Courageous Imagination and Lived Experience
Photo by Josh Miller
By IDEAS xLab co-founder + CEO Josh Miller
Flying from the Creating Healthy Communities Convening in Florida to Colorado, Hannah Drake and I participated in University of Colorado Denver's Imaginator Summit on October 13-15, 2022 organized by my husband Theo Edmonds (Imaginator Academy co-founding director) and the CU Denver Imaginator Academy team.
We collaboratively planned and facilitated the third day of the Summit with Imaginator Academy and Farm to Spaceship - creating a storytelling session at Clyfford Still Museum and Denver Art Museum grounded in the question "Whose imagination are we living in?" with a focus on the outdoor recreation, space exploration (aerospace), and creative economy verticals in Denver.
“Imagination shapes what we believe to be possible and valuable in our lives,” shared Edmonds during his Summit opening address. “All human knowledge began as imagination. It takes courage to break free from what we know to bring ‘what’s next.’”
Photo by Josh Miller
He went on to explain that, “Culture change must align with innovation.... Activating change requires courage and imagination - which are the stories we tell, the stories that stick, the stories that make a difference. Telling a story is an act of bringing about and speaking into existence what doesn’t yet exist.”
During the first two days of the Imaginator Summit, we talked about the intersection of courageous imagination and social belonging and mental wellbeing, brain capital and the value of creativity, The Elevation Effect, and more.
Photo by Josh Miller
As I shared during the kickoff of our storytelling session on Day 3, adrienne marie brown talks about how through imagination “we are shaping the future we long for and [have] not yet experienced.”
For example, someone imagined the equipment we use in the outdoor industry. It was for them, and their friends and comrades. It wasn’t created for everyone.
Across areas of our life and work there are policies and practices that someone imagined. It was imagined from their worldview, in a specific time and place. And especially after the past few years, it’s time for us to imagine something new.
Something not bound by old rules and outdated ways of working.
Think about the change we’ve seen in the marketing of outdoor exploration when it comes to body size inclusivity. In the past two years, both Outdoor Research and Smartwool released new lines or sizes specifically designed to make outdoor exploration safe and enjoyable for people of various body types and sizes. Outdoor Research engaged outdoor explorers with various body sizes to imagine clothing and equipment that would work for them.
Consider how the movie Hidden Figures inspired young Black girls to see themselves as people who could have jobs and leadership roles within the aerospace industry.
And, how Barbie just released a new series with a hearing aid and wheelchair.
These approaches are more inclusive, expand access and people’s ability to dream of what’s possible.
With that grounding, attendees broke into three groups to imagine anew their chosen vertical based on diverse lived experiences, asking questions including:
PAST/PRESENT: Whose imagination is the field currently operating within? Who is missing from the way it’s been imagined?
HEAD: What critical motivations and mindsets need to be involved in bringing novel ideas to life to shape the future of this field?
HEART: How can the narrative be imagined to create a deeper sense of inclusivity, belonging, and cultural connectivity?
HANDS: What capacity is needed to co-create change and cross-pollinate ideas and cultural knowledge?
IMAGINE/FUTURE: What does the future look like if it’s shaped by a diverse group of people – people of color, LGBTQ+, people with disabilities, etc.?
I’d encourage you to think about an area of your own life, where you work, an activity you love, norms within a social group you participate in, and ask the questions above. Consider, whose imagination shaped it before, and, consider opportunities beyond what exists now.
Those questions and examples tie back into what Daniel Cable refers to as the “best self” in his book Alive at Work, where he writes that companies should focus on onboarding an employee’s best-self. Cable "reiterates that our 'best self' is just a story we tell ourselves. These stories can include our purpose to the goals of the company, the value we bring, our self-efficacy, and the work we are doing and our feelings of connection with colleagues. If we change the story we tell ourselves, we change our behaviors."
I talked about the connection between being our "best self" and the impact of loneliness to the topic of covering, which has been a focus of my work for the past few years. Covering being the "downplaying, hiding or filtering of parts of ourselves at work, with different social groups, at school and with family."
The flip side of our best self being present is what US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy talked about during the 2022 Concordia America’s Summit, including the negative impact of loneliness on people’s creativity, productivity, performance at work, and overall retention of the workforce. Murthy noted that feeling lonely can also negatively impact the people around you.
What drives the point home is data from Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace: 2022 report, where they found that 60% of people reported being emotionally detached at work and 19% as being miserable. Only 21% of respondents reported feeling engaged — which is even lower than in 2020.
As someone who has been actively uncovering parts of their queer self for a few years, having language and an understanding of covering is really impactful. "What I appreciated learning from studies by Deloitte and UCLA Williams Institute is about the prevalence of covering," I said. "With 45% of straight white men to 67% of women of color and 83% of queer respondents all said that they covered in some form. It can be changing how you dress or style your hair, codeswitching and changing how you talk, intentionally not mentioning a gay partner, a disability, your age, growing up in poverty - those are a few examples. Covering is something that touches every group in one way or another, and the implications for that are huge."
So why do we cover? Some reasons include:
Safety / Self-protection
Fear of being fired
Cultural norms of the groups we are a part of
Limiting mental models
"When you’re covering, for whatever reason, it’s another form of mental work, it’s a constraint on your capacity – there’s a cost," I noted. "Covering can impact everything from innovation to productivity and ethical decision-making. It can change how you lead and impact the health of your workforce."
After the summit, a straight white man shared that he hadn't heard the term covering, but it's something he does all the time. Another person said how hard it would be to stay in their current role and uncover their true self.
From the two-day convening to the Storytelling session on Day 3, we continued to explore the intersection of courageous imagination and lived experience - and how we can work together to create new ways of working and telling new stories moving forward.