Brave, Beautiful and Strategic

I’m unmuted.  We’re in a full team meeting online in the middle of a critical conversation about how to facilitate our next public gathering when my 10 month old baby crawls over to me and starts to cooo, coooooo, in escalating volume.  I mute my mic, but he is demanding in no uncertain terms that I pick him up. I know the moment of conversation we’re in is sensitive and if I pick him up he might distract everyone with his cuteness, but I also know something else:  My boss loves when I bring my baby to work.  She often says, “more babies in meetings, that’s what we need, more babies in meetings.”  So I bend down and scoop him up into my lap and sure enough the team pauses to say awwww, hi Tlayo!! But we’re also used to it, so we flow quickly and seamlessly back into the convo and the person speaking makes their point and passes it on.  The group isn’t that affected at all actually by my baby bouncing on my lap during work, but I am.  I feel welcome.  I feel like I can tend to my family and still have my perspective respected.  I notice that my boss and our whole team honor my parenthood and know enough to also correctly assume I’m still very present and listening to every word as I was before.  I feel affirmed and taken seriously when I share and I trust I will still be treated with care.  So Tlayo starts sucking his thumb and watching my coworkers and we both listen intently.  I weigh in about how I think we should open and close the space with participation.  People nod in affirmation.  Tlayo smiles. 

As you already know, our babies are part of us.  How they’re feeling translates immediately to how we’re feeling.  So making my son Tlayo feel welcome in our work space, makes me feel like I can bring my full self. Unique as it may sound, my boss Courtney actually truly does want us to bring our full selves.  All of us can tell that she genuinely wants us to be happy, to be healthy, to be well. And this is the story of how that changes everything…

Courtney Harge is the CEO of OF/BY/FOR ALL.  She thinks in a way that is distinctly distinct from typical and traditional managerial methods.  From my own 25 years of working in the world and from conversations with friends, family and strangers, I draw a basic understanding that most folks manage you as a worker, not as a full human being.  There are manuals and books galore about styles and methods of being a good manager, but the norm is what it is: disconnected from our full humanity and focused on our productivity.  So, how is Courtney different?

We are a seven person team of an organization called OF/BY/FOR ALL that supports cultural institutions to be more equitable and work better at weaving back together all that has been divided by systems and histories of oppression.  In some ways, the work is high stakes.  We know our ability to support an organization to be more equitable can affect the lives of communities around the globe where the members orgs of our Change Network are located.  This could be a work environment of stress and pressure, of ‘not-enoughness’ and perfectionism because there is always more to do and there is always a way to do it better.  We could be living and working in the mindset of ‘time is money’ and ‘there is never enough time’. But, thankfully, we’re not.  Courtney explains:

“We are part of the world we’re trying to make more equitable, more healthy and happy, and if we’re not embodying that within our organization, then we probably won’t do a great job of helping other people embody it either.  That’s why we’ve designed our work to nurture and support an experience the balance and patience that all organizations need to cultivate to work well with communities.” 

And so, our workplace feels different. 

The babies are welcome.  How you’re feeling today matters.  What you need to do to take care of yourself is valued and considered.  We’re not perfect, but at least we’re trying to walk our talk and practice a culture of care.  So when Tlayo cries for his Dad to pick him up, I don’t have to tell him to be quiet because I’m at work.  I don’t have to tell him, like so many parents do in this dehumanizing culture of capitalism that reduces humans into producers, that he is not as important as my work.  Of course, there’s plenty of times when I do need to focus on work but what matters most is knowing that if I NEED to attend to my child, I will be supported to do that.

Before going farther into the way that knowing echoes into my enthusiasm and effectiveness as a worker at my organization, I want to say a word about the broader context that this is happening in.  I want to both celebrate what is happening under Courtney’s leadership and also acknowledge the ongoing epidemic of labor abuse and dehumanizing conditions of employment.  And I think this particular conversation is of course intertwined with this broader context.

We all deserve joy, peace, respect, food, laughter, housing, dignified work and a community that sees us, celebrates us and meets our basic needs for survival.  Right? Seems like that would be a sensible guiding principle for how to organize society, but instead we have the post-colonial nightmare in which none of that is guaranteed.  The context of this article is a legal and political and economic system that protect inequity, extraction, and exploitation.  The craziest part is that the nightmare is so normalized, that we see private ownership, rising rents, student debt, overflowing private prisons, mental health epidemics, ongoing indigenous genocides and endless wars as normal. Or even worse, inevitable.  Yup, business as usual.  Inequity is institutionalized. But our organization’s mission is to make institutions more equitable.  It’s a big challenge that begins with seeing the histories and realities of violent dehumanizing division.  In facing such a painful and brutal context in could be hard to have hope.  But that depends on our perspective.  With eyes to see it, there is also sources of hope in all directions! Countless forms of creation throughout our ecosystem are living in brilliant harmony with us, ever present and always teaching us, reminding us how to return to balance.  There is boundless hope in the capacity of human beings to reflect, to learn from mistakes, to connect, to organize and work together for more health, more wholeness, more safety, more peace and more justice.  Despite our systems, when I turn my gaze to the ingredients of the human heart, that power of mother earth, the magic of imagination and the mystical indescribable indomitable force that we refer to as love… I actually feel hope. Even now.  Yes, even now.  

And in the spirit of hope, I return to this is a celebration of how my boss is departing from the old ways of working and living into new and necessary changes.  She is making space for humanity and healing.  She is revealing what should be obvious to all of us: that we all should be honored in our wholeness.  That said, I believe it’s a sensitive thing to write about workplace culture while most workers on a global level are exploited and treated less as humans and more as a means to an ends.   Across these lands, most people will never be celebrated for their unique brilliance and experience at work.   We need to know that’s a massive tragic loss.  The work we are doing hopes to lift up all our people and make all kinds of art and culture ever more accessible, especially for our families across these lands that are workers- toiling right now in construction sites, agribusiness, factories, retail stores, restaurants, and all other places motored by the labor of low wage workers.  We see you, we appreciate you and we hope the way we are changing our work place might combine with your efforts to make your workplaces more just and equitable.  Our work is inseparable.  We are together. 

So, maybe it is this simple: your life could be made better by making the people around you feel cared for. 

And you can make people feel cared for by being real with them, listening to them and making a visible effort to meet their needs.  And maybe by making a consistent effort to meet their needs, you support them in showing up with more care for all the people in their lives who will do the same for the people in their lives.  Maybe it's that simple. Or maybe not.  But, what I’m learning from experience, care is contagious and even if it doesn’t echo out into perfect ripples to reach everywhere, it can be deeply healing and empowering for those that it does touch.  And that’s so much better than nothing. I, for one, am a living example of the benefits of the brave ripples of brilliance, courage and kindness that I experience at my job. 

It makes me wonder, are you supported at work to be your whole self and to care for your loved ones and maintain a healthy balance of work and life so you can bring your best self to both spaces?  Maybe pause for a second and think about it: How is work going?  How does it feel to be in the place where you go and spend so many hours of your precious life? Is there space for your unique personality and brilliance to come through there? 

Whoever you are wherever you are, I really do want to know the answers to these questions.  If I believe in the big beautiful words of love and justice and dignity and freedom - that must be because I believe in the inherent beauty and worthiness of all human beings to love and be loved, to heal and be healed, to connect and to create.  The truth is that I care about your health and happiness AND I know that you feeling good at work echoes out into your workplace and the energy of your workplace will echo out into the communities you work in or the people you encounter.  That’s just how it is. It’s the ripple effect.  And the question is what do we want to do with this truth of our interdependence? Where is our power to create the workplaces we want and need for the sake or ourselves and everyone else?  Often times, there is great power in starting small and finding any action steps available to express our values with integrity.

Courtney welcomes all of us and leads by example to create a culture of care for every single person on our team. So if the baby cries, she always says take your time.  And let’s be honest, most of us are socialized to feel like when it comes to work, its not “our” time.  We have a cultural understanding that we exchange our time for employment, a wage, maybe even benefits if you’re lucky.  So in that small moment, when I need to tend to my baby or myself, and my boss says with kindness and understanding, “it’s all good, take your time”, she is practicing taking actions that express my value AND the understanding of our interconnectedness.  And this practice is truly a powerful cultural rebellion.  Again, it may seem small, but it’s not.  These words remind me that I am important, that my child is important and that I work at a place where it matters how I’m doing.  That’s huge.  That changes how I orient to my work! Not just for me, but for the rest of my team, because it inspires me to show up with more courage and commitment to manifest our mission.  And what’s good for our team, is good for the people who we work with and for, which in turn is good for the communities that they work with and of course, that means that this act of love that invites me to care for my son, eventually translates into goodness and care for the children in communities across the world.  And what is good for the children is good for the land and for the future of life itself.  This is one little example of our undeniable interdependence.  And how this profound echo of care isn’t just cute, it’s the foundation of hope and the guiding light as ongoing wars, soulless oppression and climate chaos keep knocking out the electricity.  

Courtney speaks about how our hope is to create the beautiful revolutionary future.  But her most influential insight is that we create it by embodying it with each other here and now. The way she cares for us, has created a culture of how we as a team care for each other.  And when I leave work and go back to being with my family and community, I don’t carry the weight of having to reduce myself to a job description, instead I walk with the lightness of being seen in my power as a member of a team.  

One day Courtney and I we’re talking about the logic of her style and some of her leadership decisions.  She was like look, I know some of what I do is the right thing just because being kind and humane is the right thing, but seriously its also just helpful to our goals. Its seriously strategic to doing our work well.  She says look, of course I want all people to be happy and healthy just because I’m a decent human being AND it’s strategic to invest in the health and happiness of our team.  She points out what should be immediately obvious but so few bosses seems to consider: If I show you all care and consideration, I help create space for you to be happier people… and first of all, I want to work with happier people and second of all, happier people do a better job at their work.  So it’s a win-win. 

Seems obvious right? But stop me and drop me a comment if most people you know don’t complain about bad vibes at work, about feeling overworked and underpaid, stressed out by team dynamics or not feeling respected or supported at their job.  We are in an epidemic of bad vibes at work.  

Courtney asks, as long as we’re doing an amazing job, why would I not want you to work less hours and get paid more?  She is asking all of us that.  I’d like to see every director of every single organization have to answer that question.  Because at the root, what her example is inviting us toward is seeing and caring for each other as whole people.  With her leadership, we’re going to a place where we question all the systems assumptions about work and how to lead.  We’re going to a place where our children are welcome, our joys, our tears, our hopes, our fears, are welcome.  That’s good for us and for our families.  That’s good for those we work with and for and no matter who you are or where you are, that’s good for you.

In closing, this is an invitation to all the people out there who are supervising others or doing any kind of management at all:

Try enthusiastically supporting the people on your teams as full human beings.  Invest in their wellness.  Consistently celebrate their accomplishments and acknowledge their efforts.  Welcome them in their fullness and see what happens.  Courtney’s example suggests the power of this path.  I hope to see you out here walking with us.  You might be surprised how it lightens your load, you might be amazed how far it will allow us to go.