All of the work I’ve done, over 55 years, has been about creating a sense of family in the workplace. In my early years as a teacher, in the classroom with young people, I always connected with their parents. I wanted life at school to be a family affair and so, I was eager to find out what it was like in the students’ homes. As a principal in Evanston, Illinois, although the challenges were daunting, I wanted the Black and white communities to come together – as family. In Alaska, as a principal, I wanted the white and the Alaska Native communities to come together – as family. In my work at the University of Alaska, I was engaged in bringing school leaders from village Alaska together – as a family. As I think back upon my career as an educator, whether I was a K-12 teacher or a college professor or a school principal, my intent was to create settings that were more like family, than like an organization.

A picture comes to mind from a calendar of mine. In the painting, a Swedish family is sitting down for a meal. The family pictured in the painting reminds me of my family, both in Sweden and in Swedish America That picture captures my intent throughout all my working years. The painting always calls me back to my mission.

I’ve been attempting to re-create what I experienced in my birth family because I loved how our family members were with one another and because I needed to have that feeling of home wherever I roamed around the earth. I was a bit selfish, because I wanted this kind of workplace for myself; however, I learned early on that many others yearned for this same sense of home.

I often worked with people who were far from home.  For instance, the Black families whose children came to the formerly all-white school in Evanston were racially and culturally “far from home.”  Some of the Alaska Native people I worked with in Fairbanks wished they were back in their villages; they had come to the larger community for economic reasons.  If the parents of the children at our Alaskan school were in the military, they often wished they were “back home.”  Even numerous teachers I worked with in Alaska, for example, admitted to me that they would have rather been “back home” in the Lower 48.  In all of these situations, I simply wanted to walk them home. I wanted us to work together to create the sense of home – right there, just where we were.

And so, here I am, in this present moment, wanting the same thing I’ve always wanted: to create a sense of home, and of family, within, among, and for those persons who are in my care – these days, in the context of weekend retreats meant to support school principals and superintendents, as well as community leaders, to sustain their professional purpose and personal passions in work and life. I’m aware that these leaders are looking around and discovering that they are in a safe and trustworthy place – maybe for the very first time.

All along, I believe that I’ve been imagining a new form of family. It’s a vision of a workplace family that offers a sense of happiness, satisfaction, and productivity, like the best of families. I eagerly await and am carefully watching for signs of a sense of family among these leaders. For me, too, it will be so good – to be at home in my work once more.

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Whatever your role, what kind of workplace do you want to be a part of creating?  What do you do– or will you do – to create happy, satisfying, and productive relationships there?