Leadership Is How We Help People Feel About Themselves

 

by John Keyser

The title above is a quote from Cathy Becker, an insightful, caring human resource specialist in Chicago. Cathy is right on the mark. This is key for all senior executives to understand. If they did, businesses would thrive way more than they do now, and morale would be higher.

This principle tracks exactly with the great Maya Angelou, who said, “People will not remember what you said nor what you did, they will remember how you made them feel.”

In business, how people feel about themselves is so important. Do they feel appreciated? Heard? Do they have pride in their company? Have respect for their manager?

I hope we all realize how important it is to have the answer to these four questions be “yes”! Our people want to do well and be successful, as we all do.

As senior executives, it is our responsibility to help all of our people, our team members and all other colleagues. If we are fortunate enough to have been granted a senior role in our business, we would be well to think about ourselves as a shepherd, to guide our people to their success.

To be that shepherd, that guide, that coach, we must understand that our internal relationships are ultimately as important as our financial results. Sure, we have to hit our financial goals. If we don’t, we may not keep our job. But if we don’t have high quality working relationships with our people, they will, over time, lose their commitment to us and to our company. They will be less loyal, have less pride for our company and less respect for us as their manager. Perhaps they will leave for an opportunity with another company. All that leads to inconsistent performance and results.

Quality working relationships with our people require that we spend time with them. Time in conversations, asking about their work, e.g., “What do they need? How can we help? What are their ideas for improving our business?”

Listening—or choosing not to—plays a critical role in how we help our people feel about themselves and their commitment to our company.

Yes, listening takes time. It takes intentionality. It not only requires making time, it demands our being fully present with the person before us. This means we need to be the ones to seek out our people. After all, they are doing the work of our company!

Relationship skills include not only our being present, focused and intentional listening, it also requires humility. We must understand our responsibility to our people and work to earn their trust, every day!   

It’s the little things we do, how we treat them, our body language. Do we speak with them or at them?  Do we maintain comfortable eye contact and a warm smile, letting them know we genuinely care? If we don’t, nothing goes unnoticed. Our people are perceptive.

My invitation to all of us is to be intentional about getting out of our offices and walking the halls every day, stopping for conversations, helping instill in our people feelings of confidence, a can do attitude and knowing that we care about them and their success.