Untangle your value from your rank + role.

Untangle your value from your rank + role.

Most of us currently operate within cultures that use hierarchy to signal authority, rank, and expertise.

Bosses, C-suite, and experts are seen as more valuable than those who fall lower on the totem pole.

Rank is equated to power, high value, leadership, and dominance.

But we’ve mixed up our PERSONAL value with FUNCTIONAL value of roles and rank within hierarchy.

Someone higher up may (or not) have more functional value than someone else.

But no one is more inherently valuable as a human being than others. Our value has nothing to do with our jobs. To be a humanful leader—one who is collaborative, co-creative, and inclusive—this is crucial to understand.

The function of our role, however, becomes more or less valuable depending on the circumstances. We just don’t have systems that reflect that, by and large—we have fixed systems, not fluid ones.

When hierarchy + identity become entangled, things go wonky.

Hierarchies are useful: triage, emergencies, situations requiring quick, coordinated execution and pre-planned strategies and protocols. In these cases, functions meet context, and a fixed hierarchy is efficient and effective. Makes sense.

But as rigid models used to signal rank + dominance—which in our culture have also come to signal personal value—hierarchies become a tool for disconnection. When every action is ranked, each action becomes a judgment of better than/less than—every action becomes a transaction.

When relationships become transactional, we lose the possibilities that come from collaborating, co-creating, and mutual respect; we end up relying more on people-pleasing or politicking to receive accolades—and our salaries.

We run the risk of losing ourselves, because our identities are not found in rank, roles, or value judgments about them (even if someone tells you they are); identity can only be found within.

This is one reason why many leaders end up feeling “alone at the top,” or disconnected from the reality of their organization. The farther apart the roles in a hierarchy, the more disconnection and distrust exists between them.

Others can feel less-than, like imposters, or needing to pacify those at higher levels.

This inhibits healthy competition, which arises from going all in with others who are willing to do the same. 

It also hinders the institution from operating effectively as an organism. We all saw during COVID that the value of a role is largely contextual: front-line healthcare workers became the most valuable roles on the planet, but their rank within hierarchy didn’t necessarily reflect that.

Creativity, collaboration, and innovation rely on mutual connection, respect, safety. Rank and hierarchy hinder this—unless proactive steps are taken to make sure that they don’t.

This is a loss at a personal level: managing egos is far less interesting than evolving our expertise.

It’s also a systemic loss: rank hinders feedback that flows up, and feedback is intelligence about the organism’s health. Why might feedback be withheld? Because it might be received as an affront to rank by the ego—and if that person is the one who evaluates us, and our evaluations are what ensure we get to pay our bills… well, that’s some dynamic tension right there. Let’s talk about it.

When we untangle personal identity from role/rank within hierarchy—when organizations can focus more on functional aspects of hierarchy and less on egoic—that creates an ecosystem that fosters healthy human collaboration, competition, and creativity.

That is an open, innovative system. That is growth mindset. That is evolution.

What could healing hierarchy look like?

1. Untangle value judgments from roles within hierarchy.

2. View it as a multi-faceted, contextual organism in service of a mission rather than a tool for wielding dominance.

What if we revalued hierarchies?

What if the current way of overvaluing the top and undervaluing the bottom of the triangle is flawed? Not because hierarchies are bad, but because fixed hierarchies have been used for signaling dominance, which is arbitrary, which erodes connection, which erodes trust between individuals and of institutions, which erodes community, which erodes human prosperity, which erodes generosity and compassion and joy?

What if we used hierarchies as a fluid tool that could flatten and reassemble based on context and necessity?

Where affluence flowed to the most valuable based on circumstance—not fixed, arbitrary judgments of who has more “social capital” or “power” than whom?

What if the hierarchy understood that the top of the triangle only exists because the entire rest of it exists? That it is a reciprocal, interdependent system that can only operate as a unit? That every role is only as valuable as the circumstances it responds to, which will shift because life does?

What if hierarchy knew how to get itself into flow state?

What if the structures and systems we build evolve as quickly as we do?

This is part of my series “Healing Hierarchy: How to shift from domination to collaboration in the workplace.” More to come.

The savior and the nurturer

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Celebrate small, everyday acts of nurturing. Tell stories about them.

As long as we idolize heroes, we will unknowingly perpetuate the need for hardship and violence that give rise to them.

I say this not to diminish acts of heroism; life will naturally give us reasons to need them, and thank goodness for them.

And, we humans artificially manufacture many of the situations that give rise to the need for saviorism, as well. Create a problem, sell the solution. Let things fall apart, swoop in to fix it. Poof, instant heroism.

Why are so wed to the story of tragedy and the hero?

Maybe, in part, because it’s romanticized—we see and hear stories of it all the time. We love the story of the lone savior swooping in at the last minute to save the day.

Maybe, because it’s dramatic—and the drama of the adrenaline rush can be seductive.

Maybe, because of who it elevates—the lone wolf, the solo savior, the One—all reasonable role models in a fragmented, isolated society. If we continue to hope for a hero, we don’t have to do the mundane work of nurturing, maintaining, caring for, repairing, healing.

Maybe, because it’s good PR.

It’s time to elevate new narratives: stories that render the ordinary extraordinary; of reverence toward countless minuscule daily acts that affirm and nurture life—the ones that make life worth living.

We need nurturers as much as we need saviors. 

Maybe, when we can continually celebrate and uplift the nurturers, we’ll find we need fewer saviors. 

Maybe when we tell story after story of small acts of caregiving, we’ll have less that needs saving—and more that is thriving.

Small acts of kindness, to ourselves and others, are every bit as crucial as sweeping episodes of heroism.

We need firefighters to come in and stop the blaze with a deluge of water.

AND, we need those who plant new seeds, water them consistently, nourish them, and help them grow. We need nurturers who create conditions for life to thrive.

We need this for ourselves, and for our planet.

Not as big + dramatic, perhaps, but still a matter of life and death. Growth does not happen without the right conditions.

Celebrate small kindnesses. Elevate a caregiver. Create legends about tiny, joyful things. Live that kind of legend.

What’s a tiny story of nurturing you witnessed or embodied? Tell me in the comments, I’d love to know!

Masculinity doesn’t need to be detoxxed, it needs to be healed.

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Masculinity doesn’t need to be detoxxed, it needs to be healed.

What does healing mean?

Heading back to wholeness.

Our current cultural norm for masculinity is utterly fragmented—it requires a vivisection of self that is not just unhealthy, but dangerous for everyone.

Men are conditioned to suppress emotions, not show vulnerability, not share their joy and their authenticity, not express themselves in the full spectrum of possibilities. Seeking care or comfort is “for sissies.” They don’t even have the same variety of clothes options women have—simply wearing pink is considered edgy (how in the world did that brainwashery happen?!? So fucking arbitrary.) When they do show any of this, they’re denigrated—for being too feminine.

All of the epithets thrown at men are about the valuelessness of the feminine:

“Don’t be a pussy.” “You cry like a girl.”

What utter bullshit. Completely arbitrary, made-up bullshit. If it were just arbitrary, okay. But the problem is, this does real damage on a huge scale—and not just to women and girls.

The problem is, these parts of ourselves are not just feminine traits of the female gender, they are human needs.

The dominant mainstream indoctrination of masculinity requires men to separate from their humanity. Let this sink in.

This disconnection from self makes men susceptible to being manipulated, and the rage, isolation, and shame they feel are harnessed—because anger is profitable. Because sexism is profitable. Because racism is profitable. Because homophobia is profitable Because shame is profitable. Because divide and conquer is profitable, and it is the oldest trick in the book—because it works.

As bell hooks wrote in her landmark book The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love, “The first job of patriarchy is to disconnect men from themselves.”

The horror of it all is that shame, isolation, and disconnection breed violence, oppression, and rage.

Sometimes that violence is turned outward and expressed as racism, sexism, homo- and transphobia, degradation of the planet and its creatures, slash-and-burn development, domination, exploitation, hoarding, plain old assholery.

Sometimes, that violence is turned inward and expressed as depression, mental illness, self-harm, or suicide.

Everything we see happening in the world today is utterly predictable.

Disconnecting anyone from themselves results in violence—the only variable is how it manifests.

I consider this a crime against humanity.

The antidote, then? Give men (and everyone) the opportunity to reconnect with themselves. To heal. To love. To love themselves, so they can love others.

What would healing masculinity look like?

• Embracing the full, healthy range of expression + emotion.

• Learning how to express anger in healthy ways—not lash out in violence, rage, oppression—so that it can then be transmuted into generative activism.

• Learning how to regulate the nervous system, especially when it’s stuck in a protracted state of fight, which manifests as dominance, violence, exploitation, overpowering, general assholery.

• Learning the skills to connect intimately and vibrantly with all of life, not remain detached, apathetic, or scornful of connection.

• Learning how to discern what one’s needs and desires are, how to communicate them in a healthy way, and how to get them met in a healthy way—so we don’t resort to manipulation, control, or domination to get them met.

• Discovering what nourishing, regenerative relationships look like—with the earth, our loved ones, communities, and self.

• Dismantling the idea that growth = accumulation. Accumulation is just more stuff. Sometimes, that’s dead weight, imbalance, or false growth, or growth according to someone else’s beliefs. True growth includes letting go of certain things, as well as expanding in the direction of what we truly love—not what others tell us we should love.

• Shedding the myth that dominance = power. Dominance is actually a coping mechanism for NOT feeling one’s power. (What a paradigm-shift—the news isn’t that women feel powerful, it’s that MEN DON’T.)

• Understanding that true power comes from within—that love of self is key to our own power. This may well come with learning how to atone, make amends, forgive, grieve, learn new skills, unearth deep soul desires, share gifts, create joy, create health and a healthy environment.

• Learning that healthy, aligned masculinity is the perfect complement to healthy, aligned femininity—not its foe, controller, or oppressor, but its potentiator and balancer.

• Learning that healthy, aligned femininity potentiates and balances the masculine, as well.

• Knowing that this is a healing path for ALL humans, regardless of gender. That we are all flowing with the energies of masculinity, femininity, androgyny, non-binary, and countless other currents that we can heal and express in healthy ways.

• That the more we consciously understand and balance these energies, the more personal power we have to navigate and respond to life in healthy, happy ways.

• Reclaiming joy. Joy is your birthright. Turn it back on, and turn it all the way up. Then share it.

When we can learn new awareness and skills, and cultivate the courage to act on them, life itself becomes our sacred intimate, our partner in potentiation and joy.

That is true power, not toxic power—the kind that heals the self AND the collective in symbiosis. Healing is a collective act.

To heal masculinity, reconnect it.

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If you haven’t already, I highly encourage you to read The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by bell hooks. I wish it were required reading for every human.