try it and use it. Even in cases where our experience may be contradictory, we often doubt ourselves versus the observation shared by our friend(s) and often talk ourselves into keeping the tool despite the value our true selves find in it.

Not only it seems we need a revised definition of success in our societies, we believe it is time for us to recognize ‘greatness’ in its context of leadership, which is about exploring our very own potential. We can NOT progress in our holistic ‘being’ if we are imitating someone else’s journey and/or paying lip service to what we read in the books. We can not become a better version of ourselves if we don’t live what we cognitively understand in our hearts. ‘Greatness’ is first and foremost about our very own journey.

The very first step in the journey is to come into terms with our ‘imperfection’ as human beings and grow a commitment to focus on our ability to learn over time. Steve Jobs was ‘great’ in his customer-orientation, which led him to explore very unique, simplistic, innovative design features; however, he was not all that ‘great’ in his people-orientation. Jack Welch was ‘great’ in his strategic-orientation, which led him to guide strategy execution very well; however, he was not all that ‘great’ in his emotional-orientation. The fact of the matter is we all have our own exploration to do and that doesn’t take away from us, our current or potential (to) ‘greatness’.

Human nature is not fixed and people are only willing to connect with us trustingly when we can share genuinely and authentically about who we are. The shared commitment to learn and grow together is what brings us closer to one another. This is also the reason why so many people in our workplaces have grown a deep sense of distrust with their leaders. It is because those who of us feeling ‘privileged’ in our roles find ourselves develop a sense of entitlement to our status (presence) and lose our sense of genuine wonder.

We need a new kind of business leadership in the 21st century. 

What we have been seeing in our research findings (and it is complimentary to some other recent leadership studies), enduring leaders truly emerge from their whole selves. They not only engage in constant soul-searching, they are willing to test their uniqueness through their life experiences with a growing hunger to become a better version of themselves. We could say – Consciously or unconsciously, they are leveraging their authenticity to grow competence that’d make them more effective in their multiplicities.

Throughout this week on our LinkedIn and Twitter pages, we will share one tip every day as to how we can all grow more authenticity as leaders of our time, please do follow us and share your own experiences and learning!

Starting a new role can be both exciting and stressful at the same time.

There is so much to take in…

Recruiters, first-line people leads, and HR professionals often work harder during this time to support new joiners. A good on-boarding plan becomes super helpful and yet, the desire to get acclimated into a new environment, new colleagues, small and large cultures, new expectations, new goals can still be overwhelming…

It is not uncommon for professionals to second-guess their decision nor to get adjusted in time. Either way, the initial 90 days is a critical time of  ‘mutual learning’ between an organization and the individual.

In order to help new employees gain momentum and confidence, we shared a list of ‘best’ tips for turning the time spent into a more fulfilling experience.

Whether you’re a new graduate or a seasoned professional in charge, it is worth to remind self that we have a choice!

Thank you for watching. Enjoy!

We have been getting a ton of questions from our executive clients on definition of values lately:

“What does it mean to have a ‘value’?”

“Where do they come from?”

“How do we find our leadership values?”

“What’s the best way to find my values?”

Though it is hard to summarize it all in a single post, this is our attempt to answer a few questions at once.

As human beings, we all have our own values, beliefs and attitudes we have developed throughout the course of our lives. Our upbringing, family environment, close role models (parents, teachers, friends), communities and our experiences all contribute to the formation of who we are and how we see the world and interpret our view/ reflection.

What is a value?

Values are often referred to as core principles or standards we keep close or dear to our hearts. We like to refer to values as qualities that we as individual and/or a group of individuals hold in high regard. Values not only underline (and continue to shape) our core beliefs, they become a guide as to how we live our lives and how we make decisions.

Where do values come from?

Our values come from a variety of sources. The most common sources of our ‘dominant’ values include the way we are taught, the way we choose to learn, family, social influences, environments ranging from educational institutions, workplaces, communities, significant life events (personal and communal) and spiritual beliefs. That said, our values are also shaped by the kind of books we read, the music we listen to, media we expose ourselves to, cultures we explore, etc. Therefore, it is important we develop an awareness as to information we encounter and how it affects us and our thoughts.

Exploring your values

There are a long list of questions we can ask ourselves to identify our core values. Some of the most effective questions for identifying general values include:

1. When do I feel the happiest?
2. When do I feel the most proud?
3. When do I feel the most satisfied?
4. When do I feel the most fulfilled?
5. Which experiences do I find help me grow integrity?

In answering these questions, it is equally important to recognise the difference between our values and our beliefs (pre-existing or current) and attitudes. Beliefs are precious because they reflect our current or past experiences and attitudes usually describe how we feel about something; they may be complimentary (often are) to our values yet they may not always reflect our values. To demonstrate integrity in our being, to build lasting relationships and to work effectively across different situations, it is critical we understand the relationship between these three and grow awareness of their individual and joint impact.

Respecting each others’ values, beliefs and attitudes

In addition to becoming more clear about our own values, it is equally important for us to respect each others’ values, beliefs and attitudes. We are all entitled to different ways of being. It is imperative we accept and respect that others may have different values than others; may have grown on different beliefs and have developed different attitudes. We do NOT have the right to impose our values on others, nor the right to expect others’ to ‘change’ their way of being.

Our values certainly feed our sense of purpose and there are many reasons as to each one of us exist. THAT is what makes us truly unique and beautiful – individually and collectively. Like a rainbow. All colours of a rainbow are equally beautiful and rainbow itself also.

Why does it at all matter??

One of the questions we love to ask leaders we coach is “Why should anyone be led by you?”

This question notably and naturally makes a lot of leaders pause and think…

More than often, lack of awareness or misunderstanding around our values results in an unintentional lack of integrity – despite the well intentions we carry in our hearts. We often think of ‘integrity’ as just being honest; however, integrity is so much more than speaking of truth… In fact, in a world where we are often subject to impartial truth, it is a lot more about keeping balance, our nature, neutrality and unity. The word ‘integrity’ stems from the Latin word ‘integer’, which refers to one being whole and complete. Integrity doesn’t only inquire of our honesty, it requires a true sense of ‘wholeness’ on our part. This is a lot easier said than done; however, honesty, accuracy and wholeness of one’s actions require intentionality and purposeful thinking. In other words, integrity requires consistency of our character in different (and sometimes difficult) circumstances.

When we are clear about our values, beliefs and attitudes, we are able to align all of our being accordingly and present ourselves in balance, in our natural state, in the most neutral way and always in unity. It is only then, people around us start visibly seeing our true way of being through our words, actions, decisions, ways of relating, ways of doing and in the outcomes we achieve on a day to day basis.

When we are conscious of our values and make a choice towards those values, we become able to offer the same experience of who we are regardless of our circumstances. We become US all the time.

Values-driven leadership enables us, as leaders to unleash our potential by serving as a catalyst for our personal growth, wisdom, and transformation. Further, research demonstrates that through this sort of personal development comes opportunities for our employees to engage their own values, drive a sense of purpose and intrinsic motivation to be part of something that contributes more positively to our organizations and societies.

Becoming us is simply liberating. For us and for those around us…

“I have booked myself into a lovely apartment with a view for three days. This is my attempt to take myself off of autopilot and see what happens.

Going in, I am aware that it is not going to be easy to stay clear of the “should“, the “need to“, the “must” and instead, focus on the “want.” I will be conscious of the way I think and react. Otherwise, the days would pass in a breeze, and I would leave the apartment none the wiser.

I intend to be present, observe simple behaviours, and see the balance of automatic motion against the selective action.

The reason behind it all is to evoke curiosity in fellow humans to explore how free we actually are in designing our own lives.

If we can’t even undertake a mundane task on free will, how are we expected to be the architects of our destinies?

Here we go…”

This is a blurb from a recent blog written by our dear colleague and partner at Awakening Humanity at Work program we are co-sponsoring with Stanford University’s CCARE, Asli Aker…

Asli is a long time colleague and a friend from my Microsoft years. She is an organisational development expert and an amazing executive coach! She is a rebel like many of us, often trying to make better sense of life and our shared experiences. Not to mention she is courageous enough to lock herself up in a hotel room for three days to test her way of ‘being’ – her mind, her body, her senses…

Today, a wonderful, playful summary on a Life Experiment!

We hope you enjoy.

We all know someone who was a strong individual contributor and once promoted to a role of people management, genuinely struggled to survive. We observed them to either cling onto ‘old’ ways of working, not having sufficient emotional agility built up, being unaware of presence impact or fail at gaining the respect of peers… Does it sound familiar?

Marry the act of managing people the way one manages a task with demands of our modern day work environments and top it with day to day existential struggles of any human being and voila… You get a mess…

It is no secret leadership is more of an art than science. After all, there is no single widespread common trait to effective leadership. There are a variety of technical skills, a variety of cognitive abilities, a variety of competencies that go into making a person effective. Even the personalities and styles vary vastly. There is one commonality, however, we have found in our research – that’s a leader’s ability to connect to humanity. Their own humanity as well as others’.

Is this a new discovery?

Absolutely not! When one considers the Delphic oracle advice of ‘know thyself’ from thousand years ago or Marx’s philosophy to work from hundred years ago, this is, by no means, a discovery. We have known about the importance of topics such as self-awareness, self-connectedness, self-regulation to live fulfilling lives for centuries now. We have studied the impact of these measures in the workplace from a variety of angles. We know, for example, self-awareness (when practiced right) can drive learning and self-regulation can feed emotional agility.

Yet, despite the value of having more self-awareness, self-connectedness and self-regulation or other fundamental traits in the work place, many organizations fail to consider these aspects when they look for potential and/or engage in promotion decision making.

Why does connecting to our humanity matter?

As we progressed in the society and advanced our ways of working, we brought upon humanity independence, rationality, and pace that has and continues to stretch the mental and emotional capacities of our workforce, which in return, makes us feel isolated, anxious and exhausted. As Erich Fromm would say “Modern man still is anxious and tempted to surrender his freedom to dictators of all kinds, or to lose it by transforming himself into a small cog in the machine, well fed, and well clothed, yet not a free man but an automaton.” The inspirational video we shared back a few months ago received one of the largest hits on social media because it truly depicts current reality in terms of our relationship to our very own humanity. Further, in our collaborative research with Stanford, we confirmed 70% of business leaders report no longer living in the present. 7 out of 10 of us – people leaders (!!), though present in body some place, are mentally or emotionally disengaged.

It is almost like we have grown our cognitive capacities to exist and cope with 21st century demand and our hearts have remained in stone age.

Because our DNA has not changed in the last two hundred thousand years and because we don’t know how to better manage ourselves, it seems we have chosen to put ourselves on an auto-pilot to cope with the demands of our modern day lives. Think of it as carrying an ‘evolutionary baggage’ around with us all day, every day.

The unfortunate part of this is that when we feel isolated, anxious or exhausted inside an environment that stretches our boundaries, our autonomous response is to stimulate sympathetic nervous system, which triggers responses of withdrawal. When we withdraw, our capacity shrinks and our productivity starts to decline.

What’s your new concept of leadership?

Before going into the new model, we first have to understand leadership is different than management; but not because of its elevated status or because people in those positions are “special”, not at all. Leadership has nothing to do with “charisma” or a sexy job title or a X number in span of control. It is also not a home for a few chosen individuals. Nor it is better than management. Management and leadership simply are different and equally valuable parts of a larger system.

Management is about driving order and reducing complexity. It requires proper planning. It involves organization and problem solving skills. It is about “doing” things… To aid the organization.

Leadership is about adaptability and driving change. It involves vision setting through inspiration. It involves alignment and influence skills. It is more about “being” a certain way rather than “doing” something – executing power and/or authority, for example… To drive the organization forward.

Again, despite increasing focus on importance of leadership in the current discussions, we fail to acknowledge the importance of developing certain attributes for becoming an effective people leader in practice. Then, when people fail in so called ‘leadership’ roles, we take them out and often, do not even offer them the opportunity to go back to their previous positions.

If we want to create better work environments, we have to start thinking about leadership in a different way!

To help us rethink the definition of leadership, I want to share with you some key principles around our revised definition of leadership. In the future of work:

1. We have to stop thinking about leadership as an elevated status and/or specific ability limited to a number of people in a handful of positions. A leader can be anyone, who holds self accountable for finding potential in people and in processes. Leadership is no longer about power or status—awakening humanity at work requires us to awaken potential everywhere. Leadership is a concept available to anyone.
2. There is a pre-requisite to becoming a leader, which is self-leadership. One can only effectively lead others after one masters self-awareness, self-connection and self-regulation. Leadership of others that fully awakens humanity in everyone is a result of disciplined and knowledgeable self-leadership first.
3. Leadership is not just about inspiration as management is not just about execution. They are interchangeable in each other. It’s a well-used phrase that leaders must win over the hearts and minds of those they hope to lead, but in the new world of work leaders must also consider that human beings are whole people with many choices over what they do and how they do it. Leadership requires us to be curating messages that speak collectively to the heart, mind, body and hands of others.  
4. Years and years of multi-disciplinary studies show us that we, human beings, are designed to connect. Under that primary drive, we have 3 specific motivations: 1. self-interest, 2. our need to care, 3. our need to have purposeful and meaningful lives. Unfortunately, we have built a system of capitalism on the pillar of self interest alone and forgotten the other motivators. We need to feed our humanly needs to help each other better cope and to build resilience. Leadership is as much about meaning and connection as it is for execution.
5. Leaders, who embrace their humanity not only connect to their core purpose to communicate from there, they make it a priority to grow their wisdom, becoming genuinely committed to continuously growing their competence and resilience while become invested in nurturing others.

The kind of leadership that was born in the industrial revolution, and its implicit relationship to humanity at work, is gasping for its last breaths in today’s economy. Business today needs leaders who understand how to bind communities together, heal differences between people, and design work that enrich people’s lives. A new humanity at work is coming of age.

Do we dare?

In our recent post, ‘The Birth of a Movement‘ summarizing our notes from Work Human Conference 2018, we shared news around forming of a wonderful community around ‘making work a more human experience‘.

Today, Whirling Chief is excited to announce our collaboration with Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruistic Research and Education (CCARE) in building a new leadership framework that offers a unique and practical program focused on cultivating compassion, wisdom, and well-being.

Awakening Humanity at Work: A Leadership Model Cultivating Compassion, Wisdom, and Well-Being in a New Age!

It is no doubt humanity is undergoing a huge transformation, and our businesses are in constant flux. With artificial intelligence, robotics, and “smart” technologies on the rise and power change faster than ever. For some of us, this new era has ushered in prosperity and the potential to address some of humanity’s most vexing challenges in creative new ways. For others, this era of technological and social change has ushered in isolation, loneliness, and fear. While we are more interconnected than ever, we are also stretched for our mental and emotional capacities. And while we have more promise to end poverty, cure disease, and create wealth than ever before, global surveys tell us that most of the workforce continue to feel disengaged, distracted, and unappreciated.

The success of businesses that hope to take advantage of these new technologies depends, paradoxically perhaps, on their capacity to awaken the humanity of their organizations; our research shows that a human-centered view of business increases the performance of the organization along with individual well-being.

In this powerful program, we will use the latest research in neuroscience, the bio-physiology of compassion and well-being, and dynamic findings from organizational behavior and psychology to build resilience and create thriving organizations that also improve the well-being of their workforce.

We will explore how a neuro-scientific and physiological approach to building an organizational culture of compassion and well-being changes what you think you know about the basics of human and organizational psychology. Along with like-minded fellow travelers on a journey of evolution, we will participate in a discussion about how to develop new qualities within ourselves and within the organizational ecosystems where we live. Together we will create action plans that inspire our own compassion and well-being as we share the honor of connecting with other recognized leaders from around the globe who are focused on creating thriving, compassionate, truly human workplaces.

For more information on our pilot program, please visit our workshops page and/or download our pilot program brochure.

For custom programs, you may inquire via [email protected] and to stay informed on our other initiatives coming up, you may subscribe to our digital platform at our home page.

A few months back, following WEF 2018, in attempt to provide organizations with some tangible ideas as to how they can map out job transition pathways and consider re-skilling opportunities, using the power of digital data to help guide workers, companies, and governments to prioritise their actions, time and investments, we posted a guiding report in collaboration with other experts.

While the conversation around robots taking over current jobs continue, we have a beautiful opportunity to consider how we can skill up and skill differently across our global workforce.

The VP of Innovation and Strategy at UPS,  David Lee says that we should start designing jobs that unlock our hidden talents and passions – the things we spend our weekends doing – to keep us relevant in the age of robotics. “Start asking people what problems they’re inspired to solve and what talents they want to bring to work,” Lee says.

The quality of our future work experience truly depends on our choices today. The more we can bring human aspect into design conversations, the more we aim to build environments, where people can bring their whole selves to work, the more humility we can demonstrate to share and learn together, the better our work experiences are going to be – individually and collectively.

Enjoy!