Upon my time working within leadership positions and observing the basis of various ideologies that take place; I have come to notice that leadership needs to be implemented in ways where staff feel heard. Just asking staff “what do you need” can be life changing, and I have come to realize that even asking staff this question causes them to take a step back and become almost apprehensive as if they have not been asked that before. I have personally began to notice an increased amounts of people with concerning traits that apply to and go into leadership positions and this is often when leadership goes from “leading” to simply “managing”. They go into leadership with the view of needing to “control” rather than truly leading staff to be successful.
The purpose of leadership is to help employees learn to lead themselves and understand what they need in order to bring out their best potential. One major goal within the concept of leading should be advocacy for those who’s voices are not elevated. Quite often staff are separated from upper management in a way that causes upper management to view them as a number rather than as people who are engaging with the very clients that make the organization run and exist. These staff are crucial to the implementation and success of the organization regardless of the industry it is in. Therefore, it is imperative that we work to elevate their concerns and voices and work toward having companies provide ethical trauma informed practices for staff members.
This also means understanding different learning styles and engaging these learning styles with different forms of training material. This can happen by making learning fun and memorable and allowing for creative “play” that staff can engage in so they can come to work helping problem solve and feeling validated rather than shut down. There is also a need for the interview process to be made equitable so that we can allow those with social anxiety or mental health challenges the opportunity to interview as smoothly as others without these struggles. Some suggestions could be to make the environment more comfortable, encourage creativity within the process and take out the high stress environment by making yourself a host, rather than an integrator.
With this post, I encourage you to brainstorm and think of ways our society can push these ideologies to make working enjoyable. We are all trapped within this capitalist society so perhaps there are ways to work within this environment to improve mental health, worker moral and general social creativity leading to a happier and better society.
– EpicThunderCat