Happy May Day. 

The need for labor laws and unions grew from the Industrial Revolution, where we saw people as mere meat-based cogs in a machine that was designed to grind them up as collateral damage in the pursuit of profit. 

While this has never been a smart way of doing business, it was seen as the status quo, as traditional hierarchies and systemic inequalities created power dynamics that benefited anyone who could manage to get to the top by hook or by crook. 

But we’re in an era that has seen profound shifts in both power dynamics and general humanitarian thinking. We now understand that treating people like garbage actually isn’t profitable. 

We’re in an era of Trust-Centered Leadership that requires a different way of leading – one of empathy, vulnerability, care, and trust. 

Yet the economies of scale often incentivize us to forget this, and so we hear about Amazon delivery drivers urinating in bottles, factories that make our cell phones poisoning their workers, and the laborers who pick our food being sprayed with pesticides. 
It’s easy to create mental partitions as knowledge workers to divide ourselves from those on the front lines, laboring for us to have next-day delivery and food delivered to our homes.

But we need to remember that our world is more interconnected than ever, and that by treating people better – ALL people better – you’re literally improving the system for everyone.