Image credit: Pixabay
Businesses often search for exceptional talent, but they sometimes overlook whether their own leadership model allows employees to become exceptional in the first place.
It can be tempting to think that having exceptional employees requires finding the perfect candidates, but in truth, exceptional performance necessitates a workplace environment that encourages cooperation, clarity, and communication. As is the case in most companies, however, such a workplace demands leadership capable of connecting people and ideas beneath the larger umbrella of shared purpose.
At the same time, employees must be willing to meet leadership halfway by making the most of the opportunities presented to them. In creating a culture that facilitates clear, honest communication and an emphasis on connectivity, leaders can make the workplace somewhere where employees want to grow and put their talents to work, benefiting workers and leaders alike.
Placing Value in Soft Skills
Part of developing amazing employees involves finding people who, while technically capable, have the capacity to effectively practice soft skills, namely communication, empathy, and authenticity.
While hard skills are important in the workplace, CEO and founder of Strategic Sound Consulting Jenica Norris notes that soft skills allow employees to contribute beyond their immediate job descriptions, strengthening a business’s ability to adapt to changing circumstances and maintain relationships in the face of uncertainty.
“I think the one that I usually take the most… meat and potatoes of that [employee] is someone that knows how to communicate effectively,” she explains, pointing out that effective communication is key to facilitating a flexible workplace.
Jenica’s work includes helping neurodivergent and ADHD founders build systems suited to how they think and work, which is why she also emphasizes making expectations clear in the workplace. Motivation and momentum are useful, yes, but those qualities struggle in the face of ambiguity; when employees don’t know what their responsibilities are, how their work will be evaluated, or what communication should look like, they lack the certainty needed to succeed.
“Clarity beats motivation and momentum in retention,” states Norris.
For employees to do their best, then, it is in a business’s best interest to provide documented standard operating procedures and clear role definitions that can be easily consulted as needed. It may also be prudent to implement “How I Work Best” guides that record individual preferences and needs (communication styles, meeting preferences, family obligations, etc.) so leaders and employees alike know what to expect from one another going forward.
“Turnover is rarely a cultural problem. It’s actually an ambiguity problem,” says Norris.
Minimizing Frustration and Making Work Meaningful
While it is important to consider big-picture concepts like communication and expectations, regular occurrences can have just as much of an impact on an employee’s day-to-day performance.
Consider how disengagement is not always the result of a dramatic failure in leadership, but instead the product of small, continued frustrations that build up over time. Issues like repeating work due to poorly organized information or waiting too long for essential answers can develop into feelings of resentment and discouragement that are hard to alleviate because of how subtle they can be.
Alexandra Suchman, co-founder of Barometer XP, addresses these problems through games to simulate workplace dynamics and help teams reflect on behavior in a safer setting. She explains that “all those things make employees feel like they’re set up to fail and not succeed, and so they’re not going to put in their effort.”
Suchman describes these moments of frustration as instances of “micro-friction” that, over time, can cause employees to lose their willingness to develop. Beyond smoothing out these areas of micro-friction, she notes that one way of helping employees find the desire to invest themselves in their work is by helping them recognize why their work matters.
“I think there’s all these really small friction points that suck people’s motivation and willingness to be positive and optimistic and proactive,” says Suchman.
Put simply, people are more likely to invest in their work when they understand whom it serves and how it connects to their values. Importantly, this notion of purpose applies to virtually every role and industry. For example, employees may find meaning in helping customers, supporting coworkers, improving a process, or contributing to a larger mission.
Purpose is a two-way street, however; while employers cannot demand commitment while withholding support, employees cannot expect development without participating in it.
“A relationship only works if all involved parties are equally invested in the outcome,” Suchman states.
Workplace Culture: Treating People Like People
Workplace culture is a broad and, frankly, rather vague concept that often boils down to whether or not coworkers enjoy spending time with each other. Employee happiness is important, of course, but without the right support and foundation, those good feelings are fragile in the face of adversity.
Culture, then, should also take into consideration the practical environment employees experience every day if their happiness is to be rooted in something more permanent.
A strong workplace culture should, for instance, create an environment wherein employees aren’t afraid to ask questions or reach out to coworkers at other organizational levels. Employees should be able to trust one another and rely on their managers without having to receive constant updates about expectations. In other words, employees should be treated like people with autonomy because that’s what they are: people first, employees second.
According to Judy Ryan, CEO of LifeWork Systems, a supportive culture must address employees as whole human beings while building trust, loyalty, and collaboration across the organization. She puts that belief into practice at LifeWork Systems, emphasizing that all employees, not just titled leaders, learn a shared approach to responsibility, communication, and leadership.
“I think a big cause of [disloyalty] is the ‘us against them’ dynamic,” explains Judy, noting that both leaders and workers sometimes believe that the other group wants all the power to themselves. “There’s not a sense of the camaraderie and the mutual support and the mutual trust that would immediately start to eliminate a lot of that lack of loyalty.”
One solution to this problem may be to replace the traditional top-down leadership model with something more akin to shared responsibility. As a rule, few people like being told what to do, especially if they had little say in the decisions leading up to that demand. Additionally, without input from their employees, leaders sometimes design initiatives without understanding frontline realities, potentially putting different teams and programs at odds with one another in the process. Unfortunately, these problems aren’t uncommon outcomes of a top-down approach to leadership.
The shared power model may serve as a viable alternative, as it allows employees at different levels to contribute knowledge and participate in change, minimizing their lack of agency in the workplace. It should be noted that shared power doesn’t eliminate accountability, but instead distributes responsibility more effectively, giving the people closest to the work a stronger voice in improving it.
Build the Environment Before Blaming the Employee
Without the right foundations, the workplace can become rife with black-and-white views of how employees and leadership should behave and interact with one another, stymying collaboration and clear communication that could help all parties involved feel and perform better.
Employee motivation has its uses, but motivation is little more than lip service unless it’s bolstered by trust, honesty, purpose, and room to keep learning. Leaders, then, must examine whether workplace conditions support or undermine those needs.
Such an environment requires a practical understanding of the tools and processes employees need to simultaneously perform their best work and grow as individuals. As such, the strongest employee-development strategy isn’t finding people who can tolerate a dysfunctional environment, but instead cultivating an environment where employees want to contribute to the company.
