By Celine McKeown for Enlivening Edge
Meaning…Without It, How Teal-ready Can We Really Be?
Are we really ready for the explosion of diverse expressions of our humanity as we embrace wholeness, after so many years of building organisations where people had to ‘blend away’ their differences through dress codes, behaviours, and cultural practices (“what we do and don’t say or do around here”)?
How will we create the right spaces where we can express our deepest humanity at and through work?
How will we have conversations about wholeness? How will we respect the diversity in our experience of life and in how we experience meaning in the world?
Imagine your organisation or team introduces a new wholeness practice. How will you know it’s working for you and others? How will you even begin to find a common language to share your experiences beyond “It works for me” or “I don’t like it”? I explore this in more depth in my post on wholeness.
Meaning is at the heart of why we do what we do. In a self-managing world, who or what do I want to serve, or how do I decide what roles I want to energise? Without meaning, why would I do anything? For me, having a clear sense of meaning is key to surviving and thriving in a self-managing environment.
In the discovery of our organization’s evolutionary purpose, how do we identify what unites us in service of humanity? How do we express our collective purpose without reducing it to the sum of our individual purposes?
The Map of Meaning developed by Professor Marjo Lips-Wiersma and Lani Morris is a foundational tool that I believe everyone who is navigating their organization towards Teal should have in their toolkit. It provides a common framework for people to work through what gives them meaning. Working with the map enables us to ask (and—importantly—to easily communicate the answers to) three key questions:
- What’s important to me as a human being?
- How do I know I’ve got it, or have lost it?)
- What can I do to get it, or to get it back?
The Map of Meaning is universal; it gives us a common language and framework to express and evaluate something deeply personal. Read more about the reasons I love working with the Map of Meaning.
If you want to inquire more into these questions, then please join Lani Morris, co-author of the Map of Meaning, and myself, July 5-6, in London, in a Masterclass, “Creating Meaningful Work and Workplaces.”
We will start by using the Map of Meaning for ourselves to surface how we experience meaning individually and then exploring how this can be a source for energizing our work and creating more wholeness. We will then explore together the multiple applications of this foundational tool in an organizational collective context. Please email [email protected] if you have any questions.
To find out more about this 2-day Masterclass, click here.
Celine McKeown is founder of Do What Matters, helping people, teams and organisations rediscover success for a happier, more meaningful and sustainable future. She is also a member of Future Considerations.
