DIGNITY, DIMINISHED OR EMPOWERED?

*When I asked one of my clients how her work was going, her response was, "I feel so unimportant, like I don't really matter."

*Another client reported to me that during team meetings the leader regularly shouted at everyone whenever there was a mistake. "How do people feel?" I asked. He said, "Totally diminished or totally angry."

*Another client said with sadness, "I don't think my supervisor has ever complimented me or given me appreciation for all my hard work once since I've been here. I feel totally unvalued."

*One client, when I asked about how she was feeling, went on to downplay and berate herself with very negative words. She became aware that her self talk was highly destructive to her sense of self and worth. No wonder she had disengaged from work and was on the verge of quitting.

When our human dignity is diminished--whether from others or from ourselves--we either "fight back" in order to hurt the one diminishing us, or we withdraw, become depressed, and hold it all inside, often blaming ourselves.

Either way, people get hurt and damaged. Stress rises. People disengage. They lose motivation. And ultimately they burn out with no reserves for resilience.

Human dignity is vital to the workplace!

We need our dignity to be acknowledged by ourselves (by shifting our own negative self talk) and by others (by shifting to a more positive way of behaving and communicating with each other).

What could you do to increase your own sense of personal dignity? What could you do to empower someone else's dignity? What a different workplace we would enjoy if that could happen every day.

Express Your Emotions Accurately and Creatively

Have you ever noticed that it's really challenging to put words to whatever you're feeling at the moment? We default to the major feeling words like happy, joyful, sad, disappointed, angry, etc. And though those words are helpful to know, it's actually really valuable to go a bit deeper and "locate" more nuance and specificity in what we're feeling. 

My wife Shasta and I, in order to increase our emotional vocabulary, have been using this picture tool (see below) in our conversations with each other during the day. The list is broken down into four quadrants: Low Pleasantness to High Pleasantness, and Low Energy to High Energy. It's been challenging at times b/c we're not in the habit of being so specific with our emotion words. But it's been fun & frustrating and definitely empowering.

Being able to identify our specific feeling is at the core of emotional intelligence which measures our self awareness and social awareness. Words do matter.

If you’re a leader, the more you have a nuanced and accurate emotional vocabulary, the more you will be understood and the more the people around you will be feel understood. And you will be offering a transformational example of what working and living as a full human being is about.

This tool comes from Dr. Marc Brackett's book "Permission to Feel." He's the Director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and a professor at the Child Study Center. Outstanding book!!

from Marc Brackett, “Permission to Feel”