Ways of Being
We aim to ground our work, recognizing that individuals among our team and community bring many different awarenesses, emerging energies, and practices of love, hope, creativity, and spirituality. We embrace these differences and seek to harmonize our strengths.
guiding compass
agreed-upon values to guide our:
inner work
team reflections
tension navigation
goals
we’re striving for:
trauma-informed
psychological safety
collective excellence
i. communicate
We commit to:
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Communicate regularly with respect, love, and patience
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Give and receive feedback regularly, respectfully, and in a spirit that inspires growth and transformation
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Healthily work through tension by engaging in mindful, nonviolent communication (i.e., intentional, present, active listening, nonjudgement, compassionate)
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Ask for help when needed and offer help when others need it
ii. learn & grow
We commit to:
- Continuous Learning: We see problems as opportunities to strengthen ourselves and our team.
- Embracing Mistakes: We view “mistakes” as a chance to learn and grow, integrating new insights.
- Social Justice: We strive for social justice by addressing our biases and privileges, and unlearning harmful scripts.
- Valuing Wisdom: We respect the wisdom of lived experience and recognize the criticality of diverse perspectives.
- Team Development: We support skill-building through:
- open access to circles (e.g., non-voting visitor; satisfy requirements to join as a voting member),
- as feasible, invest in learning opportunities tailored to individual’s needs
- fostering a support environment that encourages experimentation
iii. work practices
We commit to:
- Collective Excellence: Our work is strengthened by “multiple ways of knowing” which include lived expertise across diverse backgrounds and different knowledge traditions (e.g., Indigenous, cultural, familial, spiritual, and western academic).
- Team Wisdom: We are strengthened by seeking wisdom from each other (e.g., advice processes) and recording our learning lessons (e.g., retrospectives).
- Effective Processes: We seek to find and use processes, structures, and systems to support and hold each other accountable.
- Balance Needs: We prioritize our team and community’s needs without sacrificing our own. We recognize that caring for ourselves as individuals makes the “we” stronger.
- Right Relationships: We strive to understand power, share power, and rectify imbalances with each other and our partners within social justice and frontline movements.
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Collective Impact: We recognize that our community and mission are best served through working collaboratively with our community and partners.
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Value Contributions: We are respectful of each others’ work and time through preparation and communication.
- Mindful Pace: We move at a pace that allows for learning, reflection, and trust-building.
iv. whole & joyful work
We commit to:
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Celebrate Success: We cheer each other on and delight in our individual and collective achievements.
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Work-Life Balance: We strive to balance our work and our home to the best advantage of both.
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Value Each Other: We strive to appreciate and understand each other’s unique gifts and perspectives.
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Support & Growth: We support each other’s growth, healing, and joy both within and outside of Transcend.
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Inclusive Space: We strive to co-create a space where everyone can be their full selves.
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Nurture Joy: We strive to nurture each other’s consciousness, wholeness, and joy through collective work and togetherness.
“Broadly, right relationships are relations in which each (or all) seek, without abandoning themselves, to be attentive and responsive to the needs and emotions of one another… That is, a relationship is not “right” if participants seek to overbear in power (oppress), to overreach in resources (exploit), or to mislead for selfish advantage (manipulate).”
Towards a Natural Justice of Right Relationships
John A. Humbach, Pace University School of Law
Thank you to the Sustainable Economies Law Center and the Resist Foundation for influencing our team commitments. Our Ways of Being have been adapted from the Resist Foundation, specifically, that we found in our pursuit of restructuring Transcend the Binary as a worker-directed collective, inspired by SELC.