The Make Work More Human Blog
Read. Be inspired. Lead with Love.
Is it really possible to create a way of working based on love not fear? Yes. It’s not only possible. It’s essential. Learn more from this collection of more than 100 posts to inspire and guide you.
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The Language of the Heart
Lili speaks to the importance of our chosen language by sharing a powerful story between her and her son. Lili shows leaders why it's crucial to shift the language of our hearts. She invites leaders to start using new words, new phrases, and new questions so that empathy, vulnerability, and authenticity can be at the root of communication.
Ask This Question
The questions we ask ourselves and others matter. Questions are not neutral but point us in a direction. They cause us to pay attention to some possibilities and to exclude others. In this blog, Renee shares the number one question we should be asking ourselves throughout our careers. From interviews to promotions to recognition to retirement, this question provides a powerful lens for real impact in the world.
Rituals: Making and Breaking Them With Love
Lili shares how she and her husband are spending the early months of their marriage intentionally collecting rituals, habits, and behaviors from the people who are most dear to them in a Ritual Tour. Lili shares how this action of authentically choosing rituals that align with our values is vitally important in a paralleled way within our organizations. Aligning what we value with our daily actions is bridged by our habits and rituals. What rituals do you want to keep? Which would be best to rid yourself of? And which others would you like to adopt for better alignment?
A Great Transition
CEO and Founder Renee speaks to the feeling of controlled chaos that comes along with moving and how this is a perfect metaphor for the discomfort we are all experiencing in our modern work world. She provides a series of resources for reflection for leaders and team members to utilize to navigate the same feeling of controlled chaos as we go Forward to Work.
Career Versus Change-The-World Goals
Community Member and Change Maker, Meagan Macvie, speaks to her changing career goals throughout her lifetime and how they have gravitated towards impact rather than achievement. If you’re interested to learn more about how to make changing the world part of your 5 year career plan, check out Meagan’s thoughts and sage wisdom!
Perhaps It’s Time to Tune Within.
I can ask you a question like ‘What is the meaning of love?’ and you will automatically drop down in the centre of your body to seek the intuitive knowing you hold for the meaning of that word. You will find images and sensations in your body and use them to adequately express the meaning of it.
Can You Hold Love and Anger at the Same Time?
Denise Miño recounts a recent story with her son at a local family fun center in which confusion over a pizza turned to public berating and belittlement of an employee. Denise shares her experience and thought process to actively choose love and compassion towards the victim, rather than fury or contempt towards the persecutor. She aptly speaks to one’s ability to hold both love and anger simultaneously while still choosing to act with intention for love.
What Pandemic Parenting Taught Me About Loving Leadership
Read as Lili Boyanova unpacks the nuances of our love expressed as inner light and the common struggles we share when our behavior doesn’t align with our loving, light values. Through exploring the lens of her son, Alex, Lili shares powerful sentiments and universal truths about what it’s like to navigate the world as we try to share our love, sometimes fail, but find the treasure in the lesson all the same.
Loving Every Part of You
Jennifer McDowell speaks to her own personal experiences with doubt and how she learned to love these voices through Internal Family Systems Coaching. She breaks down this framework into three major learning points. 1. We all have parts, but our nature is wholeness. 2. All parts have a noble purpose. 3. Love opens the door to healing. Read along as Jennifer describes how she learned to love her voice of doubt with curiosity, compassion, and creativity.
Help Stop the Harm
Workplace traumas are dehumanizing and can be all-consuming. The suffering caused by abusive, fearful workplaces is enormous. We must rise up and decide enough is enough. We must stop the harm. It’s time to set a new standard, to expect something more of ourselves, for ourselves and for each other. Instead, it is time to expect and create workplaces characterized by love. We must make trust, respect, empathy, compassion, and belonging the standard. We don’t have any time to lose.
Loving My Lonely
What’s Alive in you right now?
Before you read any further, I wonder if you could take a couple breaths to name what is alive in you… Here is the catch. Most of us are not trained to answer this question honestly…authentically. It has been an interesting journey for me to connect with whatever is alive in me that day without mixing it with evaluation. We are trained to judge. To have an opinion. To name in polarities. But judgements and opinions are parts of the mind. When we are trying to understand ourselves mentally, we are not truly present. We are sitting in the analysis of our experience, but we are not with our experience.
When I Say the "L" Word
What happens when we say the “L” word at work? I do it a lot. I’ve watched a lot of people squirm in an uncomfortable silence intimidated to use such a raw, but accurate, word to describe the gap in our workplaces. But the incredible, magical, beautiful thing comes next. When we talk about Love at work, people blossom. They open up to creativity, innovation, leadership, honesty, and community. Starting to use the “L” Word might be scary, but it’s well worth the results.
Can't A Little Fear Be A Good Thing?
Exploring when and how fear can actually be a good thing. As a natural human response, it’s important that we understand when fear occurs, what it does to us, and how we can use its helpful benefits when appropriate.
How to collaborate with love as a guiding principle?
“What’s the one thing that you want to improve the most when it comes to your team culture?” – I often ask senior leaders as we start to scope out what support might be needed for them.
“Collaboration” - almost instantly they respond.
I love this response - it opens up the possibility to dive in and learn more about the conditions under which a team collaborates. When I start to uncover what’s underneath the need for better collaboration, we often land on these questions:
How can we improve the relationships within our team? How can we create psychological safety so that we can talk about what’s most important? How can we promote cross-team communication? How can we become more aware of each other – our needs and expectations? How can we make work to flow in a stable and predictable way?
Powerful questions, don’t you think?
What is fear and why is it important?
“More love. Less fear.” This is what we advocate and work for at A Human Workplace. Those four words offer vast canyons of possibilities to explore with numerous question trails to follow. To go on that journey together in pursuit of understanding deeply what more love and less fear at work really mean, it will help us to share an understanding of some basics about love and fear. These next several posts will give us that common view of this landscape so we can traverse this territory together.
Loving When Overwhelmed
We are not alone in our love and concern. We are together in it, collectively creating a whole loving response out of many parts.
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