Moving beyond system of control

A FAMOUS chiropractor, BJ Palmer, stated that the healing of the world “is an inside job”. This may also be true for individuals, teams and organisations in corporate South Africa today.

Developing green buildings and optimal workspace areas for “wellness” are commendable practices, but to what extent do they perhaps deflect the issue of “unwell” organisational cultures and interpersonal dynamics?

Organisational expert and academic Margaret Wheatley wrote that employees need to be able to reach past traditional boundaries and develop relationships with people anywhere in the organisation. Wellness in this sense emerges from the domains of identity, information and relationships.

And this eventually extends beyond the internal to the external environment, that is to the organisation’s clients or customers.

Stronger connections within an organisation enhance its capacity to adopt new strategies. In an everchanging competitive landscape, flexibility to retain and grow market share is a sign of a healthy organisation, despite buildings that may not be so “green” and workspaces that may look a little less than “optimal”.

Undoubtedly, the first prize would be to have both – healthy, optimal work spaces in which healthy employees can thrive, connect and respond positively to their work requirements. But the former is more often considered evidence of having achieved a “healthy” work environment, with less regard for the latter.

Academics at the Unisa Graduate School of Business Leadership recently initiated a community project with youth on the Cape flats. The developmental interventions aimed to strengthen the personal leadership skills of the teenagers. The research that was conducted afterwards to evaluate the effectiveness of the programme yielded interesting findings.

The participants reported how they experienced a renewed and unified sense of patriotism, a sense of “belonging” and empowerment.

All of the findings reflected relational characteristics of healthy living systems; in other words, a strong and expanded network or web of relationships. The youth described the value of embracing diversity where crossing those boundaries of differences among us are evident.

Whether as corporate leaders, employees, young community members or as individuals, each one of us has an inside job to do and should understand that we lose capacity and “wellness” when we resist integration with others – and insist on a personal “no change” policy, fuelled by a command-and-control leadership style.

In South Africa, during these politically and economically turbulent times, we need to consider what we are learning about leadership. This hopefully includes a growing potential to trust each other and rely on colleagues as “bundles of potential” to act creatively, take risks, inspire, console and produce together to reconstruct the inner chambers first and then optimise the outer chambers of our working environments.

In sum, the healing of organisations may well be an inside job, as Palmer stated.

To ensure and restore employee wellness, organisations should commit to a goal of “Just connect”.