coaching insight: because all people should valued equally, no one gets to be better than others at things
07 Nov 2024while coaching a few weeks ago, i stumbled upon an unfortunate cultural pattern in some parts of left movement culture i inhabit: while we deeply believe that no human is more valuable than another, we resist acknowledging that some people are better than others at some things. because we don’t believe person a is more valuable than person b, we resist saying person a is better at activity z than person b is.
this leads to an unfortunate dynamic where (at least) three things happen:
- we devalue/under value skill, experience, and expertise
- we resist paying people for their skill, experience, and expertise
- we diminish the joy that comes from seeking mastery and becoming
i see this look like two things organizationally:
- we deprioritize learning: professional development in so many nonprofits that i know is, explicitly or implicitly, primarily the responsibility of the worker. organizations overall don’t seem to have well or clearly-designed systems for supporting workers to grow. in fact, in many hiring processes i’ve been privy to, the emphasis is on hiring the person who already knows how to do the work and is going to be happy doing it for a long time without feeling like they need advancement or growth opportunities. how much more powerful would our organizations (and their impact) be if upon hiring, staff got to choose a growth/development pathway that had been researched and vetted by the hiring organization?
- we underpay people leading to people organization hopping: it doesn’t take very long for people to feel undervalued by their workplace. this looks like the beliefs that (a) people are currently paid the amount that they should be paid, (b) what people are currently paid doesn’t need to change over time (excluding cost of living increases and inflation and stuff), and (c) the initial abilities someone brought to a job are sufficient in the long run (aka people don’t expect growth of each other). i think on some level, those aren’t terrible assumptions. but what i have seen happen is people get bored or exasperated by their work. either the work is below their ability level so boredom sets in or the work is too hard and there seems to be little recourse for that. in the best case scenarios, folks take it on themselves to try and figure out how to grow into their roles on own time and, if they have it, with their own money. eventually, when people either can find another organization that feels like it values them more or they find one that actually pays them more for their skills, they bounce.
while i’m curious if those two dynamics resonate with others, i really came here to share this thought: i want us to have organizational culture and experiences where people get excited to grow.
i want people to be pumped about developing their core skillset for their jobs. i want people to find what it is they love doing in their work and then be able to develop it intensively. why? because i think that makes for strong organizations that are always getting better at what they do. i also think it keeps individuals feeling good about their work because they feel good about how they’re spending their time. and ultimately, at least among socially minded workplaces, getting better at your work and feeling good about how you are spending your time, means positive impact for the social cause you’re working on.
ok. that turned into more of a rant than i anticipated. what of that resonates? what doesn’t? let me know! oh wait… i just remembered i turned off the commenting feature on this blog… maybe i should get that set up again… hm!
words / writing / post-processing
599w / ??min / 5min