Hope for the System: Beauty in the Broken
I love health promotion work and am persistently hopeful about embedding staff well-being as a system change in education. Today, however, I was reminded that learning and growth can also come from brokenness. Sometimes we need the slam of contrast, the wave that overpowers us. Sometimes that gentle nudge doesn’t move us forward and even though it keeps coming, we can keep ignoring or dodging it until that final destructive wave knocks us flat.
Something new is then required. It makes me think about the Japanese art of repair called Kintsugi where they repair broken pottery with gold because there is beauty in the broken.
During a recent online group session, one of the participants apologized for being distracted because they had just received word of some surprise layoffs at the post-secondary institution where they worked. I have to admit that I don’t know much about the details, but it was clearly difficult for my colleague to witness how the layoffs were handled in a “march you out of the building” way. As my colleague recounted the story, the concerning element that really stuck out for me was that a group email announcing the layoffs included a link for people that were impacted to access personal counselling. My colleague was upset by this tactic. The term they used was weaponizing mental health and they were asking questions such as; Why is personal counselling required when a system practice like layoff is handled poorly? How does that make things better? It gave me pause.
weaponizing mental health
Weaponizing mental health is a strong visual; an accusation that compels attention. Are we weaponizing mental health solutions like counselling or self-care when institutions use them to put responsibility on individuals instead of looking at practices, policies and ways of being that are causing the damage in the first place?
These are difficult and worthy questions still in my mind, it is connected to hope. I realize that this may sound like a huge contradiction but when I hear these stories it makes me feel hopeful. I think it makes me feel hopeful because if we want to move to more relational workplaces there are simple changes we can make that will have a huge impact. When we talk about creating relational workplaces there is an authentic focus on wellbeing, but we are often using old business models that are getting in the way. Using old models for highly relational experiences like layoffs probably never actually worked well in the business world either, but they absolutely don’t belong in education.
What if we handled difficult processes like layoffs with relationships in mind? It feels like our actions are sometimes so far away from our intentions that this should be glaringly obvious and really should make us pause long enough to realize there is another option and it is well within our reach.
We all want well-being in our workplaces and the research is so clear about how to improve employee well-being, so maybe all we need is the pause, the nudge towards what we really want and need. Many workplaces have started taking these pauses and asking the questions about how to embed well-being strategies into their practices which is so encouraging. They will do well and will be able to ride the ups and downs of the waves coming at them much better.
Although I wish you (and your organization) the easier route, I think the hope is there either way. So, whether you need support for the well-being work you are intentionally nudging forward or you need some gold paint pronto, let me know!
Thanks for reading along and thinking about this topic with me. I’d love to hear what resonates or ideas I have missed. Please share your experiences or ask questions. I won’t have all the answers, but someone will.
Please help me grow this community and spread the word about well-being by sharing this post and encouraging others to subscribe. If you loved the book or podcast, a positive rating or review goes a long way to help too! ~ Gail
