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How Are You Co-Creating The “New Normal” In Your Workplace?

4 Questions To Guide You

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Only 21.6% of workers feeling positive about returning to their workplaces post COVID-19 due to fears about their health, and the flexibility working from home has provided, according to new research The Wellbeing Lab conducted with 1,000 workers, representative of the US workforce, recently.  So how can workplaces create a “new normal” where workers feel safe, valued, and productive, while remaining physically-distanced from each other?

“Cultures are formed in the crucible of crisis,” explained Professor David Cooperrider from Case Western Reserve University when we interviewed him recently.  “While it can be challenging to imagine how we can hold the space to bring people together, and embrace all of the uncertainty and the suffering being experienced, the scale of the current disruption also invites the best in each of us to step forward.”

After all, as Leonard Cohen wisely sang, “Ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering.  There is a crack, a crack in everything.  There’s a crack in everything, but that’s how the light gets in.”

David’s research suggests that now, more than ever, we need to help workplaces and communities uncover when they are at their best and what gives them life.  This can’t be done through telling and selling or even consultation, but instead requires a genuine and open invitation to co-create the future.

For example, David has recently worked with organizations to hold safe spaces for online conversations about “Moments of Magnified Meaning Making.”  Employees across these workplaces have come together to discover the following:

Based on what had been shared, employees were invited to dream together by imagining what could happen five or ten years from now, if these insights were built upon.  Then they were invited to identify the smallest action and one bolder action that they could take, as an organization, to move them in the direction of this vision.

What can you do to open up conversations in your workplace to co-create the “new normal” together?

— Published on May 29, 2020