Summary of March 2022 Member Call : Mastering Community

What makes people thrive, and what makes them feel connected and engaged? Christine has surveyed hundreds of thousands of people and concludes that to help people thrive, we should focus on these levers: (1) unite, (2) unleash, (3) respect, (4) radical candor, and (5) provide More »

Power for All with Julie Battilana.

During the October gathering, we explored what agency looks like and what practices might lead to greater agency for all.  Among the puzzles we identified was the connection between agency and power.  To help us deepen our understanding, we invited Julie Battilana to share her research with the LILA community.  Julie is a scholar, educator, and advisor in the areas of social innovation and social change. She is a both a Professor at the Harvard Business School and Professor of Social Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School.  Julie has recently published a book titled Power for All: How it Works and Why it's Everyone's Business with her co-author Tiziana More »

Trust - Harnessing the Power of Agency and Belonging

People have an inherent need for belonging and agency, which can be fulfilled by trust in different ways. But just what is trust? It is the willingness to be vulnerable—to take a risk—in a relationship based on positive expectations of the trustee. And in the workplace belonging and agency matter because of their impact on job performance, commitment to the organization, and well-being. Mike’s research suggests that feeling trusted and having an opportunity to trust others can increase employees’ sense of belonging and agency. By a wide margin, the three biggest predictors of trust are ability, benevolence and integrity. (There is also trust propensity – a personality trait where someone is more willing to believe that others are reliable – but this can go away.) A few examples of trusting behavior include the supervisor’s willingness to rely on the employee’s skills and abilities, to disclose sensitive information or feelings to the employee, and to reduce monitoring of the employee. What are your thoughts? When have you experienced trust that led to your feeling a sense of agency, belonging and More »

Uniting Through Difference with Rachel Arnett

In the first presentation Rachel spoke about the benefits and risks of navigating a minority identity in the workplace.  In this  presentation she spoke about one way to bring attention to a cultural identity in a way that doesn’t necessarily activate bias and exclusion, and can actually activate and increase More »

Agency in the Context of Diversity with Rachel Arnett

In her first presentation, Rachel shared some of her work about agency in the context of diversity.  Diversity is increasingly a reality of the workplace, and it brings lots of benefits – we gain new perspectives, we gain access to broader and better talent pools, for example, which helps us to innovate and improve how we do things in organizations. And there are also many challenges for example,  how do we navigate sources of differences.  Rachel’s research explores how the perceived risks and benefits of sharing features and aspects of identity can influence and enhance both individual and collective agency at More »