Hello everyone from Athens and welcome to another edition of the Chief Wellbeing Officer newsletter.
It’s been a whirlwind week on the road for me, and community, the theme of the past few weeks, has been very much to the fore. I delivered a session on Sustainable Leadership to a roundtable dinner of Chief HR Officers on Monday in Amsterdam and followed up with a keynote on mainstreaming wellbeing in organizations to a wellbeing forum in Athens yesterday.
I’ve been reflecting on what binds these communities together, and an important element is language. A normalised vocabularly tends to take hold, whether you work in HR/People, or have an interest in wellbeing, or focus on a particular sector. The words we choose will also tend to define our generation. Any parents contending with “sigma” recently? 🙂
More brief reflections below. Have a great week everyone.
Steven
Language as a living organism
Of course, language evolves. After 21 years living in Spain I’m finally attempting to read Don Quixote, the classic novel by Miguel de Cervantes originally published in 1605. It takes a bit of getting used to.
Likewise in organisations. The day-to-day language in organisations used today will be very different to that of 10, or even 5 years ago. What words are more common-place now? Hybrid perhaps? or diversity and inclusion? What else?
Yet many are still present that are perhaps outdated. This is particularly true of the words we choose to describe performance. Leverage, productivity, and efficiency are three examples of words used to describe the advantage provided by machines in the first industrial revolution, but which still dominate today.
I’m not saying they are negative per se, just that we need to update our vocabularly to support a more human-centric view of performance and engagement. What could some of those words be?
Global languages
The language or languages we speak also form the basis of community and tend to drive culture. In the forum yesterday many of the sessions were delivered in Greek. As a native English speaker also fluent in Spanish I’ve come to understand the importance of being able to switch language in order to better communicate and build trust.
Whether you are multi-lingual or not, tuning in to the words that are used by a particular community, be they defined by sector, function or generation, will also help you build trust and improve communication.
Meaning between different languages is also fluid. I opened my keynote in Athens yesterday talking about the two different words Greeks use for time, Kronos and Kairos, that has formed the basis of a previous newsletter.
There are also two related words in English for wellbeing, with wellness also used, and in my view often erroneously. However, only one exists in Spanish, bienestar, which forced us to create a new term for my latest book. Bienestar Activo was the result.
Old words still fit the new world
I opened these brief reflections by mentioning words written over 400 years ago. Yet old words can still retain their freshness. For the working world of today there is a framework over half a century old that could have been conceived for the organisations of 2024. I’m referring to Servant Leadership. I’ll leave you to judge for yourself by including below the classic definition by Greenleaf together with the follow-up work done by Spears.
What other words will you chosse to drive a culture of wellbeing and sustainable performance in your organisation?
“Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?”
The Words We Choose
Hello everyone from Athens and welcome to another edition of the Chief Wellbeing Officer newsletter.
It’s been a whirlwind week on the road for me, and community, the theme of the past few weeks, has been very much to the fore. I delivered a session on Sustainable Leadership to a roundtable dinner of Chief HR Officers on Monday in Amsterdam and followed up with a keynote on mainstreaming wellbeing in organizations to a wellbeing forum in Athens yesterday.
I’ve been reflecting on what binds these communities together, and an important element is language. A normalised vocabularly tends to take hold, whether you work in HR/People, or have an interest in wellbeing, or focus on a particular sector. The words we choose will also tend to define our generation. Any parents contending with “sigma” recently? 🙂
More brief reflections below. Have a great week everyone.
Steven
Language as a living organism
Of course, language evolves. After 21 years living in Spain I’m finally attempting to read Don Quixote, the classic novel by Miguel de Cervantes originally published in 1605. It takes a bit of getting used to.
Likewise in organisations. The day-to-day language in organisations used today will be very different to that of 10, or even 5 years ago. What words are more common-place now? Hybrid perhaps? or diversity and inclusion? What else?
Yet many are still present that are perhaps outdated. This is particularly true of the words we choose to describe performance. Leverage, productivity, and efficiency are three examples of words used to describe the advantage provided by machines in the first industrial revolution, but which still dominate today.
I’m not saying they are negative per se, just that we need to update our vocabularly to support a more human-centric view of performance and engagement. What could some of those words be?
Global languages
The language or languages we speak also form the basis of community and tend to drive culture. In the forum yesterday many of the sessions were delivered in Greek. As a native English speaker also fluent in Spanish I’ve come to understand the importance of being able to switch language in order to better communicate and build trust.
Whether you are multi-lingual or not, tuning in to the words that are used by a particular community, be they defined by sector, function or generation, will also help you build trust and improve communication.
Meaning between different languages is also fluid. I opened my keynote in Athens yesterday talking about the two different words Greeks use for time, Kronos and Kairos, that has formed the basis of a previous newsletter.
There are also two related words in English for wellbeing, with wellness also used, and in my view often erroneously. However, only one exists in Spanish, bienestar, which forced us to create a new term for my latest book. Bienestar Activo was the result.
Old words still fit the new world
I opened these brief reflections by mentioning words written over 400 years ago. Yet old words can still retain their freshness. For the working world of today there is a framework over half a century old that could have been conceived for the organisations of 2024. I’m referring to Servant Leadership. I’ll leave you to judge for yourself by including below the classic definition by Greenleaf together with the follow-up work done by Spears.
What other words will you chosse to drive a culture of wellbeing and sustainable performance in your organisation?
“Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?”
Robert K. Greenleaf, 1970
10 Traits of Servant Leaders by Spears
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