NSN Spotlight: Creating Psychologically Healthy, Equitable Workplaces

New Solutions Network Spotlight: Creating Psychologically Healthy and Equitable Workplaces

Now more than ever, we are seeing greater complexity and upheaval in the world, which impacts how we work and how we make sense of our contributions. Remote work opportunities bring more flexibility to employees, but has also increased challenges with communication, collaboration, and innovation. We feel both overconnected and over engaged through social media and yet disconnected and disengaged at work and with our true relationships that matter. On top of this, the economic, social and political climate pose challenges for many people.

These global disruptions are making it more difficult than ever before to find our way, manage stress, maintain mental health, and feel valued as individuals, and even harder for organizational leaders to know how to support their teams amid all of these challenges that impact their work.

One solution that ties these together is to increase awareness of the work environment and learn how to create psychologically healthy, positive work cultures?for all.

And that’s just what Towerscope does, and why I’m thrilled to have it as part of New Solutions Network!

About Towerscope

Towerscope’s mission is to create psychologically healthy and equitable workplaces that empower all employees to thrive and succeed. It helps individuals and organizations build trust and connection, gain inclusive leadership skills, and develop the confidence they need to excel during times of uncertainty and volatility – and we are all experiencing lots of both these days.

It accomplished this through the following services:

●????Training and support to help individuals and organizations navigate organizational changes, conflicts, and upheaval, and co-creating new definitions of success.

●????Facilitation, coaching, and consultation for building effective leadership and team development strategies and skills.

●????Developing assessments to identify current needs, strengths, and gaps, and co-creating a plan to optimize resources and address any challenges.

●????Designing plans to implement sustainable behavioral and organizational change.

By promoting a positive work culture and supportive team environments, individuals – especially those who are most marginalized – will feel more valued and supported in their roles, leading to increased job satisfaction and reduced turnover.

By improving communication and collaboration within teams, employees are better able to effectively contribute their ideas and insights, leading to increased recognition and opportunities for advancement.

Towerscope’s Origin

Towerscope Founder Dr. Mira Brancu came to America with her family as refugees from a communist dictatorship country. It took her years to learn the English language and many more to learn the unspoken rules of the culture, particularly those of the workplace. In fact, she didn’t realize until several years into her first career as a school counselor that success requires both an understanding of the language of your profession as well as the ability to navigate complex organization systems and factors.

Her fascination with learning about how people and systems interact and how failure and success can be addressed by understanding these complexities led to where she is today. Equipped with a Master’s degree in counseling, PhD in clinical psychology, and additional training in organizational development, change management, business, and diversity and inclusion in the workplace, she seeks to help organizations strengthen retention of high-performing under-estimated talent organically – ?by making these organizations a better place to work.

She has served in multiple leadership roles for the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, which is the largest US healthcare system, and now mentors, coaches, and consults to help leaders not only lead today, but to more effectively navigate the uncertainties of tomorrow.?

Now, more than ever, women and marginalized emerging leaders are leaving their leadership roles (or leaving before even pursuing leadership roles) because they are not receiving adequate or sufficient support. Towerscope focuses on creating pathways both for individuals and organizations and through its social impact model to invest in programs that address this problem.

And as a woman in leadership, she brings a special passion to support gender inclusive opportunities.

Giving Back: Towerscope’s Pay-it-Forward Model

Towerscope is a social entrepreneurship firm with a passion for supporting underserved, underrepresented, and underestimated women leaders across their careers. It launched with the aim to give back 20% of its profits and time to charitable activities including:

1.??Donating time to mentoring, research, speaking, and training,

2.??Donating funds to non-profit organizations,

3.??Serving on Advisory Boards,

4.??Donating its Millennials Guide to Workplace Politics books, and

5.??Sponsoring its Pay-it-Forward Women’s Leadership Award to recognize those who support women in leadership.

In 2021 and 2022, it well-surpassed that goal; for every $1 the company made, it matched an equivalent $1 in donations across these five areas and has been awarded the Triangle Business Journal’s Corporate Philanthropy Award.

Mira’s hope is that through every woman Towerscope supports, there will be a ripple effect in how she can support and empower other women. And through every organization it works with to create more gender-inclusive leadership, there will be a larger impact on both individual and organizational outcomes.

Accomplishments

Some of Towerscope’s most recent outcomes in the past two years include:

·??????Co-leading a special issue on women in leadership in the Consulting Psychology Journal to engage the consulting world about this need.

·??????Every $1 invested in the company was matched in hours of mentorship and advisory board work supporting underserved women in leadership (Two years in a row)

·??????In 2021, 70% of contractor-related operating expenses supported women-owned businesses, 44% of which were BIPOC women-owned; In 2022, 100% supported women-owned businesses, 54% of which were BIPOC-owned.

·??????In the past two years of its Pay-it-Forward Leadership Award, at least 80% of judges and nominees were women and at least 40% were BIPOC

·??????It served on several Advisory Boards (unpaid) supporting non-profit organizations that focused on women's professional and economic empowerment.

·??????Towerscope was awarded the 2021 Triangle Business Journal's Corporate Philanthropy Award and the 2022 Top 50 Influential Women of the Triangle Award

·??????The company published several thought leadership pieces in Psychology Today and Thrive Global

Our Connection Story

I met Mira through a colleague who was amplifying the work at evrmore, a start-up focused on supporting children’s mental health resiliency. We had a quick and obvious connection because of Mira’s past experience and training in children’s mental health. I invited her to contribute to several blogs for their app content and along the way, we each developed a deep appreciation for each other’s passion for improving individual and organizational psychological health and wellness.

New Initiatives

Towerscope has been developing several exciting avenues to reach more people at different access points. Three of these initiatives are:

1.??Group Coaching: Towerscope has developed several group coaching programs that target specific needs, including emerging women leaders and leaders with ADHD. More information can be found here.

2.??Membership Learning Community: It’s developing a membership learning community that can serve multiple tiers of leadership and provide talented underserved and marginalized leaders with group coaching and training that may not be available through their organizations. They are currently seeking partners to support this effort, including organizations interested in serving as pilot sites.

3.??Psychology Today Subseries: Mira is currently interviewing leaders and organizations for a new subseries in her Psychology Today blog that will highlight the lived experiences and needs of women in leadership.

Interested leaders can contact Mira at [email protected] for more information on any of the above programs.??