Dear amazing community members

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Thank you for those who responded about my last message on Redundancies, responsibilities and healing​

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I've spoke about loving ourselves in uncertain times before.

Email me if you want that article.

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Here's four themes for fostering love in your team or organisation.

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I love this statement..

"Everything comes from love, and is infused with vanua, the love for land – that connection with people, animals, the spirit world. When we love ourselves, we can love others. This is what really drives our purpose going forward.”

Amy Gildea, Managing Director, International Development – Indo-Pacific, speaking about ‘Aloha’

​ Full article link is here​

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Love and belonging are complicated needs for all people. In the absence of these experiences, there is always suffering, fear and anxiety.

I personally believe there is too much toxic masculine energy in the world right now which is diminishing our individual and collective ability to show love.

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We cultivate love when we…

Allow our vulnerable and powerful selves to be seen and known.

Honour our spiritual connection with others.

Trust each other, show respect, kindness and affection.

Nurture and grow connection.

Shine a light on shame and not allow shame to hide in the shadows.

Show empathy to ourselves and others.

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In an organisation and team, right now we need to really cultivate love.

It’s edgy and necessary.

We live in such volatile times, with more information yet less certainty.

From my experience working with organisations as a coach and advisor, here’s how love can be cultivated. (We dont need to say the L word for it to be cultivated 😆)

If you are a senior leader or CEO reading this – you already get these concepts and probably think it’s happening in your teams.

The culture is being set when you are not in the room.

Your teams all have inner narratives that you’ll never know, diminishing their power and radiating their narratives to others.

Your teams probably don’t have the space to talk about it safely. Make that space.

Those silent Teams meetings - means lots of inner chatter happening!

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1. Cultivate trust and respect

When a team has trust and respect, anything is possible. I've seen it when i've lead cholera outbreaks, rapid emergency responses, or big start-ups. The energy of trust and respect feelings like an infinite source.

Brené Brown talks about the BRAVING inventory which I reframe in my book Unlocking your Rebel Leader.

John Amaechi talks about day-to-day inclusion and earning trust (John’s a member of the Innovation Community – thanks John for your incredible book Promises of Giants). Please buy John's book!

Look out for defensiveness, gaslighting and frustration leakage – all signs of diminishing trust and respect.

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2. Empathy

Empathy isn’t about ‘walking in someone else’s shoes’ it’s about connecting with the emotions that they may be feeling in a certain situation.

It’s about listening. It’s about avoiding judgement (we all love to judge!). No two people ever see the same situation the same way.

It's also about self-empathy and loving ourselves. Let's not forget that we're really good at judging ourselves against a fictious perfect. I am world-class at this self-judgement every Monday 💜.

Empathy is a practice.

In social justice context, we still need to dig deep and see the emotions of the right-wing and those in pain.

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3. Shine a light on shame, anxiety and perfectionism

It’s time to retire the phrase ‘I’m a perfectionist’. Imperfect means "I’m perfect".

It’s easy to criticise to find gaps and holes in peoples work. It’s harder to find a level of excellence.

Unfortunately, we live in a society that craves being perfect. Body. Parenting. Instagram food photos.

Shame has been intense for me in the past, feeling unworthy and allowing my monkey brain to play havoc ‘see you weren’t good enough hahaha’.

I got to a point in one project of being criticized for my writing so much, it led to triggering my own depression. It drew on some ancestral strings and inner child of ‘doing something bad’.

When I speak one:one with staff of my organisational clients, they talk about being overwhelmed.

It’s not overwhelm, but levels of anxiety that we need to focus on. It’s uncertainty and fear that needs to be named and discussed.

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4. Support resilience to hold more sh*t

If we want the world to be a better place we got to hold more of the sh*t that makes it an awful place.

So instead of simplifying work, let’s flip the narrative and make ourselves more resilient to holding more sh*t.

So this means supporting your energy, the practice of strengthening your emotional, physical and spiritual health.

It's also about, as Amy talks about in the quote above, loving ourselves, and connecting with something greater than us - the land.

It’s the last part of the four themes on purpose.

Soo...

LOVE at work is about Letting sh*t go, Observing our collective practices, being Vulnerable, and Experimenting with change (see what I did there.. 💓) Trademark pending 😆

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Here’s your challenge.

If you are reading this, I want to run a 90 minute session about L.O.V.E in the workplace for between 6 to 300 staff members.

We can call it something else if it’s too edgy.

I’ll run it for free as I care deeply about changing how we show up for each other.

My two pre-requisites.

• Your CEO has a one:one with me to talk about their vision and challenges.

• Those that attend commit to taking at least one action after the session.

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Email me.

Let's change the world one session at a time!

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And as ever a song!

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Sing to the Moon Laura Mvula PREVIEW   ​

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