There’s No ‘I’ In Team & No ‘Family’ In Work

Welcome to the second newsletter. Thanks for supporting this newsletter by reading, sharing, and engaging with the content in whatever way is helpful for yourself. For today’s newsletter, I wanted to take a crack at implementable approaches in policies and practices for the individual AND the organizations/employers. This one took me almost two weeks to write. It’s a big topic and the more I got into it, the more things I found missing and I still feel like I barely scratched the surface. Let me know your thoughts and reflections. It’s helpful to know how you as a reader are feeling about this, so thank you for any feedback. And please share with anyone you think this might be helpful for or if it could serve as a conversation starter. 

At one point I felt deeply that my colleagues at work were my family and that our organization was our home. But upon reflection, I feel that these sentiments of family and home are a dangerous confusion of what we think are aspirational in order to make better organizational cultures. 

I might love the people I work with, and I might be perfectly aligned with the mission and vision of the organization. But that does not mean that work is a place where I should expect to find a home and in my colleagues, a family.

This dangerous conflation of deep transformation that is supported by favorable systems, structures, staffing, and investments is a cultural shortcut that can actually have harmful effects on workplace culture. It adversely impacts individuals by creating unhealthy daily expectations for how they have to show up. It can force folks to recycle or recreate the harmful family dynamics they grew up with. And honestly, the biggest one for me is that families are subject to different socio-economic and cultural norms. So if you’re hoping for a diverse, equitable, and inclusive work environment, allowing your workplace to fall into a family culture can create disparate and inequitable outcomes and expectations based on people’s own backgrounds.

Why do we look for this particular type of environment and how do organizations fall into this trap? It seems that in an attempt to create a feeling of being welcomed and of comfort, some people seek out the most familiar and common place they know. Often and for most people, this means home and family. This idea of family is about finding in those around you people you can trust and struggle through the tough times together. But what does that mean for folks who may not have the best relationships with their family? And what does it mean to create an atmosphere where they feel like they are forced to have a closer relationship with their colleagues that they don’t feel comfortable holding?

Replicating a ‘home’-like environment at work is concerning because ‘home’ doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone. Rather, organizations should set expectations around being ‘welcoming’, ‘safe’, and ‘comfortable’ (inclusive) which is easier for people to build a shared understanding around. 

It’s important to remove these hurdles for as many people as possible, especially for those of us in the non-profit world who already have often complicated and unhealthy relationships with our work. I’ve heard too many stories of how these types of unattainable expectations have felt manipulative, whether intentional or not. For some, it even felt captive of young professionals who may not know better about what they should have held as their responsibility and accountability, and to whom.  

I wanted to share a few questions that both institutions and individuals can start with when thinking about organizational culture. I don’t think the categories below cover all of the starting points when building a more inclusive and equitable organizational culture that centers people of the global majority, but it’s a springboard:

• Expectations

  • What are the acceptable expectations based on who you are in this workplace dynamic and how can it be made clear for as many people involved as possible?

• Structures

  • How are the organizational structures creating the space for staff and organizations to create transparency, ensure accountability, and represent responsibilities in a shared way?

• Systems

  • What are the systems that create a circular process that creates points for inputs, ensures transparency, accountability, and shared responsibilities? 

• Workplace culture

  • How does the culture we are creating best reflect our hopes, dreams, and visions for the world we want to be creating?

• Goals

  • What are we hoping to achieve in developing steps that build our shared expectations, systems and structures, and workplace culture?

What can we do instead? Let’s start with what we intend to accomplish, establish a process that serves that intention, and then let’s work towards outcomes that ensure as much of a positive reflection of everything we’ve decided upon as possible. 

These are just some examples of how institutions and individuals could each be approaching these issues. However, rooting different approaches in transparency, accountability, accessibility, and lowering barriers to entry are all essential considerations. For institutions, you’ve got to be doing better – that’s what you signed up for in being an employer. And yes, it’s hard because the target is always moving and so are the expectations. But again, this is your responsibility to your staff. If you want to employ people to do meaningful and impactful work, you should ensure that you are a place worth working for where you not only accomplish what you desire but also where people are able to meet their most basic needs and more. It is via their workplace that they should find the abundance of financial stability and security. It’s easier to exploit and do the bare minimum (sometimes even below that) but that’s also despicable. Sadly, there are many organizations, even in the nonprofit space, that are okay with that. And in the same way that a business that can’t pay a living wage to their employees doesn't deserve to exist, neither should organizations that can’t or won’t treat their staff with trust and humanity. This standard should be the same for the supposed ‘changemakers’ in the nonprofit sector. 

For individuals there comes a more complicated dilemma. There is A LOT working against you. Not only are you working within the boundaries of whatever system currently exists, but you’re also probably feeling like you’re rolling a boulder up a hill to transform the organization or institution you work at. That’s not easy work. Most people don’t want to do it and quite honestly you shouldn’t be expected to. But what you can do is educate yourself about what norms are being set in your sector. Do your best to learn about the institutions and organizations who are taking it many steps further to create increasingly progressive standards. And equip yourself with the tools you need to negotiate what’s best for yourself. The reality is that your work does not owe you that. Your employer should, and it should even be a requirement. But many of us operate within limitations that leave us in an ocean on our own with no life jacket in sight. And at the end of the day, it is your responsibility to look out for yourself. That means creating the work habits and the work-life balance that serve you best, and demanding the salary and compensation that meets your needs and brings you closer to what you ultimately desire. 

And here lies the great divide. I want to be very clear in my beliefs: I do not think any institution, organization, or employer can be everything to everyone, nor should they. I don’t want workplaces to become the place where folks think they can be therapized. That is a formula for disaster – a very dangerous one. And I don’t think individuals can entrust organizations to look out for our best interest because our employers will never be that. It relies on too perfect of a storm to materially benefit. That’s neither sustainable nor a very realistic expectation to begin creating, especially with a younger and increasingly more radicalized (in the best way) workforce. 

Our institutional cultures need to be remade completely. The rigidity and disorganization of old burnout factories that were once the norm must have the standardized accommodations and necessary scaffolding needed so that our organizations can grow and adapt with more progressive policies and expectations. Most importantly, structures that are consistent, transparent, and accessible to everyone must be established so that those of us coming from backgrounds that are often most exploited by white supremacy can truly thrive.

For us individuals, we gotta look out for ourselves, and if we can, we should also do right by the generations coming after us. Make the workplace a better environment for you, but know that it may not happen during your tenure and that’s okay because it’s not your fault in the first place. Someone else will eventually have to go through it too, and they deserve to avoid it if we can help it, but it is ultimately not our responsibility to necessarily see the transformation through to the end. If a workplace isn’t able to meet your needs, it's okay to quit. Many times that can be the jarring shift for leaders within the organization. And for organizations that seem to continuously struggle with adapting, the question then becomes: do you really need to exist? I think this is most important for larger, well-resourced, and predominantly white institutions. 

I’m just one person though, so what are your thoughts? What resonated? What felt confusing or maybe you’d like more of an explanation for? Anything I missed? What are some other offerings for policies, tools, skills, etc. that you think could be helpful for institutions and/or individuals? 

In solidarity, 

Michél