Going From Revolution To Evolution: A Business Response
As a society, we are at a tipping point where we are facing deep and profound challenges ranging from the coronavirus pandemic to dealing with the deep-seated wounds of racism, bigotry, and otherness that have plagued this country from its very beginning. We are at a moment where valued leadership is needed more than ever. It is time for corporate leaders to pick up the gauntlet and provide their guidance and acumen to help solve some of the most pressing questions that we as a populace face today. While we watch the growth of a revolution happening before our eyes, there often seems to be more questions arising than answers. It is time to take hold of this zeitgeist and start moving beyond the revolution towards a spirit of evolution, where we as a culture take the necessary steps to move forward in a more humanistic way to not only combat racism, bigotry, and otherness on a systemic level but have better tools to be able to communicate with one another for a greater understanding of who we are and where we want to be as human beings.
Business serves as a template to help define ourselves across different touchpoints of identity. Whether it is the work we do, the organization we belong to, or how we value our work, all contribute to shaping the meaning of who we are and the significance of the role we play in the world around us. The purpose of work is not only a fundamental characteristic of our individuality but it is essential to understanding our collective unconscious and how we as a society can grow and evolve positively. As Mahatma Gandhi once stated “Be the change you want to see in the world”, it is up to business leaders to assist in spearheading this vision and cultivate a corporate culture that can evolve with the times to meet the challenges of inequities head-on and be a champion for diversity and inclusion as a mechanism for change and growth.
Before business leaders can offer any real solutions, we must pause and explore what the needs are in this volatile time. An essential requirement is the need to listen, people have to not only practice the language of silence but hear one another to begin making incremental change. The psychoanalyst and philosopher Erich Fromm in his book, The Art of Listening, draws on his half a century as a practicing therapist to provide a framework on how we can listen to one another. Drawing on six guidelines to what he defines as unselfish understanding this may offer a starting point for companies to help redefine organizational culture for the better. Fromm outlines these six guidelines as:
1. The basic rule for practicing this art is the complete concentration of the listener.
2. Nothing of importance must be on his mind, he must be optimally free from anxiety as well as from greed.
3. He must possess a freely working imagination which is sufficiently concrete to be expressed in words.
4. He must be endowed with a capacity for empathy with another person and strong enough to feel the experience of the other as if it were his own.
5. The condition for such empathy is a crucial facet of the capacity for love. To understand another means to love him — not in the erotic sense but in the sense of reaching out to him and of overcoming the fear of losing oneself.
6. Understanding and loving are inseparable. If they are separate, it is a cerebral process and the door to essential understanding remains closed.
For the time we are living in, let's focus on one key guideline, and that is Fromm’s notion of empathy. In the fourth principle, he highlights the fact that empathy is fundamental to connect to another person. When dealing with social inequities such as race, bias, and otherness, those in an organization work as a communal organism. To run smoothly we have to be cognizant of others to not only be more efficient but to be better. The art of listening is our capacity for growth, both as an individual and organizationally to promote a standard of value and create decisive transformation.
The art of listening draws us closer into the idea of the power of empathy, yet diversity and inclusion offers us something new. It is a bridge to this great divide where business still needs to understand more deeply the role that identity plays in the world of work. The complexity and nuance of the human experience is always a part of the world of work. One, we have to listen to these narratives, but two, we have to find connecting points to shape a driving culture for organizational growth. We must look toward the disability community as that bridge across the intersectionality that defines the human experience. The disability community offers a conduit for organizations to look through the lens of otherness, bias, sexual discrimination, as well as racial inequality and find a multitude of opportunities to explore all of those issues within this community.
As we stand on the doorstep of the 30th Anniversary of the signing of The Americans with Disabilities Act, corporate culture must once again reframe their approach towards the disability community and appreciate their true value as a kaleidoscope within the world of work. Their importance during this critical time should not be minimized, but rather praised, offering organizational culture an ability to enhance management practices providing a template for Fromm’s ideas that imagination, empathy, and love can become key tactics for corporate success.
