A company environment dominated by practices, policies and management styles that are toxic can make showing up every day extremely difficult for both you and your employees. If you want to change that and create an environment where people love coming to work, it’s not too late to learn how. Here, top recruitment CEO Dominique Farnan shares how she transformed her company from toxic corporate to conscious corporate.
When writer Annie Dillard famously wrote, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives,” the first thing that many of us thought about was the long, sometimes grueling hours, the average person spends at work. According to Gettysburg, it’s approximately 90,000 hours, which equates to about one-third of someone’s entire life.
But what happens if that work environment that you dedicate so much of your time to becomes toxic? Or what if it is unsupportive, or hinders your growth? How does that go on to impact other aspects of your life, your family, community, and ultimately, your sense of fulfillment and happiness?
After being involved in the recruitment industry for more than two decades, Dominique Farnan realized just how toxic the corporate world can be. Goals are large, pressure is heavy, and deadlines are strife. The people who you trust to do the work and make your dreams come true oftentimes aren’t committed or have different priorities. It’s a difficult situation to maneuver. As the owner of DotConnect, a recruitment agency that Inc Magazine called one of the fastest growing companies in America, Farnan recognized her position as a leader to do something about it.
Today she runs a company that people want to work at. She interjects joy into virtual team meetings through sound and dance, pushes her team members to succeed in a supportive environment, and helps them find opportunities to grow and nurture the relationship they have with themselves and the world around them.
“I can’t imagine another year of having to hide behind a mask, showing up one way with clients, another way with my team, and another way with my family. It’s a big challenge,” she says. And it’s a challenge that Farnan decided not to take on. Instead, she embarked on a journey to set a good example of what conscious corporate looks like, and inspire other CEOs and business owners to do the same.
“A lot of companies don’t know what it means when I say that I am a conscious leader,” she says. “My intention is to really just show up where other companies can experience myself and my team’s energy differently, so they remember it, and they feel that vibe. And from there, they’re able to say, oh gosh, that’s interesting. What do they do over there that makes all of them so happy or all of them are so different or when I talk to them?” she continues.
Farnan explains that the recruitment industry, like some of the corporate world, can often feel “thankless,” and it can be quite challenging to keep going when there is no appreciation or validation for your hard work. However, she believes that there is always a way to show up in gratitude and create a different way of being regardless of the situation or predicament you are in.
“For me initially, I was on this crusade of, ‘everyone needs to be conscious,’ and all of these companies that I work with need to be conscious. But now, what I’m now focused on is just my company, how we show up, and how my team shows up. I want to bring light to the dark places of corporate and plant little seeds of transformation,” she continues.
One of the ways that Farnan is bringing light to the dark places of corporate is by giving her team members space to heal and appreciate the moment. She facilitates breath work and sound healing with her team every week. “When we host these sessions, it creates these little ripple effects. At the end of the day, we’re really just heads down focused on how we show up and what’s in our control. And that’s our tiny little space of energy,” she concludes.
Farnan is investing in her team in a way that the rest of the corporate world can really learn from. She is fine-tuning her team’s ability to be fully formed, emotionally intelligent, and masterful human beings both in the workplace and beyond it. If you would like to learn how you could do the same for your business and maximize productivity as a result, be sure to connect with Dominique Farnan on LinkedIn, where she continues to plant these little seeds of wisdom that have a big impact.
