What Is People Perspective Leadership?
I was lucky enough once to attend a conference in Toronto call the Future Festival. To be honest I’ve attended a lot of conferences in my time and spent a lot of time daydreaming as I sat through average presenter after average presenter. This conference was different. The whole thing was first class. From the content, to the topics, to the high calibre delivery of every presenter. But there was one presenter that stood out form the crowd.
His name was Tony Hunter and he was the former CEO of the Chicago Tribune. He talked about his experience leading through change during one of the toughest periods in the history of the Newspaper. He started in the role as CEO at the height of the GFC and at a nexus point of consumers totally shifting their media consumption habits from physical papers to digital and social media. To top it off the parent company filed for bankruptcy.
Not by choice, things had to change, and change fast. Amongst other initiatives, one of his areas of focus was to have the leadership team get true perspectives from the employees. Not a survey but to get a deep understanding of their thoughts to truly leverage the expertise of the employee group. Due to a number of restructures employees were scared to speak up at the risk of losing their jobs. However he drove a culture of open communication and feedback and brought the philosophy to his leadership team to have “big ears and thick skin”. In other words, listen up and don’t take it personally.
Like Tony Hunter did, People Perspective Leadership is taking a people first approach. Listening and understanding the perspective of your employees. There hasn’t been a more important time to shift focus to a people first philosophy. Like Tony Hunter who faced immense structural change in his once steady business environment, the employee landscape is currently going through similar dramatic shifts. Driven by the crisis of Covid, changes such as flexible arrangements & hybrid working, productivity, connectedness, leadership & trust, wellbeing & belonging, innovation & creativity which were probably considered cyclical shifts and might have been approached a certain way, now need to be reimagined and are deeply entrenched in the minds of employees. Businesses need to understand employees needs in these spaces pretty quick, especially in a buoyant job market, or face significant consequences. Employees have demonstrated they can adapt pretty damn quickly to structural shifts like this- can businesses?
These issues don’t have a “one size fits all” solution. Size of business, culture of a company, industry, the demographic of a work force, all impact the approach a business needs to take to stay ahead of the competition and truly be an employer of choice. Therefore employee engagement needs to be more than just a survey. Every business is different, faces different challenges and have their own points of difference. So how can a generic survey help you drive change? It can help you measure change but not drive it.
Those who know me know I often use a birthday present analogy. The better you know someone the easier it is to buy a present for them they really will treasure. We probably revert to still buying voucher but I’m sure we’ve all had the experience where, because someone really knows us, they have bought something so special it truly endeared them.
People Perspective Leadership follows this philosophy. Now we definitely aren’t talking about buying presents for employees- far from that! We do talk about deeper employee understanding to help deliver an action plan to improve employee engagement and ultimately improve the overall success of your business.
In case you were wondering in just a few years Tony Hunter turned the Chicago Tribune around to have best in class financial results and year on year improvement of employee engagement, despite the huge lay offs.
Alastair Liptrot
Not by choice, things had to change, and change fast. Amongst other initiatives, one of his areas of focus was to have the leadership team get true perspectives from the employees. Not a survey but to get a deep understanding of their thoughts to truly leverage the expertise of the employee group. Due to a number of restructures employees were scared to speak up at the risk of losing their jobs. However he drove a culture of open communication and feedback and brought the philosophy to his leadership team to have “big ears and thick skin”. In other words, listen up and don’t take it personally.
Like Tony Hunter did, People Perspective Leadership is taking a people first approach. Listening and understanding the perspective of your employees. There hasn’t been a more important time to shift focus to a people first philosophy. Like Tony Hunter who faced immense structural change in his once steady business environment, the employee landscape is currently going through similar dramatic shifts. Driven by the crisis of Covid, changes such as flexible arrangements & hybrid working, productivity, connectedness, leadership & trust, wellbeing & belonging, innovation & creativity which were probably considered cyclical shifts and might have been approached a certain way, now need to be reimagined and are deeply entrenched in the minds of employees. Businesses need to understand employees needs in these spaces pretty quick, especially in a buoyant job market, or face significant consequences. Employees have demonstrated they can adapt pretty damn quickly to structural shifts like this- can businesses?
These issues don’t have a “one size fits all” solution. Size of business, culture of a company, industry, the demographic of a work force, all impact the approach a business needs to take to stay ahead of the competition and truly be an employer of choice. Therefore employee engagement needs to be more than just a survey. Every business is different, faces different challenges and have their own points of difference. So how can a generic survey help you drive change? It can help you measure change but not drive it.
Those who know me know I often use a birthday present analogy. The better you know someone the easier it is to buy a present for them they really will treasure. We probably revert to still buying voucher but I’m sure we’ve all had the experience where, because someone really knows us, they have bought something so special it truly endeared them.
People Perspective Leadership follows this philosophy. Now we definitely aren’t talking about buying presents for employees- far from that! We do talk about deeper employee understanding to help deliver an action plan to improve employee engagement and ultimately improve the overall success of your business.
In case you were wondering in just a few years Tony Hunter turned the Chicago Tribune around to have best in class financial results and year on year improvement of employee engagement, despite the huge lay offs.
Alastair Liptrot
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