Mollie Rogers Jean De Dieu gives us an inhalation of comfort, happiness and restored calmness with her book called Emotional Inclusion. 

While organizations globally are doing something about their DEI mandate – ie. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in their workplace, but we still need to work on embracing this dictum more profoundly into our policies, principles, framework and embedded organisation systems.

Humans are not just working machines to clock in and clock out hours to serve their respective organisation. They serve the economy as a whole with their care and compassion. Not to forget, they tend to their family commitments and enjoy their work-lives as ably as they can, with the gift of emotional wellness.

The love for labour should not be confused with transactional work relationships.

In fact, per Kahlil Gibran’s quote ‘work is love made visible’ should help us create a more creatively fuelled and inspiring workplace where people not micro-manage but micro-inspire (as Radhika Gupta, MD & CEO Edelweiss Mutual Fund, rightly points this out in her tweet).

But how?

Though I sound a bit skewed, but marketers and brand spiritualists have a massive role to play in enabling the organisations to shape their narrative in a truly inclusive way. Every content piece that comes out from our desks should be illuminated with this ‘I’. In general, we all have our unique roles to demonstrate to embrace this ‘I’ more profoundly.

So: what is this I, that I ask you to embody in your organisation’s value systems?

If there’s an echo chamber, I’d speak assertively about ‘emotional inclusion’ at our workplace.

Here’s how DEI has a big role to play in driving organisation to become the vessels of emotional change and human spirit.

  1. Contrarian personality works, as they bring double value. Quite and assertive; loud and calm; abstract and concrete – no matter what combination you have, every emotional expression beings value when the communication needs an established perspective grounded in diversity of opinions and emotions. The human emotions spectrum always needs a paradox view to certain the most grounded conversation consensus. This brings self-confidence in us to truly be ourselves and serve our community better, no matter how peculiar our inner inspiration to do things could be.
  2. Physical workspaces should be emotionally expressive. We all need our Zen workstations when we work from office, so finding your home where the acoustics work just right with your emotional energy gives you the best work therapy you’ve been emotionally longing for. My personal favourite? Orange and mauve – it gives me the gusto and rigor and vibrance that I so much crave for. Physical experiences stimulate the sensorial experiences in humans, where they can feel if the workplace belongs to them or not. So justifiably, work on making work more emotionally pronounced via colors, acoustics, nice coffee/ tea, and happy ambiance.
  3. When diversity and equity is embraced, emotional inclusion flourishes. As Mollie Rogers rightly says that she is on a mission to rid emotional unwellness shame and stigma in companies, let’s work together to work on this fulfilling and emotionally grounding mission. While diversity can be too wide and vast in its subjectivity, let’s bring some emotional objectivity by truly listening to humanly common emotional honesty and patterns of our workplace. 

Over to you.

Do you feel the magic of emotional inclusion at work?