and worthy in general, whether or not they felt loved and worthy at work, and whether or not it was important to them. We wanted to know if love and worth mattered in the workplace, and, if so, whether there were any differences among different members of the population. We designed the survey to examine the differences between those working and not working, those in corporate jobs and noncorporate jobs. We looked at the differences between men and women. We looked at differences in racial, ethnic, and gender identities. We looked at age differences. In short, we geeked out on the question of love and worth at work. (For our fellow nerds, the full survey design methodology and results are in Appendix A.)
Here are the biggest things we learned. Almost 90% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that it “matters to feel worthy.” And yet, almost one out of every two respondents, sometimes, often, or always “struggled to feel worthy.” Almost 90% believe that their boss “sees them as a person, not just as an employee.” Yet, three out of four survey respondents “want their company to place more value on human worth.”
We learned that almost 80% of respondents want to “bring my whole self to work,” and yet 40% said there are “parts of my identity I need to ‘check at the door'” when it comes to work.
Similarly, almost 70% of respondents “want to be safe to be vulnerable at work,” while only about 40% currently “feel safe to be vulnerable at work.”
The picture was coming into focus. The majority of us believe that feeling worthy matters, but about half of us sometimes, often, or always struggle to feel worthy. I am among that half. We believe that we are seen as a person by our bosses, but want more value placed on our intrinsic human worth. We want to bring our authentic selves to work but many of us feel the need to check parts of ourselves at the door. And finally, we want to be safe to be vulnerable at work, but many of us do not currently feel safe to do so. Maybe, my research team and I realized, we really did have a worthiness gap in the workplace, an experience that is in need of elevating.
How to Elevate the Human Experience
This book begins with Foundations, in which I introduce the four topics that are foundational to the journey of elevating the human experience through love and worth. We start with Chapter 1, “Work.” I begin by sharing my own personal journey at work so that you might understand my lived experience as a White woman, which may be different from your own. I explore the beginnings of what we have understood work to be as a way of making ourselves while we make our work. I then lay out the five ways in which work has become distorted—lacking love and intrinsic worth. Chapter 1 ends with a discussion of the rise of efforts of diversity, equity, inclusion, wellness, and purpose to restore love and worth to work. In Chapter 2 I define love and explore the reasons why we need to be willing to learn to feel if we want to experience love. In Chapter 3 I define the differences between extrinsic worth and intrinsic worth, and share the data on what we learned about worth at work. introduce the idea of the worthiness gap—the gap between how much it matters to feel worthy and how much we struggle to do so. Chapter 3 ends with an exploration of the connection between worth and success, as well as worth and self-care. In the final foundational chapter, Chapter 4, I discuss the ways in which all humans suffer, and therefore all humans are in need of having their experience elevated.
Next I introduce the First Path, the self. The first path of the journey is a deeply personal one. The path is inward, where we learn to love ourself and recognize our own fundamental human worth. It is important for two reasons: First of all, learning to love ourselves and recognize our worth is fundamental to our being. Full Stop. Secondly, at work, we may encounter obstacles that will regularly challenge our intrinsic worthiness. And if we show up feeling unworthy at work, we act out of it to the detriment of ourselves and others. In Chapter 5, I define self-love and self-worth and share some of the history of self-love, as well as how I discovered to love myself. I then investigate some of the surprising things we learned in our research about how different people of different backgrounds and identities learn to experience self-love in the face of an inhospitable society. In Chapter 6, I explore the ways in which we can cultivate self-love and self-worth by accepting ourselves “in our being,” with our words and with our actions. Chapter 7 acknowledges all of the obstacles we will face on the path, including the obstacles from ourselves, from another in our lives, and from the communities of which we are a part.
The Second Path is about the journey to loving and recognizing the worthiness of “Another” in our lives. We shift the lens from cultivating love and worth for ourselves to focusing on how we can cultivate love and worth for another person in our lives. Chapter 8 begins by exploring the connections we seek to other individuals, and how these connections bring us meaning. I then introduce the idea of “mirrored worth,” which is when another person perceives in us worth that is as high or higher than how we perceive our own worth.
Chapter 8 ends with a discussion of the four types of allies we can be for each other in our journey to growing in love and worth: a friend, a mentor, a sponsor, and a benefactor. We become a better ally when we consciously and intentionally give our support, our voice, our power, or all three to another. We reach out. We speak up. We show up. Chapter 9 introduces the ways we can cultivate love and worth for another by accepting them “in their being,” with our words and in our actions. Chapter 10 concludes the second path with a discussion of the obstacles we may face on the journey.
The Third Path is the path of learning to love and recognize the worth of others whom we meet at work every day. It is about challenging and changing the systems that would tell us—and have told us for a very long time—that there are those who are not worthy or loveable. It is the path of becoming better at loving those in our communities of work who find themselves systematically marginalized, unseen, and unrepresented just for being. For being female. For being Black, Brown, or Asian. For being gay or transgender. For being too old or too young. For being a person with a disability. For being any of these intersections. For those of us wrestling with what it means to be privileged White, privileged male, or both, at a time when the systems that were designed to serve Whiteness and maleness are badly in need of redesigning to recognize love and worth. This third path is of critical importance if we are going to create places of work where we can all show up as our whole worthy selves, recognizing what we value as humans, acknowledging the need for emotional connection, and building trust. On this path, I draw on my specific lived experiences as a management consultant first at the Monitor Group and then as a partner in Deloitte. In Chapter 11 I explain how we do the work collectively of elevating the human experience for each other at work. Chapter 12 is about cultivating love and worth at work. I introduce the research and work we did to learn to see and acknowledge our colleagues' worth at work. Chapter 13, similar to the earlier paths, ends with a discussion of the obstacles