In business most sustainability conversations focus on the larger social and ecological system. Organizations are looking at the question of continuing to grow while reducing consumption of natural resources or diminishing the quality of our communities and natural habitats. They are focusing on the wellness of the whole in the recognition that organizations, communities, and ecological systems are all interconnected, and that the endangerment of any one of these elements has the potential to harm them all. The trend is about acknowledging a larger system.
But what if we were to expand the system of consideration even further? Not outward, but in the other direction – inward. What if we were to include the internal dimension of people within the commonly accepted triple net equation of people, planet, profit? What if we were to consider mental and emotional sustainability in the workplace? At shiftalliance we call this psychological sustainability, and consider this key to building sustainable thriving 21st century organizations.
Ideas, innovation, products and policy come from the heads, hearts and hands of people. It is people talking, organizing, and behaving together in order to achieve our social, economic, and environmental sustainability goals.
What is the state of the hearts and minds of our most precious resource – people – and how are we cultivating a sustainable state of mind in the people who work in our organizations and make important decisions on a daily basis? What would a sustainable workplace look like? What is psychological sustainability and how can we to promote it?
Definitions are always a good place to start:
sustainable: able to be maintained at a certain rate or level
sustainability : the ability to endure
psychology: the science that deals with mental processes and behavior: the emotional and behavioral characteristics of an individual, group, or activity
For environmentalists, sustainability includes conserving an ecological balance by avoiding depletion of natural resources. We can use this concept to build a definition of psychological sustainability by identifying the elements in people that we want to avoid depleting: the elements that we want to endure or even increase. Let’s suggest that at the most basic level these elements are: intelligence and energy. Putting this all together, shiftalliance defines 21st century psychological sustainability in the workplace as the mental processes including emotional and behavioral characteristics that allow workplace
© 2010 Elizabeth M Topp PhD
