Make integrity profitable.

Make integrity profitable.

I recently read an MIT Sloan Management Review article that cited a research study examining ten factors that influenced managers’ decisions to promote their employees.

They surveyed nearly 9,000 people in 383 companies. While the article was focused on leadership and goal-setting, I was struck by something else: They developed a list of the top ten factors that influence promotions.

Number one on the list of factors that influence promotion was “Past performance.” Makes sense to me.

Number two: “Political connections.” Hmm.

Number eight out of ten on the list of what factors led to promotion: “Acting with integrity.”

This is bad news.

If integrity is not crucial for promotions, what incentive do leaders and employees have to act with integrity?

There’s personal self-incentive, of course, but not much of a systemic one.

This has ramifications. We are influenced by the systems we operate within.

I focus on the intersection of self-development and systemic evolution, and to me, this is one of those intersections that we need to examine.

Pitting personal integrity against organizational priorities—and earning one’s livelihood—is a slippery slope.

What if integrity were profitable—at every level of one’s career?

What if we were expressly rewarded for it?

It almost seems crude to suggest we reward people for what we should be doing naturally… but then again, it’s mindboggling to me that we tolerate the sweeping breaches of ethics and integrity that are going on in plain sight.

If integrity was groomed throughout one’s career, would we still produce so many leaders who lack it?

To be fair, I have no doubt that the success of many individuals and organizations is due in part to their integrity—it’s good business for people who want to do good business for good humans. And, this research study is just one study. But it just might point to something larger.

We need organizational integrity to be non-negotiable.

This makes it easier—not harder—for individuals working within organizations to prioritize integrity together, creating the best possible dynamic: a symbiotic relationship based on shared integrity.

P.S. While we’re at it, let’s make war unprofitable.

Transform systems by evolving at the individual level.

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Things need to change.

They need to change from the top-down, and the bottom-up.

At the individual level, and at the systems level.

The good news is, everything is reciprocal: so the more you do to heal and evolve, the more the systems around you will be informed by that.

The more the systems you are a part of heal and evolve, the more you will feel the impact of that.

My personal expertise is the intersection of individual self-development and systems evolution. I love diving deep with individuals into what makes them come alive, and I am also a systems-thinker who sees the ripple effects at the collective level.

This is especially true in organizations and institutions—in the workplace.

We can no longer afford to keep self-development sequestered in the realm of individual therapy or coaching.

There is no leadership development without self-development.

Healthy individuals are only as healthy as the systems they are a part of: relationships with themselves, their lovers, their families, their friends, their colleagues, their communities, their organizations, their governing bodies.

And healthy systems are only as healthy as the integrity of the people who work within them.

The best systems will fail us if the people leading them are nincompoops. The best people will fail us if their environment doesn’t allow them to thrive.

If you are a humanful leader, or would like to be, then your own self-development is part of the process. What does that look like?

• Practicing curiosity rather than judgment.

• Learning how to work with your ego and triggers (and others’) without letting those egos and triggers run the show.

• Up-leveling your skills of collaboration.

• Learning how to connect authentically—not from behind a mask.

• Creating a safe, inclusive environment: radical belonging.

• Establishing a culture of giving and receiving feedback fluently, so everyone gets crucial intelligence about course-corrections that need to take place.

• Learning how to create sound strategies—and then sticking to them by creating and measuring objectives and tasks that dovetail with them.

• Defining what good leadership means to you personally.

• Identifying your particular gifts, and how you use them in service of your leadership.

• Understanding that leadership is a service position. If you don’t see it that way, your ego may be running the show. (That’s amendable, if you choose.)

• Respecting your colleagues as whole humans. (If you don’t, then kindly reassess whether you are meant to be a leader. Not everyone is, and that’s okay.)

• Learning how to work with emergence.

• Understanding that leadership is an embodied stance of showing up human—not simply a role or job title.

If you want better systems—more inclusive companies, less exploitation, more collaboration, less domination—then start with yourself.

Build the awareness, skills, and courage to act in integrity with your humanity.

All things change when we do.

If you know your own self-development is connected to the greater good, and if you’re looking for a collaborator to hone your skills and dive deep so you can fly high, let me know. You’re my type.

Learn from nature’s patterns: ebb + flow.

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Learn from nature’s patterns: ebb + flow.

One thing I’m clear on is that we don’t need to change the world—we need realign with its natural intelligence.

We are the ones who need to regain our balance.

If we can return to our true nature as creatures who are meant to live in a symbiotic relationship within an ecosystem called Earth, we’ll naturally create healthy, healing communities, practices, systems, environments, and psyches.

Nature’s patterns are guideposts for us—they are feedback for us as we seek balance.

• The reciprocity of ebb and flow, like our friends the tides, the breath, vibration.

• The self-nourishing, regenerative torus, like our friends the trees.

• The spiral of growth and focus, from the snail’s shell to spiral galaxies.

• The fractal of iteration, like the fern’s fronds.

• The exploration and delivery system of branches, like our rivers and arteries.

• The radiance of the radial throwing energy in all directions, from our friends the dandelions to the life-giving sun.

These patterns are repeated, over and over, throughout space and time, from macro to micro.

If these patterns work that well at every scale, for billions of years, I figure they’re good enough for me.

We really don’t need to recreate the wheel, just look around to see what patterns already surround us—and embody them.

One of nature’s most basic patterns is the simple dynamic of ebb and flow.

Growth + rest.

Give + receive.

Spend + replenish.

Day + night.

Yin + yang.

Expansion + contraction.

Summer + winter.

Let’s not fall into the trap of thinking of these as polarities. They are simply different parts of a circuit, a self-healing cycle that balances itself as it moves through the journey. A beautiful balance of reciprocity and symbiosis.

What if we could embody the full pattern ourselves? What if we didn’t shame the contraction, the need for rest, the shadows in the dark as enemies locked in battle with their opposites, but rather saw them as integral parts of an ongoing process?

Not saboteurs, simply agents of balance.

Try it out: play with ebb and flow.

Where is your life in flow?

Where is it in ebb?

Where might you need to spend more time or energy in order to find your own balance?

Honor your cycles and seasons as journeys you get to walk, not fixed destinations—there is simply no such thing in a universe as dynamic as ours.

Rediscover your true nature by reconnecting to nature’s patterns. Tell me how it goes? I’d love to know!

Why feedback feels risky and what to do about it

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To the ego, feedback is a threat. In a growth system, feedback is a necessity.

Offering feedback can feel risky, whether it’s at work or to someone we have a close relationship with. Receiving feedback can feel awful.

But why?

Because we have egos.

The ego feels threatened by feedback when its identity is wrapped up in ideas of perfection, authority, goodness, worthiness, value, or rank.

“Perfection” doesn’t need feedback, it’s already perfect—so feedback threatens its perfection. However, there’s no such thing as perfection, so what that’s all about is actually needing to be perceived as excellent. It’s about identity—and comparison.

“Authority” is in charge, so feedback threatens its in-chargeness—its power over others, its higher rank (which keeps the ego feeling worthy). This is also about identity and comparison.

The ego HATES its identity being questioned.

This is why, in an organization, it can feel risky to offer feedback up—if the hierarchy is rigid and identities are very invested in their rank within it, then the person receiving the feedback can feel like their authority is being questioned.

The person offering the feedback feels vulnerable, because the person they’re giving the feedback to is often the one who evaluates them—and thus can determine their livelihood.

This is one of the perils of hierarchy—and a great loss.

In our personal relationships, the stakes are also high: we risk the possibility of rupture if we lack the skills to navigate the dynamic of giving and receiving feedback graciously. No wonder we don’t like to deal with this.

This is source of tension that’s rarely talked about, but very real and pretty common.

Instead of tiptoeing around our egos and pretending this dynamic isn’t happening, why not just admit to the fact that our feathers get ruffled—but that’s okay, we can learn the skills to get on with things anyway?

Any organization, system, or relationship that plans to grow needs feedback. Without it, it’s flying blind and stunting its own growth.

Like failure, feedback is just data.

When we remove judgment from it, it’s neutral—not an attack on someone’s skill, worth, or authority.

It IS an admission that things are not perfect—which is REAL. Reality is something we can work with.

And so are egos: we can learn to witness our egos, but not let them derail the feedback loop.

We can build feedback-sharing practices into businesses and relationships so it’s expected and welcomed—like vacuuming under the rug when we’ve swept stuff under it. It’s just good hygiene.

We can de-personalize the feedback, so it doesn’t feel so vulnerable: it’s just what happened, not the sum total of who you/we are.

Again, we get tangled in the identity piece.

The more feedback we give and receive, the more our egos can relax into and trust the new pattern.

We’re all still responsible for our actions, but the more we give and get feedback about how we’re impacted by events and our part in them, the more levers we have to find healthier ways of doing things.

Without feedback, we’re stuck repeating the same unhealthy habits.

We can learn that our egos can survive feedback, and even better—thrive beyond it.

Then, we can grow—together.

Failure is just feedback. How to use it well.

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Recognize that failure is just feedback.

What is failure, anyway? Just something that didn’t work. 

So why are we so ridiculously uncomfortable with it?

Not because it didn’t work—all sorts of things don’t work—but because of the judgment we place on the fact that it didn’t work. And the scrutiny that subjects us to—from ourselves, and others.

Why do we need to judge and scrutinize?

We don’t need to, really—we’re just used to it. Why? Because humans love control almost as much as we love rank + authority to define ourselves. We pretend they’re not the arbitrary illusions that they are in order to feel some sense of agency in our lives.

But control and rank are not actually agency, they’re coping mechanisms for NOT feeling our agency.

For trying to force outcomes, instead of allowing them to unfold. For allowing the trial, but not the error. For judging others—or ourselves—in order to rank our identities as “better than” or “not enough.”

But true agency is actually NAVIGATION of what arises, not control over it.

What’s the best way to navigate something?

Get curious, not judgmental.

To the ego, feedback feels like a threat. To a system seeking healthy balance, feedback is a necessity.

When we remove judgment from a situation, “failure” becomes incredibly useful data for how to move forward—and how not to.

Then, when we move forward, integrate feedback, and iterate, the “failure” becomes just one more step in the process.

This isn’t to say we need to aim for failure, just that when it happens, to not act as if we’re shocked by the treachery.

Failure. Is just. A thing. That. Didn’t. Work.

That’s it.

Why did it fail? Why did that person do this thing? Why didn’t I?

Those are the more interesting questions—open-ended portals to solutions, rather than judgments people can’t wait to squirm away from.

When curiosity comes in, there’s POSSIBILITY. And whenever there’s possibility, there’s POWER—power to iterate, tweak, putter, collaborate, practice, try, try again.

That’s where true power lies: building agency and identity through navigating ALL of life, not just the successful parts—together.