Written by: Janet Macaluso, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Do you add pronouns after your name, like this: She/her/hers? He/him/his? They/them/it?
I recently did. And then I didn’t. It went like this.
My Zoom Meeting
During a recent large online meeting, I felt different. Like I didn’t get the memo saying: “Post pronouns beside your name.” If all those talented Harvard alumni women posted their pronouns, I should too, right? Me2.
So, I sheepishly tapped the dropdown thingy adding "she/her/hers" besides my name, Janet Macaluso. Satisfied, I thought, "This demonstrates that I too, welcome and appreciate diversity." This is true.
When I’m centered and conscious, I notice my thought bubbles and decide whether they’re relevant or not. And I sensed something was off. Hmmm, what was it? Couldn't put my finger on it.
Eventually, I realized that my posting “she/her/hers” was causing an “approach-avoid conflict.” That’s when something has both appealing and unappealing characteristics simultaneously. Like when I want my cake and eat it too.
What appealed to me was my supporting and being in a community with these amazing women. Yet, simultaneously, labelling my personal pronouns conflicted with my Living Systems worldview that I try to live by personally and professionally.
From this Regenerative perspectiver, all living and social systems are dynamically interconnected and unfolding to their next level of potential. This differs from the Industrial Age “world is flat” and static Machine worldview.
I found myself reflecting on whether my auto-pilot pronoun-changing behavior was sourced from the outdated Machine Paradigm.
I’ll diverge from the meeting to set the context and then return below…
The Understory of Paradigms
Paradigms are commonly accepted worldviews that we unconsciously absorb as the right and only way. They create mental boundaries that prevent humans from considering other ways of thinking.
For example, we might have an invisible paradigm about women’s role in the world or that the Earth is a permanent natural resource that we can extract from without any consequences.
Here's the rub. We don’t realize the limitations of our unexamined paradigms because they seem so normal and right. Like the fish who “can’t see the water,” we become “paradigm blind.”
Like an unauthorized co-signer of our bank account, paradigms shape our thinking, doing and effects on the world.
As a Regenerative Leadership educator, I provide a structured method for Change Makers to develop deep critical thinking. Using dynamic frameworks, they learn to self-assess their own thinking, actions, behaviors, and work processes. And when I self-assessed my adding pronouns during the Zoom meeting, it caused me to pause.
Assessing invisible paradigms radically up-levels the effect leaders and Change Makers can make in the world. The structured process below motivates their Will to do more and be more in the world:
Discern the source of your thinking – which worldview?
Consider how to elevate paradigms and actions to the next level of potential.
Identify the capabilities needed to make your non-displaceable mark in the world.
Assessing the Source of Invisible Worldviews
Source Credibility is a term journalists use to ensure they’re referencing high-quality sources of information when conducting investigative research. This term also applies to paradigms.
The worldviews below play out in our daily lives, either consciously or unconsciously. I assessed my paradigm source during my Zoom meeting and gained insight into my behaviors.
1. The Machine Worldview. Frederick Taylor’s Scientific Management approach advanced linear, mechanistic methods that birthed the Industrial Age. While this Machine paradigm evolved in the world of manufacturing, the thinking underlying this worldview was this: humans are machines interchangeable cogs on a wheel.
The role of management was thought of as the “brain” while employees were the “body.” So, with stopwatches in hand, managers measured employee output with time and motion studies.
Using bell curves, they plotted and measured output, quality, and waste. This greatly advanced business efficiency. When they gained as much efficiency as possible from the workflow processes, they focused on humans and segmented employee performance into above, at or below average. Average” was the goal and unique was an error.
“I wanted a pair of hands, but they were attached to people.” – Henry Ford
2. The Behavioral Worldview. When workers rebelled against being treated like machines, they rebelled and unionized. Psychologist John Watson stepped in to find a way to make unhappy workers comply with the demands of management.
He applied carrot and stick incentives aligned with certain ideals. Rewards and punishments were implemented in the workplace. This behavioral view eventually spread to controlling behaviors in families, schools, the military and beyond.
Yet there’s a flaw in this paradigm. The studies Watson relied on were based on training rats in mazes.
3. Human Potential Worldview. Behaviorists believed they could make employees comply by offering more rewards or punishment to extinguish behaviors. Yet early psychologists believed that humans were not rats nor robots. They saw limitations to using rewards and punishment to manipulate people’s behavior.
The Human Potential realized that the Behaviorist view was incomplete. Observing rats-in-mazes would not garner valuable insights. Humans have free will to observe themselves and make conscious choices. This became the Self-Help industry where they studied human motivation and cognition directly, not metaphorically through animal behavior.
An improvement from the “humans as machines” mechanistic paradigm, yet, early psychologists used outdated thinking and tools that segmented workers. Basically, they applied the assembly-line bell curve to assess, rate, rank, and stack people against each other by:
Personalities, temperament, letter-combo types, colors, social styles
Ideal behaviors and competencies
Output: Above, Below or Average performance
Predicted potential: High Potential, Low Potential, No Potential
During my nearly three decades working in corporate HR, I gathered degrees and certificates from experts who taught me to categorize people into buckets of good, better, best. So, it wasn’t a surprise when a previous CEO said to me "Let the cream rise to the top, sink or swim."
All that came to a crashing halt for me when I found a new way of seeing the world, through a Living Systems, Regenerative paradigm. Now, I see things that I cannot un-see.
A Living Systems Worldview
Firstly, a regenerative, living systems worldview is not new – it’s ancient! Indigenous peoples knew this all along. With advancements in science and technology making it possible to study all forms of living systems, this modern paradigm has emerged for our 21st century.
Perhaps it’s due to global warming and the human conditions we’ve created, yet we now realize we’re living in complex, dynamic, interconnected systems that continually evolve and unfold just like nature. All social, living, and planetary systems are dynamically evolving and in-separately nested. Consequently, when we fragment and piecemeal, we act un-naturally, against nature.
Just as our molecular cells are nested inside organs, which are nested inside bodies, nested inside families, inside schools and neighborhoods and work and communities. We see how starfish and forests and oceans can respond, rebound, and re-express themselves in response to their environmental conditions. This applies to humans, teams, and organizations too.
Now back to the Zoom meeting, which prompted this article…
Pronouns and Paradigms
Reflecting on typing pronouns beside my name, I realized I acted automatically, not consciously. And concluded that segmenting myself was more degenerative than regenerative. This is my personal reflection not a judgement against others. (Remember, I’ve confessed to spending three decades fragmenting people. Like all living systems, I’m still an unfolding work-in-progress.)
From a regenerative perspective, identifying ourselves by gender, religion, race, preference, or other piecemeal forms separates and disconnects. We’re all HUMANS.
And, haven't we already disconnected, separated, and polarized ourselves enough already? By gender, demographics, politics, access, economics, aptitudes, abilities, physical characteristics, regions, preferences.
So, after processing all this while in my meeting, I returned to the dropdown thingy. Deleted "she/her/hers" besides my name.
I still believe in honoring and appreciating diversity of all kinds. And uniting in our nested ecosystems while inviting our essence to shine through.
Essentially Yours,
Janet Macaluso
Janet Macaluso, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
After a 25-year corporate career developing executives, teams, and organizations, Janet founded Learning2LEAD, a Regenerative Leadership Development practice based in Cambridge, USA, and Malaga, Spain.
No stranger to personal regeneration, Janet reinvented herself from a college dropout to a flight attendant and aerobic instructor to an award-winning coach and global executive with three academic degrees.
Janet created Learning2LEAD to reflect on the life, legacy, and impact she wants to leave. Applying modern science and ancient wisdom, Janet stewards successful mid-life change-makers, leaders, and rabble-rousers ready to transform their "1st-half" successes into "2nd-half" significance.
Whether in virtual workshops or leadership hiking retreats in Spain, Janet nudges clients to move toward their Best Future Self Now - so they can do the same for their people and places. Her mission: To Ban Average!
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