Over the past few months, we’ve been having conversations about our own culture as an organization that’s part of a larger national federation, and as a small team of folks who are dedicated to equity work. You’ll notice that our team grew at the beginning of this year, and we realized that the regular old “employee handbook” just didn’t suit us anymore. It needed a good update anyway. It didn’t reflect who we are now or who we want to be for those who will join our team in the future. The employee handbook has given way to more of a culture map of our organization, and a way for anyone to bring their intentions and their skills and feel a sense of accomplishment when it comes to the impact that they make while they choose to do this work with us. It’s been a continuing conversation on how we fine tune this document so that it works for everyone who interacts with it. We’ve noticed through this process and in other conversations that we’re having that culture change is hard, even when it’s the culture of the folks in the culture change business.

So often the easiest reaction to change is opposition. It makes us uncomfortable to venture into the unknown. Thankfully opposition isn’t what we’ve dealt with in our culture map conversations, rather it’s been an exploration of questions we’ve never really examined before when we think about who we are as a group of individuals making up an organization. There are some questions that sure we’ve broached when we do this work, but haven’t necessarily applied to ourselves. And as always, when we know better, when we have an inkling of better, we make the adjustments so we can do better. We recognize that just as important as it is to promote a culture of collective action and creating impact, it’s important to create a culture of self-love. Self-love that allows people to err without feeling that it defines them. Self-love that promotes healing from the rigor of this work that we do. And self-love that elevates their identities and truly metes out a sense of belonging to this team.

Maybe that’s a strange HR concept, and that’s okay with us. We haven’t always gotten it right when it comes to the culture we bear, and even if we get it right for this team in this moment, it won’t be the right thing forever. Going through this process together keeps us connected, and keeps accountable to one another. It models on a small scale, the impact we hope for outside of ourselves.