Leaders Who Walk the Talk and Are Interested in People and Self Empowerment

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

When catching up with some friends last weekend they asked what had brought us to the area. We explained it was a corporate event, a brand relaunch, and they then went on to express their misgivings about such things. It started with an eye roll, followed by a not atypical tale of many rounds of consultants having passed through their organisation over the years to talk about the culture, vision and brand and so forth and, ultimately, “nothing ever changes”.

It’s interesting, many people who have worked in organisations will have brushed up against something similar, and many express similar feelings about “those types of initiatives”. And no wonder really. All our friend wants is clear recognition of their value, whereas they constantly feel no one appreciates them or the vital nature of their role.

For me, this big picture stuff and how it connects in across an organisation was – and still is (though in quite a different way) – my livelihood for many years. I can acutely remember arriving in New Zealand in 2006 and, in the process of carving out a new life for myself, meeting lots of new people who would inevitably ask “What do you do?” The answer to that was that I worked in Customer Experience transformation, which would generally elicit a blank stare.

Further explanations about working with people, culture, leadership development, brand, communications, processes and systems and so forth would then cause foreheads to crease and a pained expression to appear.

While it is true that many people have never worked in an organisation that has the luxury of splitting the multifaceted aspects of running a business into large departments (like operations, customer services, human resources, marketing, communications, finance, technology and so forth), even those that do often don’t get the depth and breadth of change required to change their customers’ experience of the organisation – far less equate it to the experience most of the employees are having inside the organisation.

Yet there are few among us these days that haven’t been sent down the endless rabbit holes of automated phone systems and, when we eventually reach that glorious moment of reaching an actual human, it is short lived when it becomes the latest in a long list of unhelpful encounters over some quite simple thing.

Regardless of a person’s personal experience of all things corporate and the associated language and jargon, most people can relate to having sub optimal interactions with some kind of organisation or business. And many of us will relate with my friend’s experience of feeling undervalued and unrecognized in their work.

Whether – and how – organisations deal with these interactions was my bread and butter. I had come from a country that was densely populated and, the larger the organisation, the more complex the changes and transformation were to improve things. Why? Because there are more people involved.

All this I am sure seems obvious. Just as I would have hoped the links between employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction and sustainable profits were.

And yet… in every large organisation I was involved in that said it wanted to transform the customer experience, it often didn’t happen. Why? The prevalent issue is that the person or people who actually make decisions on the direction of an organization most often were not the ones driving it.  This might be the CEO, managing director, a board member, an owning group, politicians and so forth.

As I socialized with people from various training and development functions last week, I observed that the conversations hadn’t really changed much in the six years since I’d last been involved with a large organisation. Sure, topics such as flexible ways of working and artificial intelligence are new, but the endemic problems in leading change and transformation still exist – in short the people who need to lead it don’t.

From my observations, many CEO’s, managing directors, board members, and those at similar levels of leadership among owning groups and politicians, don’t have a people focus. It’s rare to find Human Resource or Customer Experience professionals in those roles, more often it’s people with an operational or financial bent, with qualifications in business economics, finance and accounting most common. Yet these people are leading people who serve people.

As much as I used to enjoy compiling monthly financial reports (which is about as much as I enjoy sticking pins in my eyes) the same I am sure is true in reverse for those whose natural bent is numbers and logic compared with psychology and people. None of the departments in large organisations are superfluous to requirements, yet careers have been carved out in a way that can makes many professionals oblivious to the value of their peers and colleagues in other areas.

One guy I met last week runs a fantastic networking organisation for CEOs, a place where those at the pinnacle of the organisation structure can come along and hear about the different issues they are each facing and brainstorm ideas together. As he said, it can be the loneliest job in any organisation.

I think most of us can relate to getting placements or new jobs we felt quite nervous about starting, and I know from my many conversations with CEOs across many fields and organisation sizes, it’s really no different. Except… I would say there is an added pressure of having the position at the top and a sense of – whether rational or not – “I should know all the answers”.

Terms like servant leadership have been around for many decades, but it really is rare to meet individuals in those positions who have the level of self confidence that is needed to take that approach. Many have an egotistical confidence, sure, but the kind of confidence I’m talking about requires a lot of inner personal work, which many have never had the opportunity to explore. And it is fair to say that the many messages we all receive growing up about success (through media, stories, modeled in family systems, education and so forth) are often rife with not showing any weakness.

It’s also understandable why people and teams start operating in isolation or competition and don’t really have a grasp on what their interrelationship with every other department needs to be in order to deliver the basic product or service well never mind to deliver strategic things like new vision statements, values, culture and brand.

Really the kind of change and transformation programmes that can make a real difference is where the person who sets the direction for the organisation has undergone a lot of personal growth and transformation or leads the way by embracing it personally.

Coming back to that friend with their eye roll, I can well understand their cynicism. And that little venture back into corporate life has given me clarity and assurance on the types of organisations and people I like to work with, really it’s the ones where I can makes the biggest difference.

When I left Auckland nine years ago, I swore never to return to that scale of corporate transformation. “Never say never” my old boss said. He’s right of course, but it would take someone out of the norm with extraordinary commitment to entice me back.

I notice it often takes being “in” something that I don’t like or want – be it a career, relationship or otherwise – to know what I do want. I’m far happier these days working with those people who run smaller businesses, where who they are and what they do affect changes far more quickly because the buck stops with them be it on finances, recruitment choices, how they develop their staff or the look of the website.

Moreover, I work with people to align their business direction with their personal values and passions. I’m not interested in anything other than helping folks’ line up their inner world with their outer world as I think that is when not only are they happier, they attract and are attracted to, people with similar interests and goals, and it sets the context for a much more contented, more productive workplace with happier staff, customers and balance sheet.

What have you been “in” that has given you the kind of impetus to follow your heart in another direction? Do you recognise any of these issues in your own workplace? What changes can you make to your working choices to live a happier life? Sometimes the biggest change and transformation we have to make is the one within ourselves to be able move on and try something different, something more aligned with our own inner passions, talents and desires.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Do You Want to Make a Heartfelt Change to Your Career?, Profit, Purpose and Personal Fulfillment Can Thrive Together - A Remarkable New Organisational Construct, Make Choices That Will Have the Most Positive Impact in Your Life, Leadership: Why Trust Leads to Better Business Outcomes, From Frustrating to Fantastic – How Do We Get Organisations to Meet Our Needs? and Normal Is Dysfunctional That Is the Growth Opportunity. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.