In just five short years, the world has witnessed (or better yet, experienced) massive changes in the ways we work. The advent of AI, the rise in remote and hybrid work arrangements, the ‘Great Resignation’—you name it—all these and more have fundamentally redefined our relationship, expectations, and approach to work.
Specifically, in today’s era of ‘constant change’ or ‘crisis’—depending on your outlook—maintaining employee engagement has become paramount to preserving organizational growth, performance, and longevity. With so much going on—and so rapidly and simultaneously—leaders are now engaged in a constant battle for their employees’ time, attention, and energy. What’s more, with shifting power dynamics and a growing emphasis on corporate responsibility, leaders are also embroiled in an ongoing battle to earn—and keep—the trust and loyalty of their teams.
Needless to say, as the workplace continues to undergo major transformation, so, too, must the c-suite evolve to confront these changes head-on. Gone are the days when leaders were ‘always right.’ Gone are the days when ‘because I said so’ was reason enough; when leaders could abruptly or capriciously give orders and expect employees to happily obey. Instead, today’s leaders must commit to facilitating employees’ involvement at every level of the organization. They must be clear and transparent in their communication and decision-making; must be intentional in how they align theirs and the organization’s goals and operations with those of their teams; and must be thoughtful in their engagement with employees.
In other words, one of the chief objectives for leaders today is to foster an environment rooted in psychological safety, inclusivity, trust, collaboration, respect, and wellbeing. To survive and thrive in today’s culture-driven world, leaders must embrace and really champion the tenets of inclusive leadership.
This was one of the key challenges addressed during Workplace Options’ recent Leading With Purpose summit held in October. During the session, “Inclusive Leadership: Balancing People and Performance,” hosts Bob Batchelor, VP of Global Communications and Marketing at WPO, and Donald Thompson, CEO and Co-founder of The Diversity Movement, a Workplace Options Company, explored some of the obstacles leaders face when adopting this new approach to leadership and recommended effective strategies for fostering inclusive leadership—sharing stories of their own trails and successes from their years in leadership along the way.
Read below for a sneak peek into their insightful conversation:
Bob Batchelor: Inclusive leadership, when we think about it, it prioritizes people by focusing on things that we know or that we think we know so much that they almost seem rote. Things like trust, respect, collaboration. Leaders who practice this style, they ensure that all the team members feel valued. They want to contribute to a sense of belonging, a sense of wellbeing. And this is so opposite to the way that you and I came up in the business world, which was traditional top down: you didn’t say boo to your leader, you did what they said, and that was it. Your relationship was, ‘that person’s the boss, I’m the follower, and that’s the end of the line.’ But we know that’s changing now. It’s almost been an overthrow.
So, Don, from your perspective as a senior leader and a board member, what are the obstacles that leaders face when they’re trying to implement these new leadership styles—namely inclusive leadership?
Donald Thompson: Yeah, great question. Thanks Bob. I think the question is very much aligned with some of the things I’m thinking and experiencing. I have the pleasure or the opportunity to talk with leaders and leadership teams across the globe, and one of the things that is really important to note is the stress level. I don’t want to say it’s unbearable, but it’s significant in today’s ever-changing economy. And so, leaders are measured by hard numbers, deliverables, profit growth, right? So, it has been difficult for leaders, in many cases, to link those hard measures with the way people need to be treated, the way culture needs to be built and sustained, and understand that those things, in essence, are a part of the same formula for creating a healthy, sustainable business.
So, the challenge for leaders is—when you have that daily pressure, that quarterly reporting, that fiscal pressure—losing sight of the fact that the way to achieve excellence, the way to beat your competition, the way to better care for your members is, in fact, employee engagement. And when you think about the engagement of your employees, when you think about providing an environment of psychological safety—just the act of thinking, actioning, and now measuring those things in your organization moves you on the path to being an inclusive leader.
But to answer your question directly, that first mental model that leaders have to really overcome—that barrier to entry in this journey—is to understand that to meet the hard measures, you have to be excellent in the soft skills. You have to understand how to link those things together.
As leaders, people are modeling your behavior. People are looking to the leaders of the organization and determining what behaviors are acceptable, what language is acceptable, and what standards for people operations are acceptable. So, if the leader is thoughtful in how they communicate, if the leader is coaching in how they elevate, this will now trickle downstream because people will model the behaviors, attitude, and delivery of the leaders in the organizations they work for. It’s a huge responsibility for those in leadership, but it’s worth it.
Bob Batchelor: That’s fantastic, Don. Thank you. To follow up on that, another question that I want to ask you—because I know that you’ve talked to executives at large companies—is how this applies to leaders at the level where you can’t ‘reach down into an organization’—when you have thousands or tens of thousands of employees?
Donald Thompson: Yeah. So, I’ll share a couple of thoughts from folks that I’ve talked to and worked with.
Easter Seals of North Carolina is a $140 million organization, with over 1,300 employees. Luann Welch is the CEO and a good friend. One of the things that she does every week is she writes a letter to her employees that comes out every Sunday, and that letter talks about the winds in the organization—things that she’s seeing that she’s pleased with, areas of opportunity to improve, etc. But it is a thoughtful content piece in her own voice that is delivered to her team on a weekly basis. That’s a small but powerful example in terms of communication.
Another example: David Bayata, the CEO at Bayata Health—which is a larger organization, about 30,000 people—is very focused on leading the town hall meetings that the team has, and creating an environment of psychological safety to the point where these aren’t just scripted events—they have a very robust, lively, authentic question and answer session with the CEO. And that creates the ability to allow your authenticity to push through the organization, but also to have that real time connectivity with the team that you’re leading—even though you may not know everyone personally.
I’m working with an organization that has close to 100,000 folks in the organization. And here’s the difference: Now you have to make sure, at this scale, that your communication platforms and structures—shaped by your leaders, your personal behaviors, and your PR, marketing, and comms teams—prioritize internal employee communication as highly as they do brand growth, product marketing, public relations, comms, and all other elements of PR.
Most leaders of companies of scale are very proficient in brand excellence—externally. But many miss the mark in terms of the consistency, authenticity, and specificity that your employee teams need to feel safe.
One of the things that leaders will say to folks all the time is, “I hate surprises,” right? “Good or bad, I want predictability,” right? And we say that as leaders to our team. I’ll say things like, “I want bad news fast.” The faster I get the news, the more chance I have to react or to respond appropriately. Well, that’s a two-way street. So, if you’re in an organization that’s going through tough fiscal times and you have to do layoffs, or you have to make those tough decisions that are going on in the world today. Well, that means you’ve got 40-, 50-, 60,000 people that weren’t laid off, but who now have that anxiety about, you know, “Are we fiscally healthy?” “What’s happening to my job?” “Now I’ve got to do the job of two or three people.” So that internal two-way street of corporate communication needs to focus on the employee as the center of that communication universe, because those are our ambassadors that make everything we want to do as a leader grow and shine and excel.
And so, Bob, to kind of put in a bow, in a smaller organization, there’s things you can do more personally—check on folks. Don’t just use Slack or Teams or different things as a transactional tool; use it as a tool to say, “Bob, do you have 5 minutes? I just want to catch up with you.” No agenda, no deliverable. “I just want to see how you’re doing.” Right? “Give me a shout when you’ve got a minute.” Because when we were all in the office together, we could do that at the water cooler. We could walk around, we could go by each other’s office. In the hybrid environment, we have to be much more intentional about how we communicate, how we create psychological safety, and how we follow up right on things that we do hear from our team…
Want to hear the rest of their insightful conversation? Replay the session at https://www.workplaceoptions.com/info/leading-with-purpose-employee-engagement-strategies-to-inspire-and-win/
