Human Workplaces
“Leave IT at the Door”
Hey guys, today I want to talk about human workplaces. I know that sounds strange because usually humans work in workplaces and businesses employ humans. What this phrase or idea of human workplaces aims to hone in on is on how humans are interacting in the workplace. It is also calling to light how to recognize opportunities to bring in the human experience. I want to focus on a cliché that often comes up in the work place, “Leave it at the door.” I've heard it so many times, "When you come to work, leave it at the door. When you come to work, we don't want to know about your personal life. When you come to work, we're not going to talk about your grandmother that took care of you, that just passed away. That's not for work." Right?
When we refuse to recognize that the grandma who took care of your shift lead’s death has a direct impact on the work that is being done, we refuse to recognize him. In addition, when it is our grandmother that took care of us, how does that leave us feeling? We feel dismissed, unimportant, and objectified. When our humanity is denied, what is also being denied? In the dictionary, humanity is defined as humanness, benevolence. So to say, our good heartedness and compassion is what makes us human and therefore denying to recognize people’s experience we objectify them and reduce them to less than human. It is the basis for diversity and inclusion in the workplace.
Dehumanizing Workplaces
So when we ask someone to leave grandma’s death at the door, or their tumultuous divorce, or their feelings of loneliness- something dehumanizing happens, something happens where we now become objectified. Because, by removing my human experience, my pain, my grief, my feelings, my thoughts, you're saying that I'm a piece of a machine that needs to come to work, and our value depends on our ability to be a cog in the machine. Once this dehumanization happens in the work place, we begin to allow ourselves to be objectified in other areas of our life.
The Infamous Annual Review
So, let’s take a look of the infamous “bad year”. I think most people can attest and agree that they have experienced a year where shit hit the fan. There was death, loss, there was financial strain, etc. I also think we can agree that productivity, teaming and work suffers when we are under personal stress (most business owners can definitely understand that concept). If we function under the principle, “leave it at the door” when an annual review comes- we are chastised and our performance grades suffer because of stress. Now, we are not allowed to talk about what happened in our life that produced the results represented in the review and therefore must accept that there is simply something flawed in us. We must accept that we are on “watch”, probation, or have a lot to work on. We don’t get the raise, or the bonus, etc. Our resiliency and our grit as humans fails to be recognized, we are minimized, and objectified.
We have to recognize our peoples performance is related to their current functioning, which means what's going on in their personal life right now and it's also highly related to their lives in the past. We have to start recognizing that a lot of our diversity and inclusion problems are related to us not having the proper information, and not bringing our oppressed humans experiences into the workplace. We don't want to listen to their experience, we don't want to hear what's happened to them as children, we avoid conversations about how the cops just shot a man who looked like them for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In reality, in order to achieve diversity and inclusion, we actually need to address all of these things.
What I'm talking about is, bringing both the current personal lives of our employees into the workplace, as well as honoring, respecting, and bringing into the workplace the past experiences. I feel like this might be a very difficult idea to handle, especially having grown up in this idea where you just go to work, you work through it. It’s time to change.
Shifting Our Perspective on Employees
Having this shift, which is not only a work cultural shift, but is also a societal shift. Even in our relationships, when we ask somebody how they're doing, our hope ... I'm not going to say our expectation, but we're actually hoping that they say, "Everything's fine," right? Because, they're functioning in a certain way in our life at that moment, and for them to actually be in their humanness, and seek connection to us, that doesn't serve us in that moment. In that moment we're actually objectifying the people around us, and I know that’s an unconventional idea. When you really get into the mechanics of the relationship, what you end up seeing is that society at large is objectifying relationships. “What does this do to serve me, and if it doesn't serve me, then I'll get rid of it.”
This is my challenge. My challenge for you leaders, it's going to be really easy. I want you to ask somebody how they're doing without the expectation that they say, "Everything's fine." I want you to start giving people the space to say, "Everything's not fine." I know that's hard because you can't make people tell you their lives. So, here's the next challenge that I have for you. I want you, the next time somebody asks you how you're doing to bring some truth into the conversation. Whether or not they want to hear it or not, whether or not they're going to make some meme about leave work at home, or some variation of it. Bring yourself into the conversation, and others will follow. You will become safe, and your leadership will start to shine through.
Challenge to Change
My challenge to you is to really start bringing honesty, experience, and humanity into the workplace, into society. We have to stop objectifying each other. Good luck, guys. Here is to diversity and inclusion, and here's to making very small steps towards making workplaces that honor every single person.
-Kristin Martinez
Visit me at www.kristinmartinezconsulting.com to see how I can help your organization.