E104: Healing, Missing Ingredient from DEIB

Incorporating healing into the DEIB mix would greatly enhance initiatives to create a more inclusive workplace. Healing is not just a private matter to be pursued in a therapy session. Just as leaders are now learning to address mental health head-on, we must make healing central to organizational culture and strategy. We should embrace a range of modalities, including the somatic (massage and physical therapy), meditation and the act of forgiveness, which played a critical role in helping South Africa heal from its wounds and divisions.

Business leaders need to explicitly incorporate belonging and healing into their strategic goals. When business leaders look down the road and decide where they would like to be in six months or a year, they can also usually identify obstacles that might prevent them from getting there. Invariably, some of these obstacles have to do with culture and team cohesion. Business leaders can take the following actions to arrive at healing outcomes:

• Create an environment that supports a belonging and generative culture.
• Use the principles of ubuntu that enable community, integrity, and honesty—the spirit of togetherness.
• Increase the language of compassion to be present for employees.
• Support self-organizing groups for meditation and self-help to explore thoughts and feelings within the individual headspace and organization.
• Measure to obtain validated learnings to decide whether to pivot or stay with the healing strategic initiative.