Building a Collective Consciousness

Collective consciousness refers to the shared beliefs, ideas, attitudes, and knowledge that are common to a social group or society. It’s a concept that was originally developed by French sociologist, Emile Durkheim, and it helps to guide our sense of belonging and identity, and even our behaviour. Tettra describes this in more detail.

As a business leader, owner or entrepreneur it’s vital to create not only a clear and succinct vision for your business but to build a collective consciousness so that all employees and stakeholders emotionally as well as logically and practically, buy into the mission and collectively help to increase it’s momentum.

The early 20th century guru Napoleon Hill said, “what the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve.” This is at the heart of building a collective consciousness because it’s not only a set of clearly defined strategies and tactics committed to paper or screen, but the way these are interpreted and embedded in the minds and everyday thoughts of those tasked with delivering them.

We have already covered that clarity and succinctness is important to set the scene, context and route map for your goals, but with a collective consciousness it’s also about repetition, to embed deeply, the essence and automatic practice.

You will probably have seen the limp attempt of many companies to impart their intentions to their employees with the printed vision statement on the office wall or home page of their intranet. These attempts are simply passive wallpaper and do little to inspire and engage with the energy required to fully embed them inside those involved.

Far better to build relevant and engaging mantra that can be shared daily across the business, in team meetings, in creative visual ways as everyone progresses through their working day.

When people begin to smile, automatically recall, and truly ‘feel’ these mantra, you will know you are on the road to successfully building a collective consciousness.

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