According to a recent Deloitte report “2021 Global Human Capital Trends”, humans should be at the centre of society to allow the system to “flourish”, rather than to simply survive. We talked about a “return to humanity” at the beginning of 2020. But over the past 18 months, we’ve seen something new. The rules that we have and that govern us today seem to pit our humanity against economics.
In short, human choices aren’t necessarily economic choices. Actually, humanity often offers the least “convenient” choice.
I remember when I was at university, there was an assumption that a solid economy would create more resources for everyone. So, it seemed logical to prioritize choices that maximized the indicators of that value. I graduated in 1997, and the past 25 years have shown me this view doesn’t show us the whole picture. There’s something else that encourages us to choose “economics” even at a micro level. It’s something that Deloitte has also picked up on, and I’ll try to summarize below:
1) For starters, Deloitte calls every company “social”. A few years ago, we started talking about social enterprise as a category of business. But now, every company can be classed as social or not, as the case may be. If a business isn’t “distinctly human at its core” and doesn’t consider a wider view of sustainability in time and space, it doesn’t have a social impact guiding it. It will therefore destroy more than it creates.
It’s the evolution of Corporate Social Responsibility – delegating this responsibility to a particular function within the company. We’re now moving into regulatory mechanisms such as b-corp, demonstrating clear indicators of those who prioritize environmental, human and social sustainability within their businesses. We’ve even coined buzzwords such as “ESG” which offer new criteria for CEOs to measure their financial success. This conversation accelerated in 2019 with BlackRock CEO’s letter to “Profit and Purpose” CEOs, following a commitment from 189 leading CEOs to put purpose over profit.
We’re starting to talk about it.
2) In their last report, Deloitte insisted on humans being at the centre. They see it as the only chance for us to move beyond survival. That’s because the characteristics that make us human – intuition, flexibility, creativity and imperfection that allows us to constantly learn – go against the economic grain, but can help us manage uncertainty. So Deloitte suggests that companies should put employee wellbeing first to enhance the company’s economics. People know how to take care of themselves and make their own choices. The report suggests that adopting this vision will mark the end of the “work-life balance” concept.
Because we’re starting to understand that it’s all life. Even our work.
3) When we look at things through this lens, things start to change shape. It’s impossible for management to keep deciding who needs which skills. It’s unsustainable to track market changes where everyone’s skills are updating in real time. The only thing we can do is “empower workers with agency and choice”. We need to trust them and their judgements. We need to trust their self-awareness that can be cultivated and nurtured. It’s something that will unleash a great potential in all of us.
We live in an uncertain world, where “the opposite of reactive isn’t proactive, but creative”.
4) These wonderful – and seemingly obvious – indications clash with the economy of “small things”. Or rather the short-term economy. All those choices that we make for a quick win, the consequences of which pile up to put a barrier between us and real change. Deloitte surveyed 3,630 managers about what they had done to make remote working sustainable over the past year. When ranking eight different factors, the human factor and people wellbeing lagged behind. In fact, only 10% mentioned improving their tools centred around people wellbeing. 39% talked about digital collaboration platforms, while 36% mentioned new operational rules and 23% talked about improving technological tools.
So we’re making the cake first before we even think about the icing. But are we really only talking about icing here?
5) The second statistic reveals the direction we’re moving in. Deloitte asked the above executives and 1,108 individual contributors: “What are the most important results in terms of transforming your work that you hope to reach in the next 1-3 years?”. Out of 9 mentioned factors, bosses put the improving customer experience, boosting innovation and reducing costs at the top of the list. Workers wanted to improve their quality, innovation and wellbeing. Interestingly, employee wellbeing slipped to 8th place for managers.
If the first statistic talked about a quick win, helping people to work in the short term, this statistic talks about the priorities that will shape our future. The ability to innovate and employee wellbeing may seem at opposite ends of the spectrum, just like customer experience seems to be disconnected from employee experience. We often but the important things first, the hard results that we can see on our balance sheets, before we move onto the “nice to have” soft factors.
Is it possible to innovate without allowing the people who are creating to flourish? Do we really think that innovation stems solely from technology?
Human beings are volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. Just like the VUCA world that we live in. It’s almost as though they are made for each other. To activate their potential, all we have to do is see them and trust them more. We need to prioritize this change.
So while we’re on that topic: there’s never a good time to start. Just like when a child grows up, whatever we think we need to do, say to them or teach them, the only time that makes sense to do those things is now. It’s not too early, they’re not too young. Let’s not put things off. Let’s become more aware that starting to do new things doesn’t mean you have to stop doing other things. That’s the hardest part right there.
This article was originally written by Riccarda Zezza and published on the Il Sole 24 Ore blog, Alley Oop. To read the original article (in Italian), please click here.
We’re not often asked “which part of ourselves we’re bringing to work“, but it’s become an incredibly relevant question. Since last March, we’ve continued to redefine which parts of ourselves we want to show at work. Now that we’re moving into a new phase, we need to define everything again. Essentially, it boils down to how engaged we feel with what we’re doing. What we “are” can’t stay the same when everything around us is changing.
Professor William A. Kahn was one of the people behind the concept of people engagement at work. He’d probably ask us: “how much of yourself are you bringing to your role”? Our roles mark the perimeter: I’m a mother, I’m a friend, I’m a professional. Our self touches on our emotional, physical and cognitive emotions: the intensity of our engagement on different activities. Kahn talks about our “preferred self”, or rather those moments when we choose to bring “the best of ourselves” to our roles.
People can use different levels of self in their roles: physically, cognitively and emotively, even if they maintain the boundaries between who they are and the roles they hold. Presumably, the more people put themselves into their roles within these boundaries, the more they are engaged in their performance and the more they are satisfied with the roles that they hold.
So, we’re faced with a choice. How much of ourselves are we going to put into our working roles? Kahn says that people constantly bring and remove different intensities of themselves during the course of the working day. They do that to express themselves at certain times, and to defend themselves at others. So there’s a productive heart at the core of what we give to our work. Tapping into that can give us more energy and make us feel more creative, more authentic and more open to relationships.
Expressing ourselves also makes us more vulnerable and exposed, though. That’s the reason why we don’t do it all the time. Canadian sociologist Erving Goffman talks about it as voluntarily detaching ourselves from our roles. It’s the distance that people put between themselves and what they do. People can run towards their roles or keep themselves “separate”, even though they’re continuing to hold that role, leaving the bare minumum of themselves in it. Kahn talks about it as “disengagement”, or rather separating ourselves from our professional roles. It happens when “people physically, emotively or cognitively pull back while they’re carrying out their working activities”. It’s the thing that companies fear most, but it’s also incredibly common. In fact, only 30% of people are truly engaged in their work, according to recent data from Gallup.
Do we only have one “preferred self”, a sole source of energy and wellbeing? Or are there lots of different ones that change every day?
Some sociologists have revealed how the coexistence of different roles allows people to “play in multiple spheres”. Each day, they can choose which will compensate for or balance out the fatigue of another sphere. For example, if I’ve had a bad day at work, I can hug my children more when I arrive home to boost my oxytocin levels. If I’m struggling at home, I can go to the office and put all my energy into my job, because things seem easier there. They’re not just cognitive strategies: sociological theory on role accumulation talks about our natural orientation to take advantage of the complexity of our identities in order to recharge ourselves.
If we run this concept alongside Kahn’s research, we can become more aware of our choices when deciding whether to bring more of ourselves to our roles. Opening the barriers between my engagement in one area compared to another now seems less risky. Maybe I’ll throw myself into things more: I’ll show more of myself and take an active role. At the same time, I’ll keep an eye on my resources and abilities. If I keep moving forward, they’ll recharge each other.
Why don’t we put our all into everything we do? We think we’re storing ourselves up. Or we allow labels and definitions to limit us. We can’t really store things up because we’re talking about energy that comes and goes. We’re actually stopping our own “role enrichment”. And waiting for an external label to truly define us is incompatible with the speed and complexity of the world today. Even the world of work. The answer is to get stuck into what we’re doing and express ourselves in every situation. Today, as we’re designing the future of work, this is both a responsibility and an opportunity.
This article was originally written by Riccarda Zezza and published on the Il Sole 24 Ore blog, Alley Oop. To read the original article (in Italian), please click here.
The pandemic has revolutionised the world of work. Physical spaces have been one of the first things to change, working alongside digital spaces. We can’t disregard either as we go back to the future (of work). It’s the title of the Lifeed work-life observatory study, analysing over 15,000 reflections from 5,000 program participants. They talked about their physical spaces during the pandemic and what they imagine their ideal spaces to be in the near future.
The data analysis revealed many aspects relating to the emotions that people have experienced during the Covid-19 pandemic. Sometimes, they mentioned working from home, but in general they spoke about spaces in life and work that have continued to cross over. This “Small data” helps to make people’s identity dimensions more visible, when usually they remain hidden. They’re fundamental in terms of making the switch from traditional People development and People analytics (looking solely at the professional sphere) to a working dimension that considers the whole person.
The first question that we asked participants aimed to tap into their emotional dimension, relating to physical spaces at home and at work. We asked people how they felt in the space that they’ve spent the most time in over the past year. The majority (62%) of people felt positive and satisfied. 45% felt serene, with an increased sense of wellbeing and freedom, while 15% felt safe and protected (especially the women involved in the study).
At the same time, around a third of participants felt dissatisfied, uncomfortable, tired or lacking energy (29%), something which was more prevalent in the over 50s age group (+18% compared to under 50s). A sense of loneliness, isolation, uncertainty, disorientation and anxiety also added to this for 10% of the population.
So some people have experienced these physical restrictions as an opportunity that has made them feel more protected. Others have had the opposite feelings. Probably, most people have oscillated between the two. We’ve all gone through new and unexpected circumstances that have triggered a life transition.
We then moved on to ask participants how they imagined their future space, without specifying whether it was personal or professional. By tapping into people’s needs and aspirations that often struggle to come through traditional People Analytics, we found that 34% of people see themselves in the outdoors or connected with nature. Before the pandemic, this probably wouldn’t have been the case.
17% imagine a creative and imaginative space that stimulates the senses. Around a sixth of the population feel the need to have a sense of dynamic and flexible space, that can also be supported through technology, providing stimulation and opportunities to connect. Men especially expressed the need to talk and share their experiences, while women seemed more interested in the creativity of the space. There weren’t any notable differences between ages or genders when it came to those who wanted to feel connected to nature. It’s in line with the feelings that most of us have experienced over the past year.
Finally, we wanted to explore people’s values. We asked participants to identify the rules that their ideal space would have. For 31%, respect was essential, implying kindness, inclusion and collaboration. 29% felt the need to express themselves and move, while 23% wanted to respect the environment, a feeling that continues to grow as time goes on. 16% wanted to see safety and order prioritised, while 14% wanted their own personal space.
Women often expressed the desire to have a physical space that allowed them to freely express what they were thinking. This impacted their way of being, reflecting their personal characteristics, perhaps with a creative component (as we found in the emotions section).
As pedagogist John Dewey said, “we do not learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on our experience”. This analysis is useful in helping to define the characteristics of our future working spaces, ways of working, rules and values that we need to adopt.
Often, parenthood is seen as an experience that jeopardises professional efficacy. But in reality, becoming a parent offers an incredible opportunity for growth, both at home and at work. In their everyday relationships with their children, people hone relational, organisational and innovation skills to create synergy between their private and working lives.
That’s the direction that the EY has taken their strategy. They’re promoting a new corporate culture where caring for families isn’t an abstract concept. It’s a lived experience. It’s why they’ve chosen to commit to transforming and elaborating their corporate programs and policies to offer new opportunities for their employees and workers. They’ve also decided to implement a training journey in collaboration with Lifeed, supporting parents (with children aged between 0 and 3 years) as professionals and individuals.
“We want to support parenthood, allowing our people to dedicate more time to their children and offering them opportunities to growth both personally and professionally. That’s why we’ve chosen a top-rated program to accompany our new parents in their journey, giving them the tools to value the skills that they’ve acquired through caring for their families”, says Massimo Antonelli, AD at EY Italy and Managing Partner of the Mediterranean Area.
The birth of a child is a unique emotional and psychological experience that triggers personal growth for both parents. Caring for others develops and strengthens relational, creative and organisational skills that were previously overlooked.
Problem solving, risk taking and decision making are just a few of the skills linked to parenthood, but they can make a real difference in our personal and professional lives. At the heart of the Lifeed You Care You Learn project at EY, we started with the idea that becoming a parent mustn’t be seen as a stumbling block at work, but rather a building block. The digital training program focuses on self-learning and personal growth, based on a revolutionary approach towards parental-work synergy.
The program uses the Life Base Learning method, and uses a range of different tools:
– micro-learning lessons with multimedia materials
– formative modules focusing on different skills
– real-life missions to see how learnings can be applied in everyday life
– corporate rooms to share and compare experiences and reflections with other parents on the platform
Thanks to the Lifeed training program, employees can train a range of different skills:
– Relational: empathy, listening, communication
– Organisational: delegation, time and complexity management, decision making
– Innovation: problem solving, creativity, change management
Lifeed’s You Care You Learn program allows EY’s new parents to experience parenthood and caregiving while developing new skills and learning how to transfer those skills from one area of life to another.
According to EY’s philosophy, becoming a parent is an experience that triggers personal growth, creating human value for both parents. That’s why the company has decided to support its parents both in terms of time with their families and financial support.
First of all, EY offers new fathers (including adoptive fathers) an additional 10 days, on top of the 10 days paternity leave that the government gives them (women are currently offered 5 months leave from the government). Through this, they want to give their employees the time to stay with their family, up to a period of 20 working days.
The new corporate policy also transforms the financial bonus for mothers into a parental bonus. The financial bonus is designed to help parents pay for nursery and baby sitter fees when they return to work. This initiative has now been offered to both mothers and fathers, employees and freelance workers.
The pandemic, a house move, a new job, a divorce. They are all life transitions that can teach us something. But to live through these situations positively, we need to develop our ability to manage change. What’s possible? Self-directed learning is a key skill in this sense. As McKinsey explains, today intentional learning is the most important skill when living through life transformations, including working changes.
In the professional sphere, the World Economic Forum has identified the need to re-qualify at least a billion jobs that have been transformed thanks to technological changes. The impact of the pandemic has only accentuated the need for people to reskill when working online or remotely. It may seem like a daunting task, but it’s all part of our approach to these types of life transitions.
If change is a part of life, it’s our response to it that makes the difference. It all starts with us and our ability to tap into our personal resources. There’s no development without investment, and a difficult period can actually present an opportunity to hone virtuous processes.
We all go through tough patches. But we can transform them into positive energy if we face them with a proactive attitude. Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl suggested “decisions, not conditions, determine what a man is”.
Change has always been a part of human history. But it’s not something that our brains will accept easily. They see “newness” as a threat and prefer to look at things that they’re already familiar with. The secret is knowing how to face transitions with realism.
Changing doesn’t mean starting over, though. We are our histories, our values, our ideas and projects in both our private and working lives. Changing ourselves doesn’t mean getting rid of all that. It means knowing how to adapt to different situations.
That’s how self-directed learning can become a key skill for evolving our professional profiles. What’s more, we can all practice it to enhance our professional success over the long term. The important thing is that we train our brains to see newness differently.
Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck reminds us of this point, with her studies on mental openness and the impact it has on our opportunities for growth. “A closed mind doesn’t allow people the luxury of changing”.
Everyday experiences and interactions offer us incredible learning opportunities. But only if we’re intentional about learning from every opportunity. Throughout continuous learning, people’s reflections allow us to become more aware of our ability to manage change and face life transitions.
Learning becomes a training ground in itself. Just like every exercise, we need to block out time to practise. What’s more, we need to adopt a growth mindset and be curious. These elements drive our learning, but those who aren’t naturally curious can also train themselves in these areas.
So how can we hone our skills and curiosity? By facing our fears and asking questions, but also experiencing new things, such as life transitions. It’s essential to focus on what we love doing, trying new things and making mistakes, making space for our identity dimensions, and not just those working ones.
Whatever form curiosity presents itself, it helps us to stay mentally agile and aware, increasing our perspectives and preparing for new learnings.
DISCOVER LIFEED TRANSITIONS SOLUTIONS
The whole western world is talking about it. Should we bring people back to the office? How can we convince them to do so? There are so many people that, given the choice, would choose remote working full time now. Those who aren’t able to choose feel demotivated, and will really feel it when they lose that flexibility that they’d been waiting for for years. Lots of companies are looking at new ways of working that allow us to be in “other places” for a couple of days a week. But theres a more radical movement coming too, especially concerning those who belong to Gen Z. People who want to work 100% remotely, all of the time. They want the choice of never going into the office.
In theory they would be right. But transitions such as the pandemic have accelerated our learning, putting theory into practice. We’ve been working remotely in exceptional circumstances, allowing us to maximize the technological opportunities available. But we’ve not had the chance to work on the culture or ways of working remotely. In essence, we’ve not made any choices about it. We found ourselves in high seas, and so we decided to swim. We’ve sum for so long that it seems like it’s the best option, but it’s not always the case. If we have the option to work differently, we should do it. It would be a great opportunity for all, but moving the place where we work isn’t the only piece of the puzzle.
Over the last 30 years, our way of working has changed in line with technological changes. At the end of the 90s, emails rose in popularity, without anyone stopping to think about the best way to use them. It was like learning a new language without having a dictionary. We all spoke it and we were taken along with it. We talked about (a lack of) netiquette. It’s something that’s still lacking, but email itself seems a much more formal and polite way of contacting someone, compared to chat, instant messaging and social.
When we’re surrounded by a constant flux of fragmented communications, we’ve given ourselves a range of bland rules, both in terms of timing and modes of communication. Today’s 30 year olds have never known anything different. Today’s 50 year olds saw a “before” and an “after”, and I don’t know how many would call the latter a smart way of working.
Time and place doesn’t bear enough weight when it comes to working effectively. We need to consider who we are, the reason why we work and the choices we can make.
When we think about remote working, we’ve discovered something important in practice. A 100% remote job can be done both freelance or in house, so long as you do what you need to do within the time limits set by the company. If you are able to satisfy your social needs through personal relationships, you won’t have informal meetings with your colleagues, you won’t be in the same place, you won’t be able to say anything that’s out of place. You won’t be able to see relationships evolve over time, using your intuition. In a way, it’s saying goodby to innovation. Individual innovation is almost impossible: it’s genius and artistic, but products, processes and services need lots of people on board to be able to succeed.
Nobody can afford to work without innovating, even if it’s only marginal. Our jobs are under constant change and we’re under pressure to be productive. This ability to collaborate has allowed our human species to flourish. The discoveries, inventions and progress have always been created by lots of different people that have been able to work together in harmony. This can also happen if they’re not physically close by of course, but it’s much more difficult.
There’s so much more out there. The human species has survived thus far because it knows how to stay together. There aren’t many other species that know how to stay together, organize themselves and care for each other, going beyond their defence mechanisms. So work isn’t just a way of producing more, it’s a way of building society. In our collective remote working, we’ve been able to produce things in a certain way. The social aspect has been dialled down. If that’s what we need, we can call it smart working.
This article was originally written by Riccarda Zezza and published on the Il Sole 24 Ore blog, Alley Oop. To read the original article (in Italian), please click here.
In the delicate new normal phase, companies are facing a dual challenge: keeping their employees’ productivity high, as well as ensuring the sustainability of the business.
When it comes to corporate strategy, people wellbeing and engagement are really coming under the spotlight. Especially as people are gradually returning to the office after a stressful and uncertain pandemic period. For managers, this means effectively responding to employee needs in terms of work-life balance, employee satisfaction and engagement.
Recent research shows that in 2021, people often weighed up their stability and salary when deciding whether to stay with their company or look for another job. But there’s often another factor that isn’t considered much: wellbeing. The pandemic has only highlighted the importance of work-life balance for people, and now more than ever they’re talking about their needs in that area.
Other aspects such as meritocracy and the gender gap layer on top of this, directly impacting employee motivation (negatively or positively, depending on the situation). Back in 1968, American psychologist Frederick Herzberg was already talking about this issue. In his paper One more time: How do you motivate employees?, he emphasised how important it was to note the difference between actions and motivations, as well as how employee motivation can make or break a company.
According to the study, employees that feel most in synergy with the corporate vision and feel involved in developing and growing their professional profiles, are more motivated and align to corporate objectives more easily. They often work passionately to boost the reputation and the productivity of their company.
So increased satisfaction boosts productivity. But on the other hand, we’re going through a huge social change. That’s why we can’t avoid people’s feelings at work: they must become a part of our everyday working lives. Living through and sharing our emotions at work (without constraining them to the personal sphere) can become fundamental in increasing people’s retention, engagement and productivity.
In order to reach these objectives, it’s important to keep an open dialogue between teams. Managers take on the challenge of continuing conversations even when working remotely, putting people and their needs at the centre.
Human sustainability will become increasingly important in business. It’s all about caring for employees each day, going beyond professional boundaries to support their wellbeing. This in turn will drive innovation and productivity.
From here we can develop the idea of the HR footprint. HR teams have the opportunity to make their own mark on the world of work, to favour a new vision of human capital.
DISCOVER LIFEED WELLBEING SOLUTIONS
We’re strong. A lot stronger than they’d have us believe. We’re ready fro change. We know how to adapt, how to learn and change ourselves in line with the world that surrounds us. And we’re not talking about a chosen few: we all have these skills because they belong to the human race. Sometimes, we walk through storms feeling tired, hurt or scared. But we come out the other side stronger and more aware than ever. We always come out the other side.
During the initial phase of the pandemic, many people worried about the psychological impact that this global trauma would have had on people. We were living in constant uncertainty and it was hard to define the crisis itself. So how would our delicate psyches respond? They responded in the only way they know how: using their advanced immune system. Data from a recent study by Lara Aknin, Jamil Zaki, and Elizabeth Dunn was discussed in a recent Atlantic article. It revealed that the psychological unease was much less that we originally thought. People were able to “respond”.
We’ve seen the same thing happen after other negative events. Even when put through immense stress, most people are able to get back up again without showing signs of declining mental health. Suffering leaves us quicker than we expect it to. Our psychological immune system has an infinite number of strategies to hand to make us feel better, to help us get back up and see things from a new perspective.
When were no longer able to find joy in familiar contexts, in Spring 2020, people got creative.
The percentage of US citizens who felt lonely in April 2020 was only 2.8% more than those in 2018. Why is that the case? Or maybe we should ask: why do undervalue ourselves so much? Why are we so cautious, treating ourselves like children who are unable to understand or decide on anything, that need to be protected from themselves and from the world? We know all about “self-fulfilling prophecies”: when you expect something and put the pieces in motion to make that happen. We hear other people talking about us and the world in a certain way. We’re immersed in a culture that sees us as fragile creatures that lack determination. If our ability to roll with changes and learn from them, and move on like adults, isn’t “seen” or considered when moving through change, how many resources are we throwing away?
The scientists conclude the article by saying:
Human beings aren’t passive victims of change, but rather active creators of their own wellbeing.
Knowing that should give us the strength to make the disruptive changes that our society needs.
So we can learn, decide and change everything that we want to, especially during times of crisis.
This article was originally written by Riccarda Zezza and published on the Il Sole 24 Ore blog, Alley Oop. To read the original article (in Italian), please click here.
While we’re planning to the return to the office, we risk facing a great paradox. We might see people more in the office, but we risk hiding all of those life dimensions that became visible while they were working remotely. Those dimensions could become invisible: seemingly irrelevant to our professional lives, fitting in before and after our time in the office.
The relationship between work and life was a problem before the pandemic. It was normal to talk about “balancing” these two aspects, as though conflict was inevitable. But it was really about being aware of slow growth, meeting resistance in a working system that was born without having to think about families. Even though families have been a key part of women entering the workplace over the past 50 years, the world of work has continued to see them as an exception.
In order to change a system that “works”, we need a shock. Without that shock, things that were already there will always win over the uncertainty of change. We prefer to keep making the same mistakes, no matter how big they are, rather than trying something new. The shock came, but maybe it’s not enough. The system that we’re up against has a powerful structure and resilient dynamics. It’s easy to go back to our old ways. They’re so comforting, after all. The rigidity of the old way of doing things gave us stability. Narrow minded views reduced our perceptions of complexity. Through these mechanisms, power dynamics were born – and they’re naturally resistant to change. Scientists and opinion makers continue to tell us that we “can’t go back”. We’ve “seen” and now we can’t go back to being blind.
But there are two human factors that mean it risks being an option.
The first is effort. Uncertainty and a sense of urgency naturally push us towards what we already know. The word “return” is reassuring in itself. Almost as though we’re returning to safety, to normality, to the office. If this effort is multiplied by the number of people that managers are responsible for making decisions for, the pressure to restore our former ways only increases. The alternative would be carefully listening to both ourselves and others to define new frameworks and new mistakes. Mistakes that seem unsustainable in today’s world because they would tip our fears over the edge.
We tell ourselves that we can’t cope with any more uncertainty. Hybrid models are uncertain. If we make space for hybrid models, we need to be ready to not be sure of what lies ahead. If a person doesn’t turn up to a meeting and tunes in remotely, are they still feeling motivated? If I can’t see who is there and who isn’t at the start of the day, what can I understand about my team? If I can’t use my old ways of measuring presenteeism, how can I measure or understand it? As the psychologist and Columbia University professor Tomas Chamorro-Premuzik said in a recent Fast Company article:
We cannot un-know what we’ve learned about our teams: Who they are outside of the office is a critical part of who they are, period. We now have a unique opportunity to invite that whole person back into the workplace and make sure they feel not only that they belong but also that they are cherished for the whole person they represent.
The second risk factor is our rational intelligence. It’s our powerful ability to optimize, to find the most simple and direct path, helping us to find and choose certainty. We have entire statistic systems that are born to help us be rational and reduce our risk. But statistics themselves know that this is impossible. Our species’ survival has counted on a different characteristic, one that’s much more useful and efficient in times of change and uncertainty. After all, change has been constant and complex for our entire human history, both in small and large events. We all have this natural ability because it’s part of our species. It’s called emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence is a superpower that has two effects that are vital in these circumstances. It helps us to understand how we are and it allows us to help others to feel well in themselves. Self-awareness and the ability to manage our emotions, as well as knowing and recognizing them, are the keys to emotional intelligence. They allow us to keep a constant picture of who we are, even while we’re changing. This social awareness and relational ability, guided by the mysteries of empathy, allows us to “feel” who those around us are feeling. It allows us to understand that which our rational minds can’t grasps, even when we’re missing information or living with uncertainty.
Emotional intelligence can touch where rationality can’t. When we trust it (and ourselves), we can go back to seeing others without forgetting all that they are. Maybe we’ll feel ready to make new mistakes to change things. We can’t go back. But maybe we don’t want to either.
This article was originally written by Riccarda Zezza and published on the Il Sole 24 Ore blog, Alley Oop. To read the original article (in Italian), please click here.
When we talk about motherhood, we’re clear about the needs. But we now have the resources and the opportunity to bring society into a new era, redefining what it means to be a mother in the 21st century.
I’m saying mother and not parent, I’m saying mother and not father for a single reason. We have now realised that children are often “dependent” on their mothers – even though bizarrely we’re still discussing how much leave new fathers should have. When we’re designing the future, we can’t ignore the status quo. Neutralizing the status quo in the hope of going beyond it is the biggest risk we run when planning for change. Especially when we’re trying to resolve a social problem.
To reach a place where we’re not “just” talking about mothers, we need to look clearly at the concept of motherhood in our countries. That narrative is still going on in the background, so much so that we talk about “reducing” the problem, as though it’s obviously and inevitably a problem for us all. We’re “helping” families, “compensating” children, “supporting” women choosing to work. Solutions that seem to reduce the negative effects of a stagnant social problem: motherhood. Before births, before parenthood: the problem is motherhood, and the difficulty we have reconciling it with everything else. Especially when it comes to the way in which productivity is defined in our society, at the speed of the market, schools, services and life in the west.
The women that choose to become mothers are courageous, and need to be protected and supported.
Motherhood is a choice that goes against the grain, and so needs to be celebrated.
Motherhood is a choice, and women must be free to make it.
But what else is motherhood? That narrative that goes on in the background, that part of the story that we don’t talk about? Which stereotypes are we talking about? Quale narrazione corre sullo sfondo, quale parte della storia non viene raccontata? Are we focusing too much on the only real driver in life?
Western culture implicitly links motherhood with weight, motherhood with illness, motherhood with sacrifice. When we think about production, motherhood interrupts a linear journey: a fracture that needs us to bridge the gap in order to compensate negative consequences. When we think about personal satisfaction, motherhood is a radical choice between one thing or another. Family vs career, woman vs mother, a conflict between different identities – or rather head vs heart. When we think about society, motherhood is a temporal discontinuity: a momentary pause as we carry forward complexity that conflicts with the norm and makes everything so much more complicated. Think about changing stations on trains, space to breastfeed, school times, the length of summer holidays, ramps on stairs, areas that are off-limits for children. They are all exceptional services that have been built by able-bodied people.
In the narrative that reaches our young women, motherhood is tiring, risky, uncertain and difficult. It’s something that holds our own bodies hostage, and an experience that needs to be compensated and protected because it’s an add-on. It depicts motherhood as being scary, something that requires courage. There’s not a baby bonus or child benefit that can compensate for the tales we’re telling about motherhood. We need to talk about it: we need to make the status quo visible. It’s the starting point.
Just like in the story The Emperor’s New Clothes, we need to see things as they are before we clothe them in something new. And once we’ve seen the weaknesses in this way of narrating things, we can see how it falls short when compared to the whole experience. We need to invest in narrating a new story, one that’s fuller and richer. A story that talks about what it’s really like to have children and care for them, raising people that are stronger that we are and that will outlive us. It’s a story that sees having a child as a wonder and a point of strength. It’s inviting for women, fathers and also people without children. A collective dream for a better future. A generative life, and so much more than that. There’s an individual aspect that we can work on: the opportunity to become a mother will always be inaccessible if we don’t let ourselves talk about it. We need to have those courageous conversations about what happens when we “grow up”.
This is what I’ve learned over the past 13 years, since my eldest child Marta was born. It’s how I narrate being a mother, but it’s often contradictory to the story that my country tells me.
My children save my life every day. They are my training ground, my refuge, and the meaning behind everything that I do.
They remind me that the world exists without me. At the same time, they make me feel responsible for everything that happens in the world. There’s nothing that I’m indifferent about.
By becoming a mother, I’ve understood that they are my children. It’s not a delusion of being omnipotent, but rather a sense of responsibility.
And I’m not scared by it. It’s the reason that I write, work, dream and plan new things. Each day, I have more energy and more willingness to move forward than I did the previous day.
That sense of life that many of us seek and easily lose, that vision that makes us immortal, that sense of responsibility that saves us. Having a child makes this a concrete reality, enriching all other aspects of our lives. Even if it’s just one part of the story, why are we not talking about it?
This article was originally written by Riccarda Zezza and published on the Il Sole 24 Ore blog, Alley Oop. To read the original article (in Italian), please click here.
