To define and agree on your Well Living Workplace terms concepts is an essential first step in creating the well-living workplace. And thereafter, it's important to review and update the definitions based on course corrections.
Remain Clear on the Terms and Concepts Associated with Creating Your Well-Living Workplace
Experience has shown, one workplace is not the same as another.
And yet, those workplaces that follow the 9 +1 Characteristics of the Well-Living Workplace outlined in the book Creating the Well-Living Workplace can design and deliver extraordinary employee and customer experiences.
From this perspective, these workplaces share ideas, practices, and resources internally (and externally) to improve the workplace of tomorrow with everyone involved. Their investment in people navigation is outstanding.
Creating Your Well-Living Workplace Movement
As WELLth Movement engages with its clients, the collaboration is based on defining the terms and concepts used to establish and sustain the well-living workplace. That is, we seek to find agreement in the meaning assigned the terms and concepts. Otherwise, there is confusion using the maps and executing the plans.
Our staff are committed to outlining and consulting, and facilitating and mentoring the creation of your well-living workplace. Their voices, their drawings, their ideas are shared without hesitation with the clients and broadly, through books, workshops, and webinars.
One of the important asks we assign our clients is to create a Dictionary of Terms and Concepts. This next section is what we share with those who manage and lead wherever they are in the organization of work.
Creating Your Dictionary of Terms and Concepts
Have you really listened to what is being said during workplace conversations? At your next meeting sit down with a pad of paper and pen, and record the keywords people are using. Then ask yourself, do I know what those words mean? Do we as a group know what these words mean?
For example, when you hear the word leadership bantered about in a meeting, ask: “Are they speaking about an approach/style, about how to lead, about the leader as a person, or a combination?”
By becoming aware of the words you’re using to organize your work, you can create a dictionary of terms and concepts, a "practical dictionary of organization speak." Then, seek out the meaning of the words with your colleagues. And, look up the words in the dictionary including their etymology (origins of the words). Are you using the words correctly?
Next, have some fun. Add, delete, and switch letters of the words found on your pad of paper. You will gain new insights.
For example ... Start with the root word lead and add 'er, ing, or ship'.
What comes to mind if you switched the 'e' in lead to an 'o' – load. What linkage can you make between lead and load?
Keep going … like "message", made up of "mess" and "age." What’s the story?
Words matter. And as a manager-leader, keep asking yourself, “How can I help lighten the load of my employees and customers along our shared paths? ... through the words we share in the organization of work.
Possible book to read: Kegan, R., & Lahey, L. L. (2001). How the way we talk can change the way we work. San Francisco: Jossey Bass. (not an affiliate link)
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