Leadership: Creating an Organisation That’s Great to Work In
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Tony Schwartz of the Energy Project believes firms that get the best out of their people share many or all of these twelve characteristics:
- Meaning and significance: They stand for something beyond just higher profits. They create products and services that make a positive difference to the world. This way, their people feel their work has meaning and significance – making them feel good about themselves and the firm they work for.
- Fairness: They pay their people a fair basic salary.
- Sharing: They let their people share in the firm’s success through profit sharing, share options or performance bonuses.
- Clarity about success: They are clear about what success looks like in every person’s job. And they treat employees as adults by giving them freedom to choose how, when and where they do their work – so they attain that success.
- Two-way appraisals: They have two-way performance reviews so people get regular feedback about how they’re doing and can comment on the support, guidance and leadership they’re getting. If necessary, they also allow anonymous upward feedback.
- Behavioural accountability: They hold leaders accountable for (a) always treating everyone with respect and care and (b) applauding high performance and creative contributions
- Time for top priorities: They encourage people to set aside time to focus – without interruption – on their top priorities. These could include long-term projects or time for more strategic or perhaps creative thinking.
- Personal growth: They give employees continuous opportunities and incentives to learn, develop and grow. This could be in job-specific skills or anything else that helps them grow as adults and leaders.
- Safety: They design safe working spaces that are comfortable and enjoyable to work in. Spaces that allow for privacy, teamwork… and the chance to simply chat.
- Food: They provide healthy, high quality food at reasonable prices.
- Rest spaces: They create places for employees to rest during the working day (and encourage them to take breaks).
- Fitness: They offer a gym to encourage their people to stay fit.
If you think about your organisation, how do you compare? What ideas does this give you as a leader?
