Creating a Culture of Appreciation, Humility, & Transparency

    

Every day during the war on the Coronavirus business leaders around the world who are appreciation-transparencyworking in this evolved and disrupted world are presented with new challenges and new opportunities when executing their business strategies.

During the past few days, I’ve had the unique opportunity of spending quality time with leaders of business and past participants of our leadership learning journeys to catch up on their lives and reconnecting in ways that I didn’t think were possible. We talked about many things related to the new remote workplace and there was one interesting and powerful theme in almost every conversation; there is a new culture growing and the smart leaders are creating, nurturing and developing it. What’s most interesting is that this new culture is different from anything anyone has experienced before. It’s more human, and it’s more focused on work and productivity.

Appreciation

One of the leaders shared an outline of the culture emerging in her organization (printing inks) that was fascinating.

Yes, things are tough right now and they are going to get worse before they get better. In this new culture there is a greater appreciation of the special efforts each and everyone in the company makes toward keeping the business going, saving, jobs, and serving customers. One story stood out, “We have a bunch of seasoned sales professionals who have established deep relationships with their key accounts. Before the crisis, I was constantly defending many of the salespeople to other leads and functions within the organization who felt they were not trying hard, and just collecting commission checks.  Well now, its pretty interesting how grateful everyone is that not only are we surviving, we are actually going to have a strong second quarter because of those strong relationships. While our competitors are dying, we are thriving.”

Humility

Albert Einstein once said, “A true genius admits that he/she knows nothing.”  In times of a crises this is especially true.  For leaders, what worked before most likely will not work now. The great leaders are thinking about what they don’t know and leveraging the resources of people that do.  One of the people spoke with this week was telling me about his first attempts at having a virtual senior leadership team meeting using ZOOM.  “I had never used ZOOM before. We just switched from Skype and the truth is that my Administrative Assistant was setting up my meetings and I was basically siting in front of the camera. And now, here I am sitting in my basement in the dark thinking to myself that everyone is looking up to me and I don’t even know how to start the meeting or let people in from the virtual waiting room. So you know what I did? I told everyone I didn’t have a clue what I was doing and asked for help. Luckily our CFO is a ZOOM wizard and took control. A few days later, I was fine, but talk about sharing and being humble!”

Transparency

With all the good, new, and innovative, there is also a lot of bad. Like jobs being terminated or furloughed which impacts thousands of lives and families.  I was speaking with one of our clients who shared that her organization started making some deep cuts. It sounded terrible and I could tell she was very sad for the people and her friends. She also shared that the company did it the right way and with full transparency. The reasons were very clear and there was nothing hidden. She also shared that she was especially pleased that unlike other times in the past were there were a lot of politics being played and the wrong people were let go this time it was totally equitable, fair, and transparent. She said that the people she knew who were let go were very appreciative of the openness and transparency.

In summary, cataclysmic change impacts culture to a far greater extent than anyone realizes. Over the next few weeks, every leader has the opportunity to hit the “reset” button and create a new culture. As you think about the coming days, focusing on appreciation, humility, and transparency will help drive a new and powerful culture.

Coaching-micro-simulation

Robert Brodo

About The Author

Robert Brodo is co-founder of Advantexe. He has more than 20 years of training and business simulation experience.