I met with a dear friend today after work. We were both in desperate need of a happy hour together and quickly arranged to meet over a plate of nachos and a good glass of wine. Angella is my friend and mentor. She is an Edgewalker. She is an overachiever and wise beyond her years. She is an inspiration to me. We were both feeling the effects of intense workloads that, although exciting for both of us, were becoming overbearing. So, there we were spilling out guts on the table of a local hangout and celebrating the successful ending of a ferocious workweek. We both soar in our work and in life, but the work is hard. So, we find times and places to clean out the toxins. We talk it out. That’s what we do – we share our experiences, highs, lows, laments, and celebrations. When we share our triumphs and our failures, we catch the spiritual updrafts of this world and soar to new heights, encouraging each other as we go.
Edgewalkers are typically high achievers. We can’t help but see an opportunity to try something new. We are in the business of putting our hands up quickly to volunteer for the next project or facilitation opportunity. This makes us especially susceptible to burnout. I am part of a highly functioning team of overachievers within my organization. We make change happen. We define change. We control change. We are creating a culture of change. We are known within our organization and outside its walls as the team first out the door. If we were paratroopers, we would be the first to jump. If we were firefighters, we would be the first into the burning building. This is who we are. This is what we do. We know only three speeds: fast, faster and crash. We wear high engagement and fast-paced workloads as a badge of honour. But it comes with a price.
Organizational trends over the past decade and longer have served to focus on increasing employee engagement. Engagement scores have been increasing slightly since 2000, but enter the COVID-19 pandemic, and all rules of engagement went out the window for many organizations. In fact, between March and June 2020, the number of self-reporting engaged employees among those surveyed dropped from 38 per cent to 31 per cent. “Since employee engagement is highly related to many performance outcomes﹣ even more so in tough times ﹣this unprecedented drop in the percentage of engaged workers has significant potential performance consequences.”[1]
Since Gallup started surveying employee engagement and revealed lower-than-desired scores, organizations around the world have been scrambling to increase their employee engagement scores. Even within my own organization, the Employee Engagement and Culture Survey holds a critical place in driving strategic planning at various levels.
You may ask why I mention engagement scores when I was just talking about high achievers. According to Harvard Business Review, twenty per cent of highly engaged employees (Edgewalkers) are at risk of burnout.[2] Angella and I are only two of many such Edgewalkers.
I have always prided myself on being dependable and a person of integrity. I do what I say I will do when I say I will do it. In addition, what I say and do are aligned with my core values. This is no accident – it is intentional. I strive for perfection and often achieve high-quality results. But I am my own worst enemy. I set goals that are too lofty to attain. I habitually neglect to factor time for getting the work done into my timelines and end up working double-time to meet the deadlines. I would rather do work harder and longer than change the deadlines I originally promised. When I meet the deadlines, my employer comes to expect more and extract more. More than once in my career, I have come close to the point of fatigue and burnout.
Angella and I briefly touched on the need for an Indigenous Worldview when considering how organizations approach highly engaged, high-achieving and highly motivated employees. As we talked, the lightbulbs in my head started to come on like crazy. Well-meaning organizations tend to bear down on highly-engaged employees like massive combines at harvest, completely consuming all they can from the earth. But this is not the Indigenous way of an honourable harvest.
I wish I could accurately write down and share Indigenous Worldview guidelines to an honourable harvest. But I am struggling to bring my ideas into words that will completely make sense. I recall the words of Robin Wall Kimmerer,
The guidelines for the Honorable Harvest are not written down, or even consistently spoken of as a whole – they are reinforced in small acts of daily life. But if you were to list them, they might look something like this:
– Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you may take care of them.
Kimmerer,, Robin Wall (2013). Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, p183.
– Introduce yourself. Be accountable as the one who comes asking for life.
– Ask permission before taking. Abide by the answer.
– Never take the first. Never take the last.
– Take only what you need.
– Take only that which is given.
– Never take more than half. Leave some for others.
– Harvest in a way that minimizes harm.
– Use it respectfully. Never waste what you have taken.
– Share.
– Give thanks for what you have been given.
– Give a gift, in reciprocity for what you have taken.
– Sustain the ones who sustain you and the earth will last forever.
Edgewalkers, amidst these guidelines, live a wellspring of opportunities if we choose to embrace them. Honourable harvest, in the metaphysical sense, is worth striving for as a path to personal and collective wellness. If I adopt these guidelines in my own life, I will redefine how I interact with our environment, creation, other humans, and my organization. Together we will soar to new heights and walk a path where we can greet each other in a good way.
Throughout my career, I have worked in organizations that encourage transactional leadership between managers and employees. What I mean by this is, I work = I get paid. This was even the case within a faith-based national organization. I recall being on a pastor’s retreat and walking in the trees with several mentors, listening to them sharing experiences with each other. They began comparing their weekly schedules and were soon boasting to each other about their 70-hour work weeks. They were shining their “badges” of honour and overachievement. They both agreed that they have no personal lives because they lived within a world of expectations. They perceived that they were expected to be available to their parishioners each hour of each day. There, in the forests of northern British Columbia, we had an opportunity to practice the ancient tradition of dialoguing with nature, listening to the trees, and reconnecting with the Creator. But the opportunity was lost because of the expectations. We were trapped in a world of expectations to live up to instead of the opportunities we could live into.
There, in the forests of northern British Columbia, we had an opportunity to practice the ancient tradition of dialoguing with nature, listening to the trees, and reconnecting with the Creator. But the opportunity was lost because of the expectations. We were trapped in a world of expectations to live up to instead of the opportunities we could live into.
In public or private service, I have experienced the struggle of self-restraint. What I mean by this is that the words are there. I have learned the meaning of “life-balance” and even how to practice it. I have learned the value of a practice of the corner of my desk that ignites my passion and fills my cup. But I sometimes worship the concepts instead of ensuring I am practicing what I know. I struggle with not only taking what I need, but even more with only giving that which I can give. I often feel I have no choice but to give everything that is asked of me even when I know full well that my own storehouse is depleted to critical levels. Therefore, to combat the tendency to give out of my debt, I have learned the wisdom that only when I give out of my abundance can my gift be honourable. In other words, if I give out of my poverty, then what I give is not freely given nor is it a gift. It will turn toxic in the hands of the recipient.
Imagine for a moment a world where the practice of Honourable Harvest spreads to all transactions. What if it were the law of the land, as Kimmerer suggests? I imagine this possibility could change the world for the better.
But this generation has inherited a certain way of doing things. Within our gene pockets we have learned behaviours within organizational and societal cultures that drive the need to produce more, acquire more, profit more, and expect more. The Indigenous Worldview, the culture of gratitude, is the answer to organizations that are stagnating and drained of its resources. Now is the time for Edgewalkers to learn the wisdom of Indigenous ways and respectfully apply the practices of Honourable Harvest in our lives and organizations.
What if organizational charters, roles and responsibilities included adhering to the guidelines of the Honourable Harvest? Formal documents and web pages will include the organizational mission statement, vision statement, and rules of engagement, which would reflect the intent of the Honourable Harvest. Everyone will be subject to the same terms of engagement as part of the way we do business with each other. We will move from a transactional world to a transformational world, from expectation to opportunity, from taking to receiving. We will seriously soar.
Donovan Mutschler, MA, MC
For more information on this or other topics of interest contact Donovan Mutschler at donovan@edgewalkers.ca.
Title Photo: Lara Dawn Photography
[1] Harter, Jim., Ph.D. (2020). Historic Drop in Employee Engagement Follows Record Rise. Gallup.
[2] Moeller, Julia, Ph.D. (2018). 1 in 5 Employees Is Highly Engaged and at Risk of Burnout. Harvard Business Review.
Be First to Comment