Executives, let's redefine connection at work.
In the last month, I took part an interactive panel on "Quiet The Quiet at the World Economic Forum's annual gathering in Davos. It is a fast-changing world for workers and I'm struck by the fact with the way that people, just like us engage in a variety of the most important questions, including how to balance the benefits and drawbacks of remote working in addition to the possibilities as well as the risks presented by AI and the need for better and more resilient companies.
However, one question is deserving of greater attention The workforce in the United States is changing and technology is evolving the way we do business, post-pandemic behaviours and standards have been changing...don't our leaders need to evolve too?
There's an entire Generation of Digital Natives making their way into the workforce. They grew up creating and sharing video content , not using phones or messaging as they think of TikTok or YouTube as their primary source of information. Personally , they're connected and also extremely active.
In their working life, there's an entirely different situation. We're seeing significant reductions in employee engagement and satisfaction in remote Gen Z and younger millennials. Fewer than four in ten younger workers who are remote or hybrid know what's required of them in their are at work. More than half Gen Z employees are ambivalent or unengaged at work. If we look at that employee engagement is the most important indicator for workforce productivity , this has huge consequences for each company as well as the financial performance of every business.
What is causing this disconnect? In the workplace, as well as throughout our daily lives, everybody is looking to belong to something greater than ourselves. This is the natural urge to be part of something bigger, and feel an identity which is unfiltered, transparent as well as authentic. However, the more of our workforce is distributed digitally, AI-connected and in ad-hoc ways, the more difficult it gets to sense an authentic connection each day. Particularly, if we haven't modified the way in which we interact with the next generation. There is still a tendency for our employees to digest dense documentation or write lengthy emails and take part in inefficient gatherings. They learn about layoffs and corporate priorities via comms that are automated and scripted that they could be created via ChatGPT. We as executives' only knowledge are provided by cookie-cutter surveys on engagement and live events which have extremely low participation rates and sometimes snarky chats or Q&A.
Traditional management models are failing us. We must change the way we , as leaders, present ourselves and interact with our workers. In the same way that we're focusing in re-skilling our employees with regards to changing the size of our population, demographics, as well as technological trends and trends, we should also improve our leadership skills, to better establish relationships and trust at large.
I've been playing around with a lot of this in the past several years . These are the things I'm learning and adopting which I think will help us perform better and be more effective in our leadership:
1. Realize who you are, and live your life as you want to.
In the early days of the outbreak, I ran a global town hall from my home in Flint, Michigan -- exhaustedand in my velvet pajamas, with my son who's just a baby, and my grandma shuffling around the room.
Perhaps it was my most effective communication ever.
Why? It was because it was not scripted as well as uncomfortable, messy and vulnerable. We tend to gravitate to "us versus us versus them" situations when working in a workplace, especially in times of stress or challenge. It's very simple to imagine "leadership" as a solitary machinery that doesn't have a face. Insuring that you're video-first in your communication can help you to overcome this issue. This forces you to shed the mask of protection and concealment that comes with writing or editing your comms. One of the most effective ways to make it clear is to be who the person you really are.
In the end, there many occasions of leaders being vulnerable and backfiring...but I would say that in the majority of the instances, the reason was that they were performing up to the point of failing. The key is to not be afraid to let that part of you fail when you are with your team. Our flaws are the reason we're human. Everyone wants to see our leaders do their best because it inspires us to emulate them even more.
2. Beginning with the "why . "
As with many managers, they are faced with challenging decision-making throughout the year. In the past, there have been layoffs and executive reductions to the reorganization and shutdown of projects in the name of efficiency. My job is to take those tough calls, controversial decisions, and implement rapid changes across the organization.
Increasingly, I see employees looking to learn the logic behind their decision-making processes, and not just the "what" however, but also the "why". There is a need to understand the broader competition or market context as well as the way the trade-offs are viewed and balanced, as well being aware of the procedure employed and the time it was.
The old comms playbook states that when you have an important communications that demands your focus to be stretched, begin by asking "what" then move on to the essential steps. In my experience, I've been better at convincing people to take the right decision when I introduce my employees as key persons who should be aware of the situation.
In the end, the beginning of "why" is a the first rule to be followed by all communications at . There are obviously limitations to being fully transparent (legal or PR-related risks to customers) but I've noticed that the vast majority of the time that obstacles are described as. Perceived. People will not always agree to your decision-making, however, it is possible to say that they are not performing your job. They'll nevertheless accept and respect your decisions by starting with the reason behind it.
3. Consider investing in either in-person or online meeting, and make it personalized.
Yes, I recognize that it is ironic for being the CEO of an organization that has videos that tell this. However, one of my greatest lessons I have learned from the past couple of months was that we had were too slow and not conscious enough about bringing our teams closer on the ground.
In January, just several days after conducting layoffs, our team organized a corporate kickoff event in NYC. Our employees flew into NYC from over 12 countries. Our employees were based in Ukraine and took trains or planes to travel there. The usual event celebration confetti and went with the more casual look and an affordable budget. It was one of the most stimulating and necessary investment decisions I've ever done.
The power is enhanced for executives when you board an airplane and bring your team together in the place they're. I'm a dispersed executive team with eight different locations that range from Seattle up to Switzerland. A majority of the team was recruited over this past year. The group is in the initial stages of formation, but is beginning to gel as an organization. For speeding up the process of gelling We started offsites at each leader's house city. The CFO's mom was there near her home in Vermont. The Head of Sales donned his apron, and we made frittatas to eat breakfast. Working sessions were conducted at our chef of product's table.
The pandemic has given us the ability to look into other people's homes and their lives . If we make use of that and incorporate it into our day-to-day actions, we will are able to build better connected and better-performing teams.
4. It is possible to go between "lean back" to "lean forward" experience.
One of the key abilities in communications is the ability to design "lean forward" experiences instead of "lean back" broadcasts. We humans have a tendency to focus is shrinking (now lower than 8 seconds which is less than the length of goldfish!). But we continue to communicate through one-to-many messages, whether through email, which you read, or by the highly-produced town hall where you relax and enjoy.
We can see this burden on engagement showing up within our own data where the amount of time it takes to drop off watching videos has decreased over the past few years. If we don't alter the way we approach it, tuning out can severely impact our ability to keep our teams on track and productive.
It is vital to shift our perspective and be willing to try new things. The new generation is working within a workplace that's ahead of us in their capacity to innovate and capture genuine and rich data. They're ahead of us because they're not subject to the restrictions that we had to contend with over the past decades using old-fashioned communication techniques at work.
It's true that employees don't leave jobs; they simply leave their bosses. The CEOs are actually, the most effective managers. According to the survey of over 113,000 managers most important factor that makes a leader effective is confidence. We as leaders must show that we can present ourselves in more authentic, engaging and authentic behavior. I'm betting on the people who embrace this thrilling new world will be far more effective in leading the next generation of workers. They'll be better informed and encourage teams who are dispersed that align their employees for greater productivityand create long-lasting relationships that produce outstanding results. They'll cease communicating and instead communicate more effectively.
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