Today in Verbate's ERG Leadership Community's Cross-Company meet up we had Leaders from Paris, Savannah, Belgium, Ireland, Michigan, NJ & more. Shared challenges, opportunities, and sentiments. Things that stood out:
1. RELIEF: You are not alone. I say this all the time. I spend all day, everyday speaking to ERG leaders and program managers, so I know that the challenges we're facing are shared across every type of organization. But for the individual ERG lead, this work feels lonely and burdensome more often than not. To hear that other ERG leads are facing the same challenges creates an immediate sense of *relief.* It's not just you, or something you're doing wrong - we're all working through this and we're better when we can do it together.
2. COLLECTIVE WISDOM: Once we get that feeling of relief, we can start to tease out and tackle the individual challenges we're facing in ERG-land. How do we define and foster consistent engagement? How do we get buy-in from people across our organization? How do we set ourselves up for success, even when individuals have to take a step back? Every ERG has one corner of the universe figured out, so if we surface that knowledge, we can start to share solutions across the board.
3. ENERGY: When you combine that relief and collective wisdom, at the end of a 45 minutes you can *feel* the literal energy jumping out of the virtual boxes. We need that fuel to keep our communities and ourselves engaged, excited and ready to keep connecting, sharing and creating efforts within and across our ERGs.
Shoutout to our founding members who are based internationally like Simon Bataille-Vandereecken 🦄 and Debora Rodrigues, ACEA®️ (she/her) who have been so thoughtful in sharing their wisdom and perspective as we continue to welcome members from all around the world. Onward and upwards! 🚀
Image Description: White hat with black lettering that says "Verbate" being held above streets in Paris.
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1wCongrats Chathuranga Samarasinghe 👏