At the American Evaluation Association conference a couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege of attending a session with Dr. Monique Liston. She was talking about hiring and recruitment to amplify new voices and centre dignity. This concept of dignity keeps coming up for me recently, whether its in my work or current events.
What I loved about Monique's presentation, is that she encouraged us to also focus on how we're treating ourselves with dignity. So, being the nerd that I am, I looked up the definition. According to Oxford, it's "the state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect".
As women, people of colour, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ+ people, we've been conditioned to treat others as more worthy of respect than ourselves. My answer to that therapist? That it would have been disrespectful to her for me to be late.
And to an extent that's true, but we are making ourselves sick to avoid being disrespectful to others and not showing ourselves the same grace and compassion. This is true at the individual level, but I also see it so often in the organizations I work with, when policies and practices are designed to hold staff back, in ways that would never fly in their client-facing work. We need to start questioning the way things always have been, to design a future that supports people and communities to flourish.
How are you doing? This has been a rough week, a rough year, and I'm here if you need to talk. Hit reply - it's really just me on the other end :)
