Collective Leaders Integrate Wellbeing & Belonging into Everyday Work.
Welcome to 2022. Whilst new years bring hope for new and better things, I’m reflecting life can no longer pause whilst we wait for our old and familiar normal to return.
It isn’t coming back!
Which means we must learn to thrive, not just survive in our new normal.
We must adapt in our search to uncover opportunity and create a new and better, and yes, profitable normal!
There is unprecedented disruption in our world; economic & political, commercial & social. There is also a very real Wellbeing & Burnout crisis occurring as we speak.
As leaders, how do we begin to grow our business profitably under these conditions and support the wellbeing & belonging of our people?
3 Key Activities address profitable Business Growth AND Wellbeing & Belonging
According to Deloitte’s Human Capital report, there are 3 critical activities which will address these priorities:
Integrating Wellbeing into work, which is different to worklife integration, currently under huge stress in the working from home, Covid environment.
· It is less about the helpful supporting strategies many companies have adopted such as Mindfullness and Employee Assistance Programs and more about creating work places fit for people and integrating well-being into the work experience. ie. creating fundamentally human work and workplaces, designed with people in mind.
2. Unleashing Worker Potential, is about unlocking all of our Collective Intelligence:
· and we are going to need every bit of it as we seek to innovate and invent a new & better, profitable normal.
3. Teams is where the hard work gets done!
· Complex problems rarely get solved by individuals.
· Diverse teams with a robust culture of inclusion, are uniquely equipped to solve the most complex problems.
Consequently, it is the Team’s Leader who comes into focus, as their daily impact largely determines the culture which enables people to thrive (or just survive), and achieve their full potential and maximum impact.
The Leadership Juggle to Grow your Business and Create a Thriving Team
In 2021, every leader I talk to, is trying to figure out how to find opportunity and grow their business, whilst creating a thriving team at the same time.
·A team where EVERY team member EQUALLY experiences consistently high levels of contribution, impact, wellbeing & belonging.
It’s a goal which has been largely elusive to date for many leaders and teams.
It’s a juggle isn’t it – trading all of those apparently competing priorities?
But do they compete – or do they in fact support one another?
Intuitively I’ve always believed they do support one another and of course there’s evidence from the exhaustive employee engagement research, which confirms that a great Employee Experience creates a great Customer Experience. Together they enable a virtuous circle which delivers industry leading financial benefits.
BUT – it’s not easy for leaders to figure out the few simple things which make the biggest contribution to creating the circle - in every day discussions and decisions - which is where so much of the Employee Experience happens.
Unlocking the Elusive Leadership Equation
Last year – during COVID – my journey began – to find the answer to this key question.
My search started with a review of the Inclusive Leadership and High Performance Teams research.
There is endless evidence that Diverse Teams with Inclusive Cultures, achieve superior business results and a better employee experience.
But just what do you DO, to consistently BE, that Inclusive Leader?
My breakthrough came when I connected Tim Clark’s The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety, with The Wellbeing Lab’s, Wellbeing at Work study (Australian Research), and then uncovered Deloitte’s Belonging research.
I found there are in fact 4 very simple things leaders can do every day in business- as-usual discussions and decisions, which impact each one of the 3 “Thrive Factors”. ie, safety, belonging and wellbeing.
I’ve also more recently added research from Susan David & McKinsey on Psychologically Safe leadership, which confirms 4 leader behaviours create Thriving Teams which achieve Innovation & Performance, Wellbeing & Belonging.
What are the 4 Leadership behaviours?
Tim Clark’s research identifies HOW teams achieve innovation & performance. And I’ve mapped where the Wellbeing & Belonging factors align.
It works like this, Leaders who:
Connect - create Inclusion & a sense of community and belonging in their teams. The quality of your connections is the foundation of any team.
Coach - create safe spaces to learn & grow, explore & experiment, which is how people become competent & confident in their jobs.
Collaborate - maximise everyone’s intelligence. They offer autonomy in exchange for contribution & commitment.
Encourage an environment where challenging the status quo is accepted, generate innovation and give individuals the meaningful ability to impact and make a difference.
Collectively, these 4 Collective Leadership behaviours, impact top & bottom line business results – AND - the human experience, through wellbeing & belonging.
I’d sum it up like this:
Leaders who unlock The Thrive Factor (innovation and team performance, wellbeing & belonging), create environments where a diverse group of people, feel connected and can collaboratively experiment and explore.
And if companies do this at scale – we can create social belonging & community cohesion as well! And that’s something, we would all benefit from a great deal.
If you’d like to hone your own connecting; coaching; collaboration and challenging skills or take your team to the next level of Inclusion or Psychological Safety, we have Digital Learning Journeys to guide you and your team.
The Thriving Teams Challenge targets 3 behaviours in 30 days to take your team to the next level of performance.
