Resilience Part 7: A Feeling of Agency
We are first cognizant of it when we begin to push back at our parents.
The teen years are rife with the beginning of the fight for our own agency and not just developing, but owning our own voice and thoughts and actions, for the first time with adult consequences.
As children, we test boundaries and ideas with that parental buffer teaching us right from wrong: the baseline of what is acceptable and what is not in society.
As we mature, read, study, meet new people, experience new ideas, travel, argue, go away to school, join the workforce... we continue to learn. Slowly, we pick away at the rock-formation of our family way of life, becoming our own person with our own thoughts and ideas and faith and allegiance.
This is what democracy is supposed to invite...the idea of multiple ideas. Of no one owning the “one way.”
Unfortunately, as we have seen with politics, sometimes our parents, and far too often Bosses, “Agency” isn’t always given freely. Like with many “freedoms,” we find it is one that we need to battle to defend over and over and over in life.
Restricting our agency is a limitation used to keep us in place, to regulate, and to avoid conflict.
But limiting someone’s voice from fear of its capabilities isn’t a productive “preventative” measure. It is a fear-based action.
The truth is, if your organization or leadership is limiting the agency of its employees, the problem is the organization or leadership, NOT the employees.
If employees are not able to speak to, address, question, or challenge unfair practices or policies, to voice concern for safety, insist on equality, and speak to power, at some point, you will have a revolt on your hands in the form of union formations, walk-outs, picketing, law-suits, EEOC complaints and more.
Totalitarianism doesn’t buy hearts or work ethic. It breeds cancer and destruction. It may appear to work for a time, but it will fail in the end because people will revolt when given enough cause. It’s called History. You should read it sometime.
There is little more to say to the business and organization runners who employ silencing, lying, and limiting and degrading treatment to keep employees cowering under their thumbs.
There is also plenty to say to the employees IN such a state. You are not alone. Sadly, there is a much too large workforce being squelched just like you. Speaking to power, standing up to wrongs, supporting co-workers, and leaving when you are able, are tools at your disposal.
So study up. Know your HIPPA laws, study your rights and protections under OSHA, stand up when these rights are threatened.
Know your worth.
Use your voice.
Speak your piece.