Wow, what an amazing experience I had at the recent Work Human Conference last week!

It is true… We are not the only ‘crazies‘ at Whirling Chief out there trying to champion humanity back into the workplace. 🙂

The Work Human Conference, sponsored by Globoforce is a growing community with a powerful mission: to galvanize more leaders worldwide to harness the transformative power of people for the next generation of Human Resources.

Together, we want to recognize and celebrate breakthrough organizations building and rebuilding human-centric workplaces, where employees achieve their fullest potential, in turn leading organizations to reach their fullest potential.

To our cause, we have been incredibly fortunate to hear from the most inspirational speakers and academics, including the most daring Brené Brown, the most graceful Selma Hayek Pinault, the most passionate Simon Sinek, the most humble Shawn Achor, the most vigorous Amal Clooney and the most willing panel of Tarana Burke, Ronan Farrow, Ashley Judd and Adam Grant.

My biggest takeaway from the conference (and I encourage you to write down my words) is this: We ARE starting a #WorkHuman movement!

There are enough of us with a burning desire to design a different kind of business and a completely different kind of work experience for all of us around the world. I wholeheartedly believe we will make it.

What is it that we so desperately want?

We want to create environments, where more of us can experience feelings of inspiration, safety, joy, and receive recognition for their true value and contribution.

Inspiration!

We imagine businesses built around a core moral purpose – a purpose that’s serving more than our immediate selves, focused beyond the profit aspect.

We imagine leaders clear about their purpose, not only driven to serve that unique individual cause, and also excited to role model their inspiration and their spirituality (liveliness) onto others.

We imagine employees clear in their purpose and genuinely excited to get out of bed, wanting to serve something more significant and interested in being a part of something bigger than their individual cause.

Safety!

We imagine businesses free of asymmetry of power. We want to see a key aspect of business coding to be grounded in providing physical and psychological safety for ALL its constituents.

We imagine leaders clear in their core values, demonstrating day-to-day courage to support, not afraid to exercise empathy, and willing to stand up for their key principles.

We imagine employees standing in for each other’s rights, free of judgment and fear, willingly and actively lending a hand to pull each other up.

Joy!

We imagine businesses free of apathy. We want to see businesses become better balanced, providing both grit and happiness at the same time because, as Shawn Achor stated in his presentation, “Without happiness, work just becomes a grind.”

We imagine leaders connected to their humanity, growing wisdom, humility, and compassion for those they are surrounded by, as well as their natural surroundings.

We imagine employees actively building connections, understanding that happiness is not an individual choice, rather an interconnected one.

Recognition!

We imagine businesses appreciating the “worthy adversary,” a concept introduced by Simon Sinek referring to an evolutionary view of both the ecosystem and competition, and willing to show flexibility for sharing the spotlight from time to time.

We imagine leaders motivated to be a better version of themselves rather than focusing on others’ journeys.

We imagine employees comfortable in their uniqueness, able to bring their whole, authentic selves to work, wanting to make an impact every day.

Of course, we recognize this is a huge transformative journey. We are by no means naive about the evolution this journey requires. Yet, we are willing to begin. I was born into a multi-cultural, multi-religious family. I spent my childhood years in poverty with an abusive adult parent. I have been an immigrant the majority of my life. I have lost my father, my uncle, my grandfather, and my best friend, all to unexpected circumstances. I may have less than 40 years of life, yet I have a very close relationship to two states: suffering and joy. I can smell suffering from far away with eyes closed and I can feel joy in my bones when I see it. Having worked in Human Resources organizations of eight Fortune 100 companies across 18 years, and more recently serving many Fortune 500 companies, NGOs, and beyond, I can tell you now with confidence that we DO need a different approach to work.

In the US alone, though we leverage 25% of worldwide resources, we are far from being enriched.

The poverty and inequality we turn our faces away from robs people of their dignity; the institutional discrimination we allow – whether in gender, religion, race, or other – inside our organizations robs people of their spirit through despair and hopelessness.

As leaders of 21st century, we need a whole new capacity to care, to nurture and to grow. We need a completely renewed definition to success.

If we can step out of our traditional roles, we will no longer be constrained to our current realities. Every human being has a right to flourish, to have dignity and respect, and to thrive. Every organization is capable of growth.

Let us reimagine business and work experience together.

To learn about our very first initiative, a wonderful collaboration with Stanford University’s CCARE reimagining the future of leadership, a model aimed at Awakening Humanity at Work, please refer to our pilot program brochure here.

Values.

I think by now many of us realize values play a key role in creating and maintaining fulfilment and satisfaction in our experiences.

Although motivation, values and emotions have been studied by philosophers, psychologists and neuroscientists for decades now; there’s still some confusion around what a value is/not… and how to define it… As a result, we find many leadership values are not making their way into people’s hearts and many organizational values await sitting hang up on some wall not supporting the culture an organization may aspire to create.

A ‘value’ is a concept that describes the beliefs of an individual or a culture. These are things we believe are important in the way we want our experiences to come to life and in the way we choose to take part. They help us determine our priorities, serve as a primary tool for grounding our decision making, and when things get muddy, they play an active role in reconnecting us to our true being.

A set of values may certainly be placed into the notion of a value system. This is how we typically live our leadership values inside an culture. Generally, values are considered to be subjective and expected to vary across people and cultures. There is no right or wrong to values. In other words, we don’t get to judge anyone or any culture on their chosen values. Values are also expected to evolve from circumstances with the external world and tend to change over time. Types of values could include ethical/moral values, doctrinal/ideological (political, religious) values, social values, and aesthetic values, etc.

Now.

There is a difference between an emotion and a value, this is where we often get stuck. It is in action. 

Without an action, a value (any value) becomes just an aspiration rather than a way of being. 

Every time we create a choice and take a decision, we either feed into a value or take away from it.

Let’s take courage as an example.

We could define courage as our willingness to be vulnerable against uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure. Yet, when we think of courage or courageous leaders, we often imagine them being fearless. This is absolutely untrue. All of us, without an exception experience fear. Even those people we look up to. If you don’t believe this, please take the time to listen to some interviews of world-known musicians, athletes and read a few biographies of our world leaders. We all experience fear. The difference is courageous leaders are making a choice to show the will, they are willing to act despite their fear.

There are many emotions we find to be unconditional and life-giving…

Trust. Love. Joy. Gratitude. Awe. Hope. 

All require boundaries and all have consequences and yet, they are bountiful.

The power of taking an emotion and turning it into a value is that you know it when you see them in action, you rarely need leadership books to concur to. 

Reach for what defines your being, soak yourself in the emotion, find your way to live and measure it, and allow yourself the opportunity to grow with it.

You’ll see how over time it’ll become a light in guiding you first and in time, many others. 

In a recent collaboration, BCG and WEF have imagined various scenarios for what the future of work may look like by the year 2030. Unsurprisingly, in their report, Eight Futures of Work, the need for re-skilling – meaning an organizations’ need to provide venues to today’s workers so they can develop the skills and capabilities needed for the future workplace – is highlighted several times.

It is true. In the future:

• we will learn on the go,
• our learning experience will be customized,
• our learning content will be curated to maximize outcome,
• we will be expected to switch in between different tasks.

Though the ongoing discussions about the future of work is often emphasizing the urgency of re-skilling, life-long learning and overdue upgrading of our educational systems, only a few ideas and a handful approaches exist when it comes to actually identifying pragmatic and productive ways of planning job transitions, which can facilitate minimization of resource strain both on organizations as well as the affected individuals themselves.

In a recent study by Monika Hamori of IE Business School of Madrid, who has been on Thinkers 50’s radar, across a number of 1481 employed learners, only 5% reported having financial support from their companies in online coursework. Training represents one of the biggest gaps between employee expectation and employer benefits for the 21st century. It is no longer enough to craft meaningful and secure jobs, we are now stretched by the need and desire of growing new skills.

And we can ALL learn. 

Following WEF 2018, we got together with a few specialists to develop some tangible ideas as to how organizations 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 prioritize their actions, time and investments. Today, you can find the downloadable summary report on our site here.

Remember, the traditional frames of well pay, employment security and benefits are long gone. The 21st century requires all of us to approach our ‘jobs’ as CEOs of our own companies, looking for opportunities of growth, profitability, productivity and re-learning simultaneously. If we can facilitate ‘re-skilling’ for our employees, we have a better chance to drive longer term engagements.

In that, learning can serve both as a great productivity and retention tool!

“I wouldn’t call it lying… I didn’t tell the whole truth because I cared. I knew it’d hurt (the person)” said the manager, “my intentions were good.”

Sound familiar? 

We all do it. We lie with the intention of benefiting others.

There is even a name for it in organizational psychology, we call it “pro-social lying.” We face our peers, friends, loved ones, look them in the eye, and we tell them what we know to be partially true.

Despite our  intentions, it is important to remember our actions cause an effect. There is an outcome to our intention. It may be that we don’t want to hurt someone or cause more pain, yet, we need to remember every time we engage in partial truth telling, we are possibly stripping the opportunity away from the other person to learn, to do things differently, to be a better version of their selves. 

“I just find compassion to be in contrast with performance management?” continued the manager; this time, looking genuinely confused.

Compassion is not in contradiction with helping someone improve (their performance) – unless your focus is on pointing out what the other person is doing ‘wrong’. Being compassionate at work is about recognising someone’s suffering and acting to eliminate it at large. We often assume if someone is in need of coaching, they must have no desire to be or to do differently. That could certainly be the case, but it doesn’t have to be… In my experience, if someone is not meeting up to a particular expectation, they either do not have the awareness (they usually carry a different perception) or more commonly, they have a ‘feel’ for the situation and act in search of some guidance to change their reality. Either way, imagine coming to work everyday with that sort of disconnect and/or mental burden; what a painful and confusing experience that’d be…

We all experience suffering. We are bound to it by our human nature. And we all make mistakes. Every single one of us. Collectively, we make massive mistakes. That said, after a decade working alongside with people from all walks of life across multiple work environments and geographies, I can tell you with confidence that most of us come to work in search of meaning. Most of us sincerely want to add value and do right by our people. Most of us want to do well. So, we have a choice.

A choice to ground the foundation of our connection on honesty and to actively build trust.

That doesn’t mean people won’t break our trust from time to time. Yet, there are a hundred reasons as to why someone may not be living up to the expectations of an organization and/or meeting goals. Assuming they are only in it for the ride is not only unfaithful to the person receiving feedback, it is unjust to the organization at large.

Being compassionate also doesn’t mean we have to be ‘lovey/dovey’ or do away with the core message all together, it simply requires a different kind of managerial toughness. When we exercise compassion, we mental-ize someone’s thoughts, feelings, circumstances and actively engage in experience sharing, showing empathic concern. There is an activation of our neural system that drives social affiliation and caregiving. It leads to higher sensitivity and helps us connect to the reality of other without pre-judgments and/or bias. It also exudes joy for both parties involved – yes, even if we are delivering a difficult message because it guides us to focus the conversation in the right place: the  joint experience of our humanity.

Over the course of my career, I have personally led 1000s of employment terminations and I never ever, not even once, had someone file a complaint. Of course, no one is going to thank you for cutting their position; yet we forget we are capable beings… We understand the circumstances if it is communicated well. The secret is in the treatment (with respect, dignity and honesty).

Compassion doesn’t get in the way of our authenticity. We do. Our capacity for standing in with truth, for facing conflict, and for connecting with others’ emotional state to lift them up get in the way. 

Research shows us compassionate people leaders engage in driving impartiality by overcoming bias, in driving equanimity, in sharing gratitude by showing thanks, appreciation and empathy. They create this ‘care giving system’ that’s more sensitive, less aggressive, and honest. They understand morality is not just about being nice to one another; it is about being a deserving group member, serving a greater truth.

Exercise compassion and do people right by presenting honest feedback. Even if it feels uncomfortable to you as the messenger today, remember you are not in this alone and you may just be as thankful as the receiver tomorrow.

Honest connections go a long way. A long, long way… Choose to build trust. 

I just spent five weeks on the road, visiting five different cities across America, EU and Asia, spending majority of my time in NYC and Istanbul, two cities that literally do NOT sleep.

We tend to think of sleep as a time when the mind and body shut down. 1 out of 3 colleagues I speak to argue having a lesser need for being ‘inactive’; and yet, struggle to find the WHYs behind certain patterns (i.e. not being able to lose weight, not remembering things, breathe shortage, etc.).

It is time we acknowledge sleep is actually an active period in which a lot of important processing, restoration, and strengthening occurs; and what we need for our holistic well being.

First, why do we even sleep?

During his TED Global Talk of The Neuroscience of Sleep, neuroscientist, Russell Foster provides three great reasons:

1. Sleep is for restoration, to replenish and repair our metabolic processes. Indeed, a whole host of genes are “turned on” only during sleep — genes associated with restoration and metabolic pathways. My grandmother, who is a dervish has a great saying: “Everything with a soul (that’s all living and non-living) requires time to be in need and in rest.”
2. Sleep is for energy conservation, to save calories.
3. Sleep is for brain processing and memory consolidation. Studies show that if you prevent people from sleeping after a learning task, their ability to learn is basically smashed. And worse, our abilities to come up with novel solutions after a complex task are reduced after sleep deprivation.

I would add a fourth reason to say sleep is for discovering self. Again, studies would tell us our consciousness is not just a bunch of different levels – it’s a group of different states, of which the best worked out are those involving wakefulness and the different stages of sleep. Moving through the states of consciousness allows us to discover/ rediscover self and to experience different levels of ‘awareness’ in search of reaching potential and productivity.

Then, what happens when sleep is disturbed?

Sleep is one of the most pervasive biological phenomena, but one whose function remains elusive. Because we often seem to function ‘just fine’ without sleep, it is hard to point to the specific effects of sleep deprivation, yet there are… We experience both biological and psychological side effects when we are under sleep pressure or worse sleep deprived.

On the biological side, there are effects on our central nervous system, immune system, respiratory system, digestive, cardiovascular and endocrine system. Take digestive system, for example, sleep affects the levels of two hormones, leptin and ghrelin, which control feelings of hunger and fullness. Leptin tells our brains that we’ve had enough to eat. Without enough sleep, our brain reduces leptin and raises ghrelin, which is an appetite stimulant. The result: Nighttime snacking or overeating.

On the psychological side, studies suggest sleep deprived individuals are more prone to experience loss of will power, engage in poor decision making, and loss of control. Regarding the loss of will power, for example, a review published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience journal back in 2015 summed up the results from a range of studies. It reported that sleep deprived individuals are more likely to give in to impulses, have less focus, and make other questionable or risky choices. In fact, looking across studies, it may be fair to say lack of sleep may affect self-control in two main ways: 1) it might reduce our capacity to exercise willpower; 2) it could diminish the internal energy we need for self-control.

The amount of sleep needed by an individual certainly varies. Our genetic make up, age and habitual experiences play a role, along with a number of other factors; but a good guideline — as recommended by the National Sleep Foundation — is generally seven to nine hours each night.

And, for the latest stats…

The Foundation’s annual ‘Sleep in America®’ poll reported for 2018 that among U.S. adults with excellent sleep health, nearly 90% say they feel very effective at getting things done each day, compared to only 46% of those with poor sleep health, see below:

The study also showed that only 10% of American adults prioritize their sleep over other aspects of daily living such as fitness/nutrition, work, social life, and hobbies/personal interests, see below:

So, what we do?

The dangers of sleep disruption can not be stressed enough. If you are one of us struggling with setting balanced sleep patterns, you could try one of the following and if not, consult with a medical doctor:

1. Decrease the amount of light exposure at least two hours before going to bed. We start turning off lights in our house after 7pm and try to create a nesting atmosphere by setting candles, incense or fire.
2. Leverage the bedroom for sleep only. Making it a heaven for comfort and rest really makes the bed more inviting. All the neuroscientists I work with recommend NOT having tv or gaming available in the bedroom. Just saying…
3. Turn off blue ray that will excite the brain. We do not own a TV and we deny all technology usage after 8pm in our house.
4. Don’t drink caffeine after lunch. Ok, I have Turkish genes, so caffeine doesn’t affect me as much as other people, but, my husband stopped drinking caffeine after 2pm and it really has benefited him greatly.
5. Increase light exposure when you wake up. Another disagreement we have in our house: I am for keeping the room cool and easy on light, where as my husband likes it warm and very dark. When we have a disagreement, we turn to science 🙂 and it tells us: a cool room with a little light to wake up to helps our body slowly rise in the morning.

For me, personally, I made a leap in sleep once I discovered the stigma I kept in my head. I was raised to believe I needed to work in order to be most productive, which was untrue… What I have learned along the way is that if we want to fully enjoy these sacred lives gifted to us and be at our best when in encounter with others, we need to stop fighting our natural system processing and look for alternatives methods to reach unknown corners of our beings…

Life is SO much better when we sleep. Try it. 

Many organizations are flawed about the concept of digital transformation. Many understand they need to consider leveraging technology and data; few truly understand the WHY behind such effort. As a result, we are seeing quiet a bit of adoption for the sake of adoption; change for the sake of change – time to be aware!

MGI reports 72% of companies leveraging chat tools are doing it because “others do it”. Adopting new generation of social tools because you want to help people connect and/or provide them with a flexible work environment is a good reason, doing it for the sake of ‘competition’, not so much. To realize the potential of technology, we need to clearly define WHY we need it in the first place.

Same with data… In a EY survey, 81% of corporate executives said they believe big data should be at the heart of decision making. Because there is so much hype over big (and small) data, some executives mistakenly believe causality is not important. They assume all they need to do is to collect information, establish correlation and causality can be inferred. In reality, the presence of data is not sufficient proof that outcomes can not be different. If there is no overarching strategy in place for managing the data collected, there is no point in collecting information in the first place. Data is not logic. Collecting databases, inferring possibilities, and investing in data management systems makes sense when we can use the information as part of our holistic decision making to increase efficiencies, improve experience and/or reduce costs over the long run.

Digitalization refers to the use of digital technologies and of data in order to create efficiencies (revenue generation, business process transformation), whereby digital information is at core. It is certainly most beneficial for regular and highly dependable processes.

Digital transformation, on the other hand is broader than digitalization as a way to move to a digital business model. It requires far more complex systems – bridging processes, tools and systems while automating. Digital transformation is about giving end users the path of least resistance to reach productivity. It is about unleashing potential. It is often serving a broader business strategy in place and until we integrate into a holistic strategy, it is not going to serve us. During digital transformation, similar to any other transformation effort, we still need to consider:

1. The WHY behind change,
2. The commitment to the journey of leaders,
3. The early involvement of key stakeholders,
4. The point of view, discipline and focus around continuous communication,
5. The creation of feedback channels.

Remember, magic kingdom has never been about an outcome; it is rather about value.

It is clear the trends of workplace transformation are presenting us with countless opportunities from better collaboration to higher productivity to more fun; yet, let’s make sure to keep in mind that until we build a simple vision and share a holistic journey outlook with our people, they are still going to wonder what this is all about…

We all do it. Hide behind the truth.

Majority of us report regularly ‘faking’ a good attitude and consciously acting to display ‘appropriate’ emotions at work. And it is not just about being tired or frustrated in a day, we hide our preferences, thoughts, our likes, dislikes, etc. The unfortunate consequence is that we completely ‘drain’ ourselves of our productive, life giving energies.

For years I made the excuse that as the designated HR partner, I needed to be ‘not so close’ to a single client as to keep neutrality; where as I had no issue playing soccer with a group of clients in the fields. I pretended friendships didn’t exist in the workplace and I was hired to ‘do my job’ and that alone. My heart sank when a person I genuinely cared for came into my office while I struggled to keep the conversation to the frames of task identified in my job description. Many times I knew I could do more to elevate the suffering of the individual and my heart wanted to; yet, somehow, I gave into my rationale whispering I was better off doing limiting my follow through to what was being asked of me as a high performing professional. I literally and consciously fed the culture what it seemed to want of me rather than showing the courage to honour my own being and leadership values.

The truth of the matter is that friendships do exist in the workplace. More importantly, they matter in the workplace as well as the type of work friends engage in. According to a meta analysis on the relationship between friendship and group performance, friendship groups perform better than mere acquaintance groups when a high quality output is required. Researchers for Gallup also found that having strong social connections at work makes employees more likely to be engaged with their jobs and produce higher-quality work, and less likely to fall sick or be injured.

So, perhaps it is time we start treating each other as mature adults and start trusting one another’s choices? After all, belonging is a fundamental human need and caring is our default mode.

When we feel a sense of belonging, that feeling of being ‘cared for’ not only ignites our reward system, our brains produce oxytocin and we feel lifted in spirit and useful in relation to others. That’s why our social connections at work have big impact on our productivity and our ability to display authentic behavior. And we see it in action… In both Fortune’s ‘100 Best Companies To Work For‘ and Glassdoor’s top listing companies as ‘2018 Best Places To Work‘ we find caring to be the mutual success sauce in creation of cultures based on trust and reciprocity.

On the other side, loneliness and weak social connections are associated with a reduction in lifespan similar to that caused by smoking 15 cigarettes a day and even greater than that associated with obesity. “At work, loneliness reduces task performance, limits creativity, and impairs other aspects of executive function such as reasoning and decision making. For our health and our work, it is imperative that we address the loneliness epidemic quickly,” states September 2017 HBR article of ‘Connecting Around the World’.

It is true workplace friendships can be tricky. Nevertheless, there is no need to be scared of them or hide from the possibility.

Next time you think about the choices you make at work regarding friendship, consider both the impact of your decision on your wellbeing as well as on others and on the environment.

After all, we are the architects of our experiences!

Well-functioning organizations – organizations that thrive – from families to communities to businesses to countries generally share two common traits: vitality and learning.

Vitality is the sense of being alive, passionate, and excited. It is often seeded in a specific core purpose and is fuelled by authentic leadership.

Learning is about embracing growth that comes from gaining new knowledge and skills. Learning is seeded in connection and is fuelled by conscious investment.

For us, at Whirling Chief, building thriving organizations that create value and differentiation through their people orientation is the most unifying, satisfying and inspiring purpose.

When we are successful in achieving our mission through our transformation support, employees do not only become more satisfied and productive, they become more engaged in creating the future they imagine for themselves and their organizations.

In today’s video, our contributor, Simon Marshall co-Founder of WhyNot Partnering and I have a casual chat in our office around what constitutes a thriving organisation in forth:

• Starting With WHY
• Leading From Heart
• Engaging Everyone
• Developing Constantly

As Arianna Huffington of Thrive Global recently put it:

“We think mistakenly that success is the result of the amount of time we put in at work, instead of the quality we put in.”

There is so much discussion in the world today around the use and misuse of power – both in our workplaces and by the individuals we consider ‘leaders’ of our very own businesses, societies, and institutions, it should come as no surprise that our comprehension, acknowledgment and practice of the concept seems obviously and greatly lacking in its essence.

In our dictionaries, power is broadly defined as “a person or thing that possesses or exercises authority or influence”.  This generally accepted definition suggests ‘power’ is more about ‘doing’ and when we engage in use of power; we’re utilising our authority to get at something or someone.

In this thought of line, and probably in line with our experiences, there seems to be many ways we perceive and arguably exercise power in our workplaces.

Coercive power is associated with those who are in an authoritative relationship with others. Connection power is associated with those who know some people considered influential. Expert power is associated with those who have expert knowledge on a given topic. Information power is associated with those who have access to information considered to be of certain importance. Legitimate power is perceived of a particular position one holds. Recognition or reward power is associated with people being consistently recognized for the results/ outcomes of their doing.

But what if power was more about ‘being’ rather than ‘doing’?

What if we defined power as “a skill allowing an individual to empower another with decisions” as we do in medicine or as “energy required to effectively drive change” as we do in physics? What if the concept of power was more about our ‘being’ than ‘doing’ in business; would our way of exercise evolve?

We, human beings, by the virtue of being a living organism, interpret and modify our agencies through our very own conception of ourselves. It is only when we are unaware of the fact that everyone is granted the same degree of power by birth, we start to develop a false belief /sense of isolation. We deeply fear the unknown inside of our being, lack emotional agility to navigate our ocean of ‘wholeness’ and deny ourselves the very use of our most precious latent powers.

“Afraid that our inner light will be extinguished or our inner darkness exposed, we hide our true identities from each other. In the process, we become separated from our own souls. We end up living divided lives, so far removed from the truth we hold within that we cannot know the “integrity that comes from being what you are”.”

-Parker Palmer

Every time we engage in an organisational transformation project, we take time to have deep discussions with higher executive(s) on their individual and collective abilities present and lacking; and it becomes quickly clear that it’s often the notion of self-separation, which creates misalignment between work and meaning, self and other, power and service, strategy and execution or product and customer.

We mistakenly equate wholeness to perfection; where in reality, “life’s beauty is inseparable from its fragility”.

Alain de Botton shared in his 2009 Ted Talk, most of us live our lives by definitions of others, completely disconnected from our true selves and inner wishes. “One of the interesting things about success is that we think we know what it means” he said, “A lot of the time our ideas about what it would mean to live successfully are not our own. They’re sucked in from other people. And we also suck in messages from everything from the television to advertising to marketing, etc.”

What does our self-perception have anything to do with power?

See.. When we are separated from our true selves, we start to grow an external perception on ourselves. We design and build a ‘persona’ of ourselves that may or may not have authentic elements of our true beings. Think of it as living in a body of a particular profile, a character self-grown. That character often has more than a few “well-recognized” qualities and because any recognition feeds our egos, we unconsciously and willingly nourish these “well-recognized” qualities to excess until they actually dominate and dictate us and everything/everyone else around. Further, to approve our very own self-creations, we tend to form narratives, stories, and start making choices according to patterns these personas exercise and along with our imagined experiences.

This is exactly why sometimes we look at a particular person or a leader and wonder how in the world they’re rationalising this or that behavior or a given decision… They seem completely ‘disconnected’ to us because they actually are… We all are disconnected from self from time to time and especially during certain life situations; some of us just stay there longer.

And so, because we often lack an understanding of our ‘whole’  being and we strive for perfection at the same time, we genuinely struggle to trust and make space for our imperfect sides, dark corners, unintentionally stripping ourselves away from inner capacity to make choices.

The results?

What we actually see in the real world: increased egocentricity and decreased empathy.

It is true. When we become disconnected from self, we eventually become disconnected from others.

In a 2006 study, for example, Adam Galinsky and colleagues of Northwestern University primed power or powerlessness in participants and asked them to draw a capital E on their forehead with a washable marker. Those who had thought about a time they had power over someone tended to draw an E on their forehead which was correct from their point of view, but appeared mirror reversed from the point of view of someone standing opposite them. One consequence of lack of empathy and egocentricity is that it inclines us to see people as a means to our ends – more as instruments of our own goals. In another study, Deborah Gruenfeld and colleagues at Stanford University also have found evidence that if we arouse power feelings in otherwise ordinary people, they begin to see others as objects.

What now?

Talking about language, we are proposing a different definition to power.

We are ALL granted power AND equally. It is without choice and discrimination. We do have a choice, however, as to how we want to work with that gift of power. We can choose to embrace it and grow authenticity or we can choose to deny our common ground and walk away.

A critical tip for those of us having the fortune to be placed in critical positions: We are much safer to eliminate pride from our proud circumstances. Those exceptional business leaders driving impact and profit, they commit to grow consciousness and work extra hard to stay as close to self as possible despite their prestigious circumstances. They do so in service of self-empowerment and organisational growth.

Our human minds are powerful tools. Our human bodies are powerful tools. Our human emotions are powerful tools. The way in which we choose to expose, direct and focus our wholistic selves becomes a determining factor as to what we are choosing to BE, which determines what we draw and receive from the infinite wisdom inside and around us.

The true power – power of ‘being’ is what determines the kind, the quality and the quantity of what we receive and offer back in life, which is a direct reflection of our choices.

In our ‘Dispatch From Davos‘ write up last week, we shared about the Fourth Industrial Revolution being referred to as “the greatest transformation” human civilisation has ever experienced. The reasons?

1. The Reach. Unlike any other industrial evolutions we have experienced, this time, with current technological advancements, we are able to go way beyond simple dimensions of ‘doing.’ In other words, technology is not just evolving the way we do business. For example, how we manufacture and produce things; it is actually evolving the way we consider and use our planet’s resources, the way we bond,  the way we learn, and the way we work and govern ourselves. Its scope, speed, and reach are unprecedented.
2. The Impact. The current technologies are running on knowledge, meaning we have access and availability to collect, merge, and interpret immense amounts of data. Many states, businesses, and institutions already run on data. Further, with advanced algorithmic technologies like artificial intelligence, they are able to analyse the large chunks of data they have access to, to understand how we, human beings, function physically, psychologically, and spiritually. For the first time in human history it may be so that a company or an entity knows more about us individually and collectively than we know about ourselves.
3. The Gap. Though we have advanced tremendously as a society over decades, we continue to struggle with immense gaps in equality, access, free-will, environment resources, and inclusion.

If humanity is going through a transition, will our businesses, too? You bet.

One study suggests that 75% of the S&P 500 will turn over in the next 15 years. Another says that one in three companies will delist in the next five years. A third shows that the “topple rate” of industry leaders falling from their perch has doubled in a generation.

It is all about value creation through experience in 21st century.

What will transform in organisations then?

There is often two kinds of transformation efforts in organisations: Strategic and operational. We think there will be a third and a very important category to 21st century transformations around culture. In an increasingly digital world, where transparency is on demand and employees, customers have greater influence, we all expect a meaningful, productive, engaging work experience. Therefore, organisations will be positively challenged to recreate innovative, integrated, inclusive experiences.

Further, we believe (business & hr) leadership needs to be in the heart of these transformation.

On Change… Back to Basics.

‘Change’ refers to a process of becoming different. It can also refer to turning one thing into something different, or even replacing, transferring, or evolving it.

The emotion of change is the biggest catalyst to change itself. Not knowledge, or the ‘what’ of the change. And not the content, or the ‘how’ of the change. It’s the emotion – the ‘why’ of the change. People don’t buy what we do, they buy WHY we do it.

In our consulting work, one of the most frequently asked questions we hear from prospects is, “Is it truly possible to reinvent an organisation – to a new model of productivity, fulfilment, meaning, and joy?”

“The most common way people give up power is by thinking they don’t have any.”
Alice Walker

It absolutely IS.

To invite and manage change effectively into an organization, however, requires a comprehensive understanding of human development and organizational psychology.

In his book, Reinventing Organizations, Frederic Laloux describes so eloquently how humanity has evolved from the earliest forms of human consciousness into the complex consciousness of modern times. He explains how humanity evolves in stages and how there is an ongoing evolvement, a growth that defines our values and paradigms we work under.

Organizations are no different. When we think of changing a process in an organization or the organization itself, we need to think of a continuum. The level of consciousness an organization goes through from the initial introduction of a ‘change’ to consumption of that ‘change’ is a timeline. That timeline will differ, depending on a set of variables, but for any mid-to-large size change in an organization we would be looking at about 1 to 3 years of evolvement. That doesn’t mean operations have to stop and everyone focuses on the change during that period of time. No, the show must go on! The organization needs to run. It does mean, however, that the change needs to be planned, scoped, scaled, and maintained right next to day-to-day priorities to complement one another, not hinder. It needs to offer a level of flexibility for our basic needs and emotional cycles. And you will undoubtedly start seeing positive impacts of the change in those first three months.

Human Focus… People Leadership.

Getting people matters right is essential for any sustainable lean-management effort, for ultimately much of the point of a transformation is to help people achieve more—build their capabilities, increase their capacity, intensify their engagement, and develop deeper connections between purpose and meaning.

There are clear expectations when it comes to our joint opportunity to rethink our experiences. Below is a summary from 2017 Deloitte Insights on factors contributing to a positive employee experience, for example. Much to consider…

One of the very core reasons as to why organisational transformation efforts fail is because leaders tend to start driving immediately without creating the right channels to gather data and feedback from key stakeholders.

Despite what’s at stake for change, we recommend people leaders to start their process by focusing on understanding their business needs first, actively seeking for inout from their employees and customers, and then, working their way backwards to an appropriate transformation or people strategy. The same goes for HR leadership.  (If you are unsure about how to build your HR strategy, you can download our free quick tool here.)

The great transformation is not only about digitalisation and automation does not make a leaders’ role redundant. If anything, it amplifies the role of leadership in as it allows for better data gathering and mastery of renewal energy.

The essence of 21st century transformation requires more active leadership in the process than ever before…

Let us step up to it!