I had just returned to Minneapolis from an incredible, energizing NAGC Communications School: a 3-day conference that our team had delivered beautifully. It was rush hour, and my spouse was running late to pick me up at the airport, which gave me a chance to take a breath and look around.
A small, calm dog in a car’s passenger window caught my eye. Suddenly, its tail was wildly wagging, and a blur of fur was jumping up and down: the dog had spotted its person.
As I looked around, I noticed all sorts of happy reunions: not just people reuniting with their dogs, but people reuniting with their people. The feeling of belonging, of “coming home,” was palpable.
As we enter our summer season, perhaps we have a few minutes to take a breath and look around. What if our associations and organizations could create this sense of belonging and inclusion? What if, with every engagement with our group, our stakeholders felt like they were included, like they were uniting with “their people”? What kind of impact could such a culture achieve?
Some of you may already be excelling at this; I’d like to think that MHQ and our clients are. And I also know that we have plenty of room to deepen this experience further.
What will you do this summer to build an engaging and uniting culture in your work – and in your life?
