We have edited the original blog post from March 2019 and added some updates to the current day. Interestingly when you reflect on previous works (always a great activity to do), you can assess your consistent message, impact and outcomes. We use an action to remember our business, its framework, and how we can iterate, learn, reference, benefit, and continue to learn. All companies can evolve and grow- it takes reflection and candour to critique and react to feedback and opinion- includes as many as possible in your review and sees how beneficial it can be for your overall focus.

Covid 19 - The world rediscovering the magic of humankinship and spirit

Edited and updated The original text focused on the link from sports to humankinship to business. There is something about the magic of pure sportsmanship. The element to readdress is the context and application to the importance of language and the semantics of humankinship, sportsmanship etc. We want to highlight that our use of the word humankinship could be not diverse or as inclusive as we would like these days as it refers to the route word of humankind which is “man. “ The word man can represent the whole of the human race. [a]. We would like the context to reflect the etymology of human as its Latin base of philanthropic, kind, gentle, polite, learned, refined, civilized, literally "earthling, an earthly being.

The sports analogies are shared to highlight how sports can be applied to business. When it works well, consistency, constant application, microlearning, incremental gains, personal connection, personal resilience, and l sports is about action very relevant in humankinship.

A minister of a church once said to me, “why is that so much in the life of the church is done by so few?”

For the last 30 years, we have lived in a time where society has become so much is done by the few.  It is up to us to decide whether the circumstances of COVID-19 will give us a chance to readdress this and determine if we are serious about the forced lessons placed on us right now around the world.

Humankinship has a series of attributes that we have to decide whether we do them or not?

Examples of sport and their humankinship can be applied to business and leadership. Look at these examples and how we can ensure that when situations arise, we can be better in the workplace using humankinship.

Brownlee brothers

Yet, we could miss some of the most impressive attributes it encapsulates in a single adjective.  A few years ago, the Brownlee brothers from Leeds were competing in the World triathlon series, and Johnny the younger brother collapsed with a short distance left.  Alistair caught his brother up, and we can all recall the moment he helped his brother finish the race [1], an act of sheer selflessness. Humankinship.

Lawerence Lemieux

in 1985 was placed 2nd in the Olympics in a sailing competition, the race was completed in lousy weather. In the last part of the race, the crew of another boat, in the lead, capsized, and he decided to sail for Gold or save the crew. The decision was easy for him; he sacrificed his place to save the crew.  Extraordinary endeavour from a fiercely competitive individual.  A great example. Humankinship.

Sport allows us to see things for that moment in time. We witness this in social sport all over the world too.  You can also see the last remnants of this in many communities across the globe, from foodbanks to charities, social organizations, support services and more.  The same strain of DNA giving us hope that we can still make a difference. 

Five ways to present Humankinship in leadership and business

1.      It means doing

Humankinship is about taking part, contributing, noticing the things around you and no longer having a self-imposed blind spot to what you see.  It means ACTION.  A small action made by many makes an incredible difference. Here is proof: The UK NHS Clap 8 pm UK #clapforcarers.

Edited Update: What has been interesting is that the clapping started with the positive intent and the woman, AnneMarie Pas, who created it and she renounced its positive impact as she felt it was getting politicised, so even in a matter of 12 months, a positive intent of celebration begun to become something else. As in business, we can make decisions and choices without reflection or assessment lose the intent it started with. The impact of the sunken cost fallacy can damage business and leadership intent [2]

2. It means caring

It is a choice.  Have you ever taken the ignorant view?  Put simply that won’t happen to me. I don’t do that.  My Sister Heather once said that if we could all remove the word I, you and me from a sentence, we would instantly have a better perspective. Ignorance blinds care. Studies uncover that ignorance blinding care is, for most people, a validation that the less they know about important complex issues such as the economy, energy consumption and the environment, the more they want to avoid becoming well-informed [4]. In business, we can apply ignorance, bias, and lack of care to all business decisions and their impact. Consider the leader is always correct, even when we know they are not- as it’s easier than dealing with conflict or caring about an outcome. This lack of care directly impacts customer experience, results, retention, recruitment (plus their incurred costs), profit and purpose, and overall culture becomes toxic quickly.

3. It means thinking about someone else

This is a tall order. This takes place where you live, with who you love, how you conduct yourself in your town or neighbourhood.  Humankinship in sport shows us how we can unite in a moment; the community needs us to do it every day. In business selfless and selfishness are both positive traits. We have to be selfish to become selfless ultimately. Suppose we are not operating at our best (selfish leadership [5] covers self-improvement, growth, self-investment, feedback responses, sincerity and much more). In that case, we can think we are being selfless and helping, yet we miss the outcome and impact. Focussing on others, thinking of some else means you have to be acutely self-aware. In leadership, we call this “what shadow do you cast”? Asking yourself what real impact and influence are you having? Are you genuine? Do you want something in return? What more can you do? How do you help? How do you allow others to be at their best? Putting others first also means removing assumptions and judgement, labelling others and defining others through your biases. This means in any business ensuring that you are not making decisions without having enough knowledge and just reacting without more information, aligning to values, your business framework.

4. It means putting down differences

Inclusivity and active diversity are to celebrate differences, accept them, embrace them, understand them. Not highlight them, give them more power to separate us.  The world is speaking a single language, the virus, wash your hands, stay home, save lives.  It is an unusual time.  The military forces worldwide engrain in the people they select the importance of protecting your unit, your team, each other – is it now time for us to do the same to every human on the earth?

COVID-19 has made us look at the same things. Only all rapport starts with noticing one thing you may have in common, just one. Our inability to see beyond

Edited and updated – What’s has been interesting through the pandemic and isolation has that our circles of influence have become smaller physically. Therefore, we have not had face to face having broader discussions, debates. All of this has had a negative impact on some businesses [7] 33% of companies said that Covid has negatively impacted their D&I work. The best way is to focus on competency and not be tokenistic in your actions, words. Attracting and sharing inclusivity means not isolating others, creating insular “exclusive” events for “different” colleagues. Inclusivity is about embracing, listening, doing, sharing, questioning, challenging, attracting language, actions, and inbred culture. Start with removing the naivety of language in your business around inclusivity in your industry. Excuses and validation become a big part of businesses attention on D&I, and being aware of them and dealing with them one by one is a great starting point.

Your language AND consistent actions are what make a difference, not just having a poster on a wall?

5. It means giving of yourself

It is no longer down to someone else; it is up to us.  We can answer the call.  We can meet the need.  The UK has seen over 750,000 volunteers to support vulnerable communities across the UK, and 20,000 retired NHS Colleagues come back to work.   We still have this in all of us. What are the small things you can do today for each other? At home? At your work? For your family?

Ask what are you ignoring and why? Fear? Discomfort? Uncertainty? Using the glorification of being busy as an excuse?

If one of our family were sick, we would stop all we were doing and help. This should be how we help others. We have time, and we have the capability. We have the reality we are all living through a global pandemic. Avoid the excuse that this is what happens in covid. It is not normal. There is no normal; there is no new normal. There is the human excuse, inaction or action. You chose. The impact of giving is more significant than that of not. Create a giving culture in your business. Stop focusing on mistrust and provide first. The result and outcome is others do it back without asking. Celebrate the small actions, recognise your teams’ efforts, see the small wins, embrace and share the process and steps of “getting there” instead of the big win result. Share and talk about the failings, the bits that didn’t work with as much enthusiasm as you do the wins.

Be vulnerable; give first. Abundance and gratitude are infectious in business and life.

Maybe it’s time to slow down and notice the needs of those around us, look at what we don’t need, and look at how we can make a difference for those around us.

A time for a change - the rebirth of humankinship

COVID 19 has been teaching the world that it is time to take these lessons and apply them to our communities.

The covid virus has exposed the ugly truth of celebrity culture where celebrities all around us are attempting to prove we are all in this together.  The virus has made us stop paying attention to what they are wearing where they are going as it consumes all the airwaves and new streams; there have been many of them who have made huge errors in their vain way of attempting to connect.  This is not the time for building your personal brand empire, your product or following, and this is a time for collective humankinship where you are.

This is not the time for building your personal brand empire, your product or following; this is a time of collective humankinship where you are right now. Have you? Do you?

We can read of the Juventus team, including the manager, taking a 4-month salary freeze to support the Italian region they are part of all the players took part.  Yet in England, we see a London club taking 20% off the whole support team – should all English Soccer stars learn from the Italian example?

Either way, we have an opportunity to do something different and learn from the Sportsmanship characteristics and apply them to a new breed of humankinship across the world.   Instead, we have been forced to put down our differences and be given a set of circumstances built on the same basis. A common ground fraught with terror, fear, sadness mixed with joy, relief, happiness, love, and sorrow.  Many parts of this pandemic are awful, extreme, unbearable, and too challenging to comprehend yet, (and this blog is riddled with lots of grammatical ‘Yet’ expressions). Yet, there are exceptional human traits and acts of sacrifice, kindness, and love still occurring in the middle of it.

We all have to learn from this, that learning never ceases

We read an article about the role of our paramedics in Britain who are responding to the Virus call outs. In their response to the emergency call, when they collect a patient, they must ensure they have a phone and phone charger (s) as they have had to share a video call with the patient to call their loved ones.  However, it gets much worse than this, as they even have to get the patient to say their final death bed goodbye to their loved ones.  Can you even comprehend that if this virus has still has not touched someone close to you yet? So millions have had to say a video goodbye after deteriorating in intensive care, their last few hours in the hospital, alone, isolated and dying with no family around them, and to make it even worse, a virtual funeral service. 

This may read as extreme, yet as we see people all over the UK in small pockets still ignoring the lockdown conditions, this is the harsh reality of the virus at its worst.  Statistically, studies show that up to 75% of NHS staff (and global hospital teams have PTSD from what they have experienced)

BEING THIS SPECIFIC IS TO ENSURE THAT ANYONE THAT READS THIS GRASPS THE MAGNITUDE OF WHAT WE ARE ALL WORKING TOGETHER ON.

Considering your role in humankinship can start with answering these questions

• How do we need to think differently?

• How do we need to behave differently?

• How do we need to look at how we learn from this?

• How do we need to notice and learn from the tremendous heroic sports achievements of sportsmanship and embrace the lessons hidden there all along?

• How can we still make a huge difference?

Humankinship has some essential qualities

• It means doing

• It means caring

• It means thinking about others

• It means putting down our differences

• It means to be willing to sacrifice and vulnerability

• It means saying yes first, then what’s the question

• It means putting love back into your thinking for all human life

• It means contributing to the community you belong to (and interacting with communities that you don’t)

• It means seeing beyond our borders, differences, skin, gender, religion, and ultimately anything you perceive to be different needs embraced, learned about and understood better.

Sport is a clue of a place to look for some of the best human ingredients. The DNA of athletes shows us what we are all capable of.

We are all humans; it is up to us to do and be better humans in all that we do.

In summary, we can be different in our professional and personal lives. One thing that has been recognised is how different people have been and are now demonstrating their “more personal side”.[6] The shared stories of working from home and how spouses and living partners have seen a different “side” to their significant other. From behaviours, language, self-presentation and overall what they did in their work-life was very different from their personal.

Covid has seen us (*thankfully) see more of the real lives, the impact of family and working from home, dogs barking, kids joining video calls, deliveries at the door. Videos have entered our home like big brother and have seen us share how we live our lives.

It had also occurred if and when managed well more personal approach to business. This humankinship of connecting with “real” life, entering into hybrid working and that life is a balance of business and pleasure is coming.

Generationally we know that this difference is vital for future work. Being connected, humankinship and face-to-face connection have a greater value as they were replaced with video and no contact.

Retaining this, bringing humankinship into business and balance of life means we will become more effective, productive, caring, connected, responsive, aware.

All of these are attributes to success, profit and purpose through being human to each other.

We have a long way to go, learning and applying. Our learning must be continuous, adaptable and flexible, aware of others' situations, and asking and not assuming. Then, we can develop humankinship and keep assessing ourselves and how we can continue this change to be the better outcome of a pandemic.

Research and references

[a] https://www.etymonline.com/word/humankind and also https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=human

[1] A collection of superb examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6J_A281XvZU, SAILING: Lawrence Lemieux – Trading a Gold Medal at the Olympics to save a crew’s lives https://youtu.be/Fsi6OoJH04Y  Including the Brownlee’s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKVdLHZYGhI

[2] https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/the-sunk-cost-fallacy/#:~:text=The%20sunk%20cost%20fallacy%20means%20that%20we%20are%20making%20decisions,longer%20in%20our%20best%20interests.

[3] ignorance studies covering gender and other topics allow us to see that ignorance isn’t always bliss https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09589236.2021.1880884

[4] https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2011/11/ignorance

[5] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01006/full and also 8 Faces of Leadership written by Dave Evans

[6] https://www.oprahdaily.com/entertainment/a31811637/couples-working-from-home-stories-coronavirus/

[7] https://www.mondaq.com/operational-impacts-and-strategy/1041786/how-has-covid-19-impacted-diversity-and-inclusion and https://iuslaboris.com/insights/how-has-covid-19-impacted-diversity-and-inclusion/?utm_source=Mondaq&utm_medium=syndication&utm_campaign=LinkedIn-integration

[b] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7828167/