We have previously addressed the value of #diversity in the workplace. The value it brings to organisational reputation is one thing but the opportunities it opens to increase profits and speed up problem-solving. But how do we get more diverse communities and how do we build those same communities to provide benefits to the business through increasing long-term growth, reducing employee turnover, and a reduction in HR issues, all while improving the business’s cultural sensitivity and awareness? This month’s newsletter explores this topic to bring focus to the importance of community building and its long-term effects. To grow a community initiative, we must establish a key purpose and values. After all, what is the point in #growth if it is not #sustainable or #rewarding? Following the set of principles listed below should ensure our first principle of long-term growth is achieved through setting out community “standards” or “principles” these will provide the spine to which the community can attach: Define and form your identity, what is your core purpose, and why should your community want to join the cause. People will only join the community if it aligns with their identity Earn credibility and encourage participation. Show and prove your value to increase your credibility, the more people that see this as you scale the more improvement you will see in business cultural awareness through reputational gain. Inviting more and more people to join and participate through a mix of digital and in-person events. The step makes people see and feel the value, encouraging organic growth through word of mouth. Feedback. In all community operations feedback is key to growth, continuous improvement, and trust. Did you know that Forbes lists achieving diversity through Inclusion in its top 5 reasons HR issues arise? Gaining feedback from the diverse populations in your communities will give a vital boost to inclusion reducing these HR issues and feelings of alienation. Allowing people to feel heard in the communities they belong to is therefore the foundation for success in this model. We can ultimately add as many people to a community as we like, but if we lose them at a similar rate due to HR issues and a lack of awareness, our businesses will not function as they will be failing the communities they endeavor to serve. Communities can be built in the modern day both digitally and in person. This provides businesses with an unparalleled opportunity to seek broad thought diversity from those external to the organisation. Here are a few examples of key networks that can be used to broaden #communities to allow us to #invest in the future #growth of the business: LinkedIn connections In-person network events Learning events Social media We understand that business is now a revolving door of talent, but strength and identity in a community that aligns with individual purpose can slow this process, and prevent it in some cases. Long-term community building will allow alignment of purpose, and values to the peer group, but will add value back by providing constant feedback that can fuel growth. Community building in business can feel like just another buzzword at the moment but the feedback loop and growth it subsequently provides makes it a key driver of the increased bottom-line performance. So why then do we focus on diversity when building these communities? Adaptability and awareness as a business, whilst growing cultural sensitivity allows us to ensure that we put inclusion front and center. There’s a saying that goes “we’re riding the same storm, but we ride it in different boats”. Those boats represent the different journeys people have been on in life, where the importance of this statement about community building is the feedback loop that we create in community growth. The more diverse the community is the broader range of feedback we will receive as people’s experiences will differ through their diversity. And we can go further. We know strong communities reduce employee turnover, and people want to stay in places where they have a sense of belonging and purpose, where they feel valued and heard. Acting on the feedback of a diverse community can improve employee experience and fix issues before they arise. It should be mentioned that a diverse community is proven to increase retention amongst both white and non-white employees. So what does this all add up to? Diversity brings people with different backgrounds into the feedback loop of a community. The full value of a community is in that very feedback loop. To enlarge it, we need to be clear about our purpose and identity as a community. HR is an expensive business for organisations so by taking the time and investment to listen and learn we reduce complaints and turnover greatly, but this again has to be underscored by diversity. If we don’t understand the journey of people from all walks of life, the community purpose of the organisation is quite simply flawed. Are you interested in learning how to leverage the power of community feedback loops to improve the experiences of your team members, and create a more emotionally well and supportive work environment? Connect with the Consciously Exposed team in an exploratory conversation to learn how you can leverage the power of community building, and how taking an arts-based approach can make this process insightful and enjoyable for your team.

Framework - A basic structure underlying a system, concept, or text. Human beings are hardwired to build connections, we thrive off access to open and honest communication paired with clear expectations. This holds true in the workplace, where interactions with team members directly affect our mental health and ability to provide for ourselves. At Consciously Exposed Consulting we utilize frameworks designed to help organizations maximize emotional well-being and mental wellness. This is a fancy way of saying that we encourage companies to have clearly defined roles with consistent expectations around communication and deliverables. When employees understand their role, know whom to go to when they have questions or need help, and respect whom they report to - quality work naturally happens. To achieve this, we use the GRPI Framework ( Goals, Roles, Procedures, Interpersonal Relationships) to help managers and decision-makers at organizations better understand how to organize their teams and view the relationships between staff. We’ll use an imaginary non-profit as an example to show how this framework could be applied to an actual organization. GRPI Example Let’s start with the first part of the framework - Goals. In this example, there is an imaginary non-profit working at eliminating food insecurity in underserved communities. This company has a very distinct extrinsic goal that It aims to accomplish. “ Reduce the number of households in (XYZ Zip Codes) who don’t have access to fresh produce by 15% within 24 Months.” This is an example of a tangible and measurable goal. Employees may work towards this goal, and may even be motivated by this goal - but not because they share this specific goal. If the company only reduced food insecure households by 10%, employees wouldn’t necessarily change their own personal goals. An intrinsic goal for an employee might be: To develop meaningful relationships based on trust & mutual respect. The Non - profit would then be responsible for creating alignment with the specific goal of the company, and the intrinsic goal. They can use the GRPI Framework to accomplish this. How does this play out? Let’s look at the second part of the framework - The Roles within the company. First, we look at the roles (examples) within the non-profit that are working to achieve this goal: Director Senior Manager Program Coordinator Community Liaison They all work to achieve the same extrinsic goal, however, their intrinsic goals may all differ. For example: Director - Support their families' material needs and provide their children with opportunities to be successful. Senior Manager - Expand their sphere of influence in the professional community. Program Coordinator - Develop more competence in transferable skills ( Public Speaking, Marketing, Graphic Design, UX, etc.) Community Liaison - Develop meaningful relationships within the community After looking at this list, you may already see where we would go with this. But the next step of the framework explicitly states this. The actual work someone does day in and day out should lend itself to the intrinsic goals of the individuals on the team. To create the alignment required to achieve maximum success ( an emotionally healthy work environment), the procedures undertaken to achieve the extrinsic goal, and the incentives offered to employees to meet the extrinsic goal must speak to what the individuals find meaningful. The procedures for each role may vary within the specific organization, but in general, these roles are fairly common. It is important to understand intrinsic goals during the hiring process to create better fits within the organization. Employees will follow the procedures because the incentives help them realize intrinsic goals, at least in theory. Example: The Community Liaison is responsible for identifying local farmer’s markets and connecting them with families in the community. The procedure for achieving this involves reaching out and developing relationships with families through town hall meetings and setting up exploratory meetings with the farm owners. The procedures and intrinsic goals are closely aligned - which helps the Community Liaison find meaning in their position. The final piece in this framework is what makes alignment possible, and is key in creating the kind of impact needed. That final piece is the quality of interpersonal relationships on your team. Interpersonal Relationships Their ability to find meaning in the workplace is immensely impacted by the quality of relationships within the team. This has changed due to the nature of remote work, but at its core, relationship-building is an indispensable part of growing a company, retaining employees, and nurturing development. The problem is - most companies are horrible at this. They use words like family, and community, and may even be successful at creating a community as a product for their customers, but will fall short of fostering that same environment internally. Without a strong enough relationship, employees may not even be willing to share their intrinsic goals/motivations with senior management and leadership within a team. The relationships are the foundation for this entire model. Your team-building activities should accomplish the following: Create a space of trust, where a level of vulnerability is accepted ( Within reason - but ideally enough vulnerability to be honest about their intrinsic goals) Create opportunities for the team to develop respect for one another Space where they can talk about external factors that affect their mental state at work The ability to hold other members accountable, while also being held accountable Space for candid, honest, and direct conversation How Consciously Exposed Creates The Environment: The use of multidisciplinary arts and spoken word poetry art - More specifically the process of creating it, refining it, and then sharing it with a larger group is important, and can usually open a space where all the above points are covered in one fell swoop. Are you interested in learning how your organization could benefit from the GRPI framework? Maybe you’re a non-profit organization like the example we used in this article, or maybe you’re a for-profit company looking to build an effective team. Book a complimentary conversation to share your team-building goals - we’d be happy to help you craft a plan for arts-based team building!

It's never been more important to create and promote #diversity in the workplace. The benefits are not only clear but also proven. McKinsey has found that over time the relationship between diversity in executive teams and the likelihood of financial outperformance has strengthened. So with all that being true, the retention of BIPOC employees becomes a business-critical matter. Any investment in diverse #recruiting practices and positive action at work is negated if there is no strategy to retain this staff base and enable BIPOC employees to be comfortable in bringing their true selves to work. We at consciously exposed can share with you in this article some key proven strategies that aid and promote retention in a successful manner Creating Network Groups Embedding network groups in your workplace allows a group with common ground to come together and discuss their own Intrinsic Goals with a common viewpoint in mind. BIPOC employees often encounter barriers in the workplace, often through bias, be it conscious or unconscious but this can escalate to levels of harassment and bullying which are clear signs to an employee that it is time to head to the exit. Network groups will not only encourage colleagues to share problems and overcome them together. It will proactively create a focused and action lead group, which can be open for promoting active #allyship across the broader business, deepening relationships, and spreading knowledge of challenges. In Change Catalysts report, The State Of Allyship Report: The Key To Workplace Inclusion, 92% of people responded saying that allies had been valuable in their career and those with at least just a single ally in their workplace are nearly twice as likely to feel like they belong and are satisfied with workplace culture and their job role as a result. We can go further on the strategy of creating allies in the workplace though. Allyship is directly linked to reductions in employee turnover, as it promotes a feeling of belonging. As far as business objectives go, those extrinsic factors we have previously explored in the Transformational Leadership Model (TLM), allyship is linked to increases in #innovation, #productivity, #profitability, and customer satisfaction, as thought leadership is broadened and barriers are understood and broken down. Equitable Recognition Equitable Recognition – to connect an employee to the culture and the message of an organization the organization needs to understand performance recognition and performance management. Engaging employees through recognition in meeting their business objectives increases the sense of value and belonging that an individual feels. Businesses need to understand that everyone has their own goals, and encouraging an individual to write some of their own #goals helps connect #leadership to what employees want to achieve and sets an expectation of celebration. This recognition is what promotes #growth and #development, and encourages tough performance conversations where employees are encouraged to push themselves further, in turn connecting employees to business culture with a greater sense of purpose. BIPOC employees often experience a greater sense of injustice in reward systems. So make sure conversations with employees are structured with a clear framework, and frequent. Employee led discussion as opposed to employer led discussion gives greater opportunity to realize and celebrate intrinsic goals and is a great way to pivot a conversation and create a recognition framework for success. The question exists to what end does this benefit business, we can all get on board with wanting to be congratulated on a job well done, but these are personal emotional gains. Lack of recognition is cited in 36% of cases as a reason to leave. This is an enormous percentage and one that can be rapidly reduced with a strong strategy in place, ensuring you as an employer retain a greater basis of BIPOC employees. On average in America, it can cost upwards of $4000 per head to recruit a new position, with a loss of productivity also experienced during the 42 days on average it takes to fill a vacancy. Education Leaders need education. Get your leaders to create education-based inclusion and diversity goals. Create reverse mentoring groups where #bipoc employees are able to spend time with leaders educating them about their background and the barriers that they have faced and actively seek all colleague training to reduce bias. Continually assess the progress the business makes and the availability of new opportunities, ensuring that the development and education of staff is no longer a side of desk activity. Working With Consciously Exposed Business strategies are an entirely bespoke approach to success. Reach out to us at Consciously Exposed Consulting to allow us to help develop your strategy, so that you can ensure that when the tap is turned on for BIPOC recruitment, you're leaving the plug firmly in place.

“ It is one of the great paradoxes of the Human Condition - we ask some variation of the question, “How are you feeling?” Over and over, which would lead us to assume that we attach some importance to it yet we never expect or desire or provide an honest answer.” - Marc Brackett One of the common reasons an employee leaves a company is because they are unsatisfied with management. This is such a broad and nebulous word - unsatisfied. What leads to this dissatisfaction? What does it entail? The word “satisfied” is defined as a state of being contented or pleased. The circumstances which lead to this dissatisfaction can be numerous, but all these roads lead to the same place. Employees have a negatively charged feeling that they associate with their place of work and team. They dread waking up and going to a place where they will feel a host of negative emotions. Even if that place is the desk in their home office or the coffee shop down the street. The core concept here is the feeling associated with work. At Consciously Exposed Consulting, much of our work is focused on getting the leaders and decision-makers in organizations to take action on creating emotionally sound work environments for their employees. Most companies at least attempt to create positive work environments for their workers, but in the age of mass resignation, many businesses seem to be missing something vital. We believe the reason for this is a lack of attention to the emotional dynamics of the workspaces senior management places their workers The Framework We use a framework to understand some of the forces that are at play when considering the emotional environment at work. 1 - Subjective Dynamics 2 - Objective Dynamics 3 - Intersubjective Dynamics 4 - Interobjective Dynamics Subjective Dynamics Subjective Dynamics in the workplace focus on the emotional context brought into the workspace by individuals - is this employee fulfilled at work? Are they in a good state of mind, and is achieving this state of mind something that is acknowledged and emphasized in the workspace? This is a part of that employee's subjective experience, and their view may not be shared by the rest of the team. In fact, it can often be dramatically different. Imagine being the one person of color on staff, or the only woman on a sales team of men. The work is the same objectively, but the individual experience of that work could be drastically different. Objective Dynamics Objectively an employee’s emotional and mental state can be impacted by the technical aspects of their work. Are the procedures efficient & easy to understand and execute? Are these procedures improved upon? Is all the staff equally involved in improving or influencing this iterative process? These are the objective dynamics that can be empirically observed - and also weigh into the overall emotional state of team members. These two concepts - subjective and objective don’t work on individuals in isolation. Even with the advent and rise of remote work, team members find themselves engaging with one another. These spaces of conversation can occur in the office, through email chains, slack channels, or zoom calls. Wherever they happen, they create opportunities for relationships to develop. Intersubjective Dynamics When we discuss relationships, we move from subjective to intersubjective - and it begs us to ask these kinds of questions. How do the emotional relationships in your organization affect business performance in aggregate? Do the junior staff trust and respect senior and middle management? Can they be candid with each other? What are the factors that positively impact these relationships? When examining intersubjective dynamics - we find that many organizations fall seriously short. On the surface, daily check-ins are observed, and emails are polite and cheery, but below the surface, employees find themselves apathetic to the extrinsic goal of the organization, because they feel that the organization does not respect their intrinsic motivations. Interobjective Dynamics Interobjective dynamics are usually clearly defined - simply because the organization needs to have these processes outlined to generate revenue. This also includes a review of employee work - which is a mix of interobjective and intersubjective dynamics. How we use the framework to create results When an organization decides to work with Consciously Exposed Consulting we approach all of these areas - with a focus on subjective and intersubjective dynamics. Our arts-based approach creates space for staff to develop trust and respect for one another - and this leads to greater emotional awareness of one another in the workplace. Reach out to Consciously Exposed to book an introductory session today!

Transformational Leadership Model ( TLM) Leadership - The action of leading a group of people or an organization. Within an organization, there is almost always a hierarchy. Even in the most egalitarian workplaces, it is necessary to have a leadership role - someone who directs the efforts of the team and ensures that progress is made. Leaders are often the ones who have the ability to communicate effectively, inspire their team, and provide encouragement and support when things may become difficult or stressful. At Consciously Exposed Consulting, we appreciate leadership as a skill that can be refined through practice & reflection. We help coach executives, directors, and managers to leverage their emotional intelligence and communication skills to motivate and strengthen interpersonal connections among team members. We do this through an arts-based approach, which utilizes different creative mediums to help engender an environment where members can be honest, appropriately vulnerable, and intentional in building trust. Before jumping into the arts-based workshops, we ensure that decision-makers and leaders understand how we use the transformational leadership model (TLM). This model is focused on supporting staff by acknowledging and aligning the realization of their goals with company success. TLM is finding ways to align the company's extrinsic goals with the employee’s intrinsic goals. When these two are aligned or complementary - employees and management both experience more meaning in their day-to-day tasks. Intrinsic Goals are focused on outcomes that we inherently value The place where leaders often get tripped up is thinking that they’ve built the kind of trust with their team where they are aware of the actual intrinsic motivations that drive behavior. Ideally, this is something that is uncovered during the interview process, but even then it’s important to acknowledge that intrinsic goals are subject to change. You won’t be able to align intrinsic goals with the organization’s actual goals in a meaningful way until you have an understanding of why your team members come into work, and what meaning they derive from their work. These things often have very little to do with a paycheck. When the company's extrinsic goals and the employees’ intrinsic goals are out of alignment, it leads to misunderstandings, resentment, and tension in the workplace. If a leader can bring the two concepts together, they will naturally see their team remain longer with the company while investing more time and energy into their work. There are a lot of things that companies attempt to do when it comes to team building. The process isn’t always expertly executed - we’ve all been in that space where we’ve had to sit through onboarding, and muddled through the same ice-breakers we’ve done while still in high school or college. Your organization and team deserve more than “Two Truths & A Lie” or asking adults to share their hobbies with strangers. Reach out to Consciously Exposed Consulting to discuss how your organization can begin doing a better job intentionally developing meaningful relationships based on trust and mutual respect amongst its team members.