What if instead of working from a place of fixing our weaknesses, we worked from our strengths? Gallup research shows that when our talent development and management is strengths-based employees are six times more engaged, 3 times more productive, and the company experiences lower unwanted attrition. Building upon an employee’s strengths is significantly more effective in performance development than trying to improve their weaknesses. Bottom line - strengths-based cultures outperform others.
What do talent development and DEI have to do with each other? Everything. An organization that wants to increase diversity must look at how it hires and recruits, how it develops its people, and how it promotes people with a sense of inclusion, belonging and equity. The experiences of exclusion or belonging are in the day to day interactions people have at work — who gets work, who gets the good work, who is engaged with, whose ideas are heard, whose contributions are valued
Grief isn’t meant to be shared. But comfort is.” Chairperson Rainwater (Yellowstone). As with #grief, so also with racialized trauma, #inclusion and #belonging, and #wellbeing.
When my mother died this summer, I immediately went into “do” mode. It’s my default in a crisis. It’s why I am a good war time chief. Laser focused on what needed to be done, I whipped out lists, broke lists into tasks, and planned. This “do” mode-first is also what can get in the way of connection with self in the moment and others also suffering…
How we grieve is very individual. So is how we respond to trauma and aggression. This blog is not so much about grief and death as it is about what it looks like to stand alongside others, to make space for them. We have to engage with empathy and curiosity to have better relationships, teams, workplaces and communities.
I've survived wondering how I would make it through with no safety net. I've survived work place bullying and harassment I've survived being underpaid and unappreciated. I've survived depression. I've survived health conditions I never planned on struggling with I've survived grief I've survived the kind of disappointment and pain that causes people to walk away.
Here is what I have learned in my short lifetime. We are in this together. I knew this when I was a child afraid of Maitesine, when I have been an adult in my partner office crying because boko haram was killing people and I couldn't reach my family, or when I saw my family members grieve loved ones lost in the so-called civil war in Sierra Leone.
I also learned that we must speak for each other. I am not gay or transgender. But I will speak for our brethren who are LGBT. Because they are as deserving of dignity, love and respect as every other human being made in the image of God. I will speak for my Muslim neighbors because in my heart dance memories of the people who have loved me the most who are Muslim, and because they are covered by grace as am I. I will speak because the darkness cannot survive the light. I will speak because courage is a practice. And in a political environment where people draw artificial barriers between work and life, where we don't discuss social justice issues, I know that my failure to speak will inevitably lead to me being silent when I should not.
Sometimes we find ourselves facing giants. These giants —obstacles we haven’t faced before, challenges that could affect our livelihood, politics that could derail a career, financial struggles that cloud our vision — can weigh us down. It happens. It happens to the happy and successful and confident. It happens.
I have found myself at times in places where I thought I would lose my sanity. It is hard in those places where I was challenged in ways that forced me to confront who I wanted to be and what was not worth risking. It can be painful and scary. And yet here I am. Hopefully, sane.
It’s like running track. Fix your eyes on a spot ahead of you, maintain your form, and power through. All the training, the exercises that hurt and then built, the diet, the stretching and practice was preparing you for this.
