I keep thinking about what it means to feel recognised. Really recognised; not evaluated, not processed, just genuinely seen by another human being. It should be unremarkable.
Right now, it feels like one of the most radical things one human being can do for another.
Many of us might be looking for the big gestures. But it happens in the small moments. A man at the post office who remembered me not just from recent visits, but from the old branch at Red Hill. No prompting, no CRM system telling him. Just a human being who had been paying attention.
I have been thinking about it ever since. Because in a world increasingly designed to process us, to move us through systems, to optimise our experience, to scale everything, being recognised by another human being feels *almost* radical.
We are living through an age of dehumanisation. We see it in the most devastating ways in places like Gaza, where entire populations are rendered invisible. We see it closer to home, where in Australia today, one woman is killed every week by a current or former partner, and we have absorbed that so completely that it has become a statistic rather than a tragedy – but never a statistic for the families and the children. We see it in subtler ways still, in how workers are reduced to productivity metrics, in how customers become data points, and in how communities are replaced by platforms.
And yet. We still crave that moment at the post office.
None of us can solve what is happening at the edges of the world from where we sit. But we can choose, every day, what kind of environment we create for the people in front of us. That is not a small thing. In fact, right now, it might be one of the most important things.
Here is what I think this means for those of us in leadership: you do not get to outsource humanity. You can automate processes. You can scale systems. But you cannot scale the feeling of being known. Of being seen and of being recognised.
People will not always tell you they need it. They will perform fine without it. But they will do their best work, stay longer, and bring their whole selves only in places where they feel genuinely seen.
Here is the question I am sitting with, and that I invite you to ponder:
Do the people I lead feel recognised? Not managed. Not processed. Recognised.
Because that, more than any strategy or system, is what holds us together.
As always, if you invest in yourself and your people, the rewards will be unfathomable.
Until next time.
