The quiet revolution in the world of work

A quiet revolution in the world of work began to unfold in the very first months of the remote work the pandemic forced on us.

We discovered that work could happen far from the boss’s eyes, from anywhere in the world, and that our productivity could be even higher.

We also realized that our lives go beyond work, and that setting aside time for family and friends brings an emotional balance we had been missing in the traditional day-to-day of companies.

So we learned that our lifestyle can shape how work happens, instead of work dictating, through its rules and procedures, what our lifestyle should be.

Looking at this intense process of giving work a new meaning, I can point to 4 major findings:

1. Autonomy at work depends on self-knowledge

Autonomy is basically the result of three factors combined: understanding who we are (self-knowledge), understanding the others we work with (relationships) and knowing the context (organizational transparency).

When that happens, responsibility becomes a consequence of autonomous action at work (and not a precondition, as we are used to hearing), and so-called “mature” behaviors begin to emerge from professional relationships.

2. Self-knowledge comes from experience

Self-knowledge is not learned from books. You have to live through situations, try, get it right, get it wrong… to discover who we are and what we are capable of.

That means having opportunities to interact with people, take part in decisions, face challenges and be in a position to take risks (things that are usually available only to the bosses).

Cultivating a work environment with psychological safety matters, and so does the support of other professionals who help us look back on how we think and act in our professional activities (we know this as a “feedback culture”).

3. Experience brings awareness

The current predominance of empirical processes in organizations (the ones we only figure out how to carry out after living through them) and the pressure for innovation in an ever more complex market make experiments a very important path for discovering how we think about the people and things around us.

Having discernment about how actions, behaviors and relationships affect the results of work makes us responsible for our capabilities and for what we have the will to create (after all, “will is a desire that has passed through the sieve of reason”).

The joy of success, the pain of failure, the doubt about whether we will be capable and the hope that we will make it shape our awareness in the workplace.

4. Awareness creates learning

Acting autonomously, living through opportunities that make us grow professionally, experimenting with solutions to complex problems (together with other coworkers) and expanding our awareness of our own presence in the world creates something unique: learning.

This learning transforms us as individuals and as professionals, making it possible to act differently in the face of future challenges and to achieve results we were once unable to reach.

Allowing this “virtuous cycle” to happen naturally is the foundation of modern management styles and the main responsibility of managers and today’s leaders.