Thrive: Becoming Whole

We humans have a natural longing for wholeness, seeking this quality in every area of our lives including in our work.

• We want to be whole as individuals, not pretending or hiding but authentic to ourselves and living in integrity with our values.

• We want to be whole interpersonally, not fractured, ignored, or ostracized in relationships but enjoying trusting, respectful human connections.

• We want wholeness in our work processes, not disjointed, siloed, confused, or error-laden but with unity and shared clarity about who does what when and to what standard and how all parts flow together to contribute value.

• We want wholeness in organizational purpose and priorities, not misaligned or vague but knowing why this endeavor exists, what’s important to achieving that purpose, and how we should help advance that purpose each day.

Brokenness

A physical fracture or dislocated bone hurts and prevents us from going about our daily activities normally. Compensating for an undiagnosed and untreated injury can cause other injuries as we adjust posture or gait.

Similarly, when we do not have wholeness in our work, with ourselves, colleagues, work process, or purpose, it is difficult to get anything done. Social and structural fractures create mistrust, confusion, withholding, and doubt, inhibiting problem-solving, collaborating, and identifying issues or ideas. It becomes hard to work with quality, confidence, and satisfaction.

Diagnosing and Treating Brokenness

Some workplace fractures are obvious, easily diagnosed, and treated, while other fractures are hidden and take effort to understand and care to repair. The same is true for broken bones.

During the summer of 6th grade, I broke both wrists in a cycling accident while on vacation in the San Juan Islands of Washington State. It was immediately clear that we had to take the long ferry ride back to the mainland so that I could receive medical treatment, setting my wrists and putting me in casts. We were back on vacation 3 days later and after 6 weeks, the casts came off.

In contrast, as an elite high school soccer player (“football” for most of the world) and one of the top-five goal scorers in the country, my husband Jim experienced chronic pain in one foot in the fall of his senior year. It took his mom, a world-class radiologist, ten weeks and dozens of X-rays using the best technology of the day to find the hairline fracture. He spent nine months in casts and another nine on crutches so the fragile bones could heal.

Sometimes we know where we lack wholeness in our team and the “treatment” is clear. An obvious breakdown in communication in an email exchange between two people needs a conversation to listen to clarify the meaning or perhaps to apologize for reactivity. Persistent complaints about the timing of handoffs in a process need a meeting to map out the timeline and identify needs and expectations. Repeated questions from staff about where we are going as an organization need explicit messaging from leadership to make direction clear. Notice how often the “treatment” involves open, healthy, clear communication.

At other times in our work life, we know something is off. We think there might be a breach in relationship or process or purpose, but we can’t figure out what’s broken. People avoid directly naming the struggles, carrying on as if everything is fine. It can take persistent, careful, respectful exploration of the symptoms on a team with special facilitation support, inquiry methods, and reflection and communication tools to discover where the fracture is, stabilize relationships, and then heal over time.

Consequences of Brokenness

It's important to note that fractures can be repaired but may still have significant consequences. After a year on crutches, Jim went on to play college soccer and to decades of satisfying recreational adult league play around the world, though he missed the critical window when he might have made the US National Team. As in our physical lives, fractures in our social-organizational lives can heal but we may miss leveraging market opportunities, attracting new team members, creating breakthrough innovations, or benefiting from other strategic advantages. It’s to our advantage to cultivate a healthy culture of wholeness to enjoy all its benefits and not miss out.  

Becoming More Whole

In our work with teams and organizations, we see a common pattern of needs for wholeness at each level of work life and of actions to heal the breaks to bring wholeness.

Individual Wholeness: Individuals are not comfortable being themselves, hiding parts of their culture or identity to be accepted and to have their work accepted. Create more wholeness by actively supporting people to be authentic, appreciating the value and strength of differences, and learning to cultivate belonging for all.

Interpersonal Wholeness and Team Wholeness: Two or more people, or an entire team, have a breakdown in their relationships and collaboration sapping time and energy from work with conflict, factions, back-biting, etc. Create more wholeness by intentionally cultivating psychological safety through team agreements and charters, role clarity, trust repair, values and habits of respect and problem-solving, learning to name and address harm when it happens, and using conflict resolution practices.

Process Wholeness: Siloes and process breakdowns keep work products from flowing to the customer. Broken processes cause issues of safety, cost, time, quality, customer satisfaction, and employee burden. Create more wholeness by using continuous improvement methods and tools like process mapping and process walks to discover how the work gets done. Meet regularly across teams to review and improve process performance with open, respectful communication and problem-solving practices.  

Organizational Wholeness: Team members are unsure about what’s important now. Maybe leadership, budgets, products, or context have changed and no one is exactly sure what the priorities are now. Team members are confused, hesitant, and floundering. Create more wholeness through strategic and business planning, immersive, persistent communication by leaders at all levels of goals and priorities, activities to help each team and team member to have a line of site from their jobs to the organization’s desired outcomes, track progress and share stories of contributions

For Your Reflection:

Reflecting on these descriptions of when wholeness is missing and examples of activities to build wholeness…

Which area are you drawn to improve in your organizational life and why? Where are you experiencing gaps or struggles? What impacts are you noticing? What difference might it make for you and your team to be more whole in this area?

Also, take time to notice and honor the areas where you have wholeness now. What benefits or advantages does your team have because of this? How can/do you support this wholeness as a valuable aspect of your work?

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I share more about leading teams that thrive on To Work: With Love a NEW series airing on the Gut + Science leadership podcast. Find episodes HERE.

If you’d like to take a Thrive Self-Assessment, email me at Renee@MakeWorkMoreHuman.com

And if you want to talk about real strategies for wholeness, contact us here.

Our Thrive Strategy Lead is Faith Addicott and our Thrive Program Lead is Lili Boyanova Hugh. To learn more about bringing Thrive to your team, reach out here.