on abundance and reciprocity 🌱
(5 minute read)
Hi! Welcome to Our Best Work Weekly, a newsletter from Healthy Pour where you'll get weekly tips on creating a healthy workplace, becoming a more compassionate leader, and cultivating a regenerative relationship with work.
Traditional models of employee relations are rooted in highly transactional models: a person is hired and sells their skills and time for a wage and (maybe) some additional protections like health insurance, life insurance, retirement, etc. In some cases, they receive a bonus if they perform exceedingly well. In the employment life cycle, agreements around these transactions are central to negotiations and offers, but employees and employers often fail to account for the other costs.
For employees, this can look like the costs to their mental health and energy or the impacts on other important life roles like being a friend, parent, or partner. We fail to account for the emotional costs of the ways our identities can become entangled in our work the insidious ways our jobs strain our ability to maintain fulfilling lives that have purpose, meaning, and joy. I’m reminded of Christina Maslach’s (likely the most influential burnout researcher to date) famous definition of burnout, calling it “an erosion of the soul caused by a deterioration of one’s values, dignity, spirit and will.”
Woof.
This prompts the question: What is a soul worth? What should the compensation be? How much should we sell that for?
Can we even sell that? Buy that? I mean, someone could be pulling in a salary of $10 million annually, but that still doesn’t guarantee that person’s perception of a worthy and fair exchange.
The point I’m making is that the ways we engage in compensation models are painfully limited to monetary transactions—neglecting the spirit's needs. When work takes someone’s spirit without proper compensation, the consequences are disastrous for people, their families, their communities, and the business itself.
“But Laura,” you ask, “how do we even quantify that?”
The answer can be found in the pursuit of reciprocity and building operational and organizational systems that are not only sustainable but regenerative, then measuring their efficacy and impact.
I recently read Robin Wall Kimmerer’s latest book, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World. Another of her books, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, has been profoundly influential in my work through the gift of language and indigenous wisdom to communicate the importance of ecological balance not only in plant life but our relationships, workplaces, communities, families, etc. If you’ve ever worked with me, you’ve likely heard me say something about moving from the machine-like organizational model to a bio-dynamic ecosystem. My thinking in this area was sparked by learning about biodynamic wine production, which flourished after reading her book. It was codified into my process as it was validated by both indigenous wisdom and contemporary scientific methods.
Her newest book, The Serviceberry, is a speedy but profoundly impactful read that advocates for a gift economy rooted in reciprocity and community care. She details the importance of how we show up for each other, not only offering help but also asking for and accepting help. So many of us are great at offering help but not so great at asking for it and even worse at accepting it.
On a personal note, this is something I’m actively working on, and it is challenging but so rewarding. Accepting the offered love and support from friends and family who care about me is an unmatched feeling of warmth and care, mainly because I know how hard I show up for, love, and support them. It’s not like a written ledger of give and take—that transactional model gets us into trouble—but a relational feeling we follow, consistently and subconsciously assess, and engage with. When it’s imbalanced, we run into problems, but when it’s in harmony? Unmatched.
Coming back to the workplace, the best and most innovative organizations not only cultivate systems, environments, and cultures that lean heavily into creating feelings of reciprocity, they recognize that when our resource systems (social, relational, skills development, etc.) are regenerative, there is no need to operate within a scarcity paradigm rife with fear and anxiety. These organizations know that work has the terrible potential to take far more than we intend to give, but it also has the extraordinary potential to provide more than we ask for. Abundance.
(I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: it’s a bummer the default move is only to give people the absolute bare minimum that will keep them working, forcing them to stop working to get more…but here we are.)
Practically, this looks like systems of personal and professional development, integrating feedback and input, values alignment, strategizing and implementing family and community impact programs—looking beyond the transactional salary model of compensation and accounting for the seemingly* intangible costs that inevitably make or break organizations.
*We can usually measure these things, btw, and if we can’t measure something directly, we can measure its impact. SCIENCE.
With that, I’m doing a soft re-launch of my EMBERS & FLAMES program next Monday, which I’ve expanded into EMBERS, FLAMES, and FIRES: an operational framework that businesses can adopt to 1) have a solid operational structure, 2) properly manage employee relations while 3) making a people and community-centered workplace that supports mental health & well-being. It’s a straightforward, actionable, and replicable model for businesses that want to build stronger, more functional workplaces, and it integrates the concepts discussed in this newsletter today (and more, of course).
The best part? I’m making the framework freely available. Take it and run with it. I’ll also be hosting workshops and providing coaching and consulting programs to help you make the most of it and implement it in the most functional and effective way possible, so there will still be plenty of ways to work together.
I’m excited to share it with you.
See you next Monday!
