What We're Thinking
How we choose to talk about where we are and where we’re going is no small matter.
The way we choose to talk about things is vitally important. As Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel famously put it, “Words create worlds.” Embedded in this elegant three word sentence is the transformative idea that language does not describe what we see, it forms it, gives it shape, creates it.
Looking for lessons.
I write this from my office in London, where I sit following a largely sleepless night. Before the first polls closed on America’s historic election night, I hosted a lovely dinner with a handful of friends and colleagues where, mercifully, very little conversation was devoted to the campaign or the potential results that were only a few hours away.
These are exciting and encouraging times, if we can find the courage to allow them to be.
Almost since the time I entered the field of organization development I have been driven by the desire to help people bring more of who they are to the work they do. Nothing irks me more than hearing people talk about being one way at work and another way altogether when at home or with friends. Invariably, these people report that they leave some, often significant, part of themselves at the door when they enter the workplace.
How much are we missing out on and how much is lost because we don’t feel like we can be who we really are at work?
It’s all about the learning.
For some time now, I’ve been noticing a change in the way teams operate. When I was first learning my craft, the typical metaphor for a high performing team was often a sports team, or a symphony orchestra, if I was in a place where drawing parallels to sports was unwelcome or misunderstood. These metaphors are less and less applicable in many of today’s dynamic organizational environments.
Balance is learning to live without guilt.
Maybe it is the hopeless optimist in me, but I find the following idea incredibly compelling: “...it’s time to stop limiting our thinking and start believing that equality is possible if we ‘lean out’ and create the companies we want to work for, instead of waiting for the companies we work for to become what we want.”
