The Role of Leaders is Changing

While leadership has always mattered in terms of your ability to get the best out of people, it now also affects how customers think of your business. The Edelman Trust Barometer found that employees who trust their leadership are significantly more likely to advocate for their company and its products and services.¹

The voice of employees has never been more powerful, with social media, open communication and public reviews leaving nowhere for leaders to hide. Sites like Glassdoor allow employees, past and present, to leave anonymous reviews of a company and its leadership. Once in the margins, Glassdoor is now in the mainstream: 41 million people visit the site monthly, 80% of candidates read Glassdoor reviews before applying for a job and customers—and even external investors—are starting to look there, too.²

Employers like Google are taking power away from team leaders—they don't allow them to rate their direct employees or hire independently, outside a hiring committee. Instead, to deliver on the complex jobs people have, where we need them to bring their creativity, ideas and judgment to work, employees are demanding that leaders add visible value. If leaders do not, people start to withdraw their consent to be led, the murmurings get louder, braver employees ask probing questions and the leader's personal authority starts to collapse.

Businesses perform better when honesty and candor are encouraged, and that means providing multiple avenues for employees to speak up. In these environments, the best leaders thrive and those lacking can fail. I've seen this first‐hand in Reward Gateway, where a leader who did good work but didn't invest enough in communicating and connecting with people was repeatedly the subject of questions and comments posed through public and internal channels. Ultimately, this person left, unable to battle the weight of opinion that they just weren't showing good enough leadership.

The New World Leader

Leaders are recognizing that how they are perceived by their employees is as critical as how they are perceived by their bosses. Positional authority has been weakened; today, leaders have to genuinely care about their people because they now run the double risk of being fired by the boss or rejected by their own staff.

Our own study of 350 millennials produced a multi‐dimensional picture of what people now want and expect from their leaders. We asked respondents to state and prioritize the leadership traits that they respected and valued. The results show that what people are looking for in a leader has changed dramatically in the last 20 years. Leaders are no longer expected to be perfect—“Own their mistakes” was third favorite. Instead, they are expected to be positive and human role models.

Leaders are hired to deliver results, but increasingly, to be effective, their teams have to see the value that they add. The team has to be coached and developed, and wants to see their leader marshall the resources that they need. Without that, leaders quickly lose the confidence of their teams.

“I keep beating the drum—management is here to serve the workers. We have to get people at the bottom not to take any bullshit. We have to be in touch with all of them. We have to get the best from everyone.”

—Satya Nadella, CEO at Microsoft

There are great leaders who understand and do all of this, and there are leaders who say they understand but actually just pay lip service to it. I've lost count of the number of companies that have a “them and us” aspect of their culture because the staff feel that leadership operate to a different set of rules. What message does it send when the leadership team has the parking spots closest to the office? When they have the nicest desks or the corner offices? What about when leaders receive more vacation days, better life insurance or medical coverage? When they come and go as they wish while the rest of the company works to “core‐hours” or has to ask permission to be trusted with flexible working?

Fundamentally, if leaders want to build trust they need to eliminate all of the barriers that separate them from their people. This always applies to the CEO, but also extends further, across the leadership team and beyond, with larger companies having to provide visible divisional, regional and group leadership.

Many companies find visibility is not enough: Improving levels of access is also key, giving employees the opportunity to pose questions, raise issues and make suggestions directly with senior leaders. Technology is making this more possible. Open communication systems like Slack, Yammer and HipChat are, in some companies, making it the norm.

Key Outcomes Rebels Strive for

Key Rebel Behaviors

Rebel leaders show a real understanding of people. When examining their key behaviors, it is clear how much of what they do relates to the creation of trust. The trust they build increases information flow upward—their team is open and honest, knowing they will handle information with integrity. This greatly improves the decisions these leaders can make and the judgment that they develop.

1. Put the mission first

   Rebel leaders put the mission first wherever possible, prioritizing it over short‐term profits or other goals. They're prepared to make bold, long‐term decisions to make the mission successful in the long term.

2. Live the values every day

   Rebel leaders are role models for the company's values. They take every opportunity to communicate and apply the values, constantly showing how the values can guide and help decisions.

3. Have and use great judgment

   Rebel leaders prioritize doing what is right over what is popular. They are accountable to their people and act as servants, but are prepared to be unpopular when necessary, striving to do what is right for the business, the customer and their people as a whole. They are open and honest early with their team and don't shield their team from bad news.

4. Are human

   Rebel leaders bring their whole selves to work. They are humble, have the courage to be genuine and show vulnerability, and lead with compassion and kindness, showing their people that they truly care about them. Doing this gives the whole team permission to do the same.

5. Act with integrity

   Rebel leaders develop honesty and candor, and practice total integrity. They strive for real honesty, not “business honesty.” They tell the full story wherever possible and as early as possible. They give the whole truth, the back story, the why. This leads them to make better decisions, better calls, with sharper judgment, which builds trust.

   “We need leaders who add value to the people and the organization they lead; who work for the benefit of others and not just for their own personal gain. Leaders who inspire and motivate, not intimidate and manipulate; who live with people to know their problems in order to solve them and who follow a moral compass that points in the right directions regardless of the trends.”

   —Mary Kay Ash, American businesswoman, and founder at Mary Kay Cosmetics

Making a Start

Situation

In March 2016, VaynerMedia, a digital media agency, appointed Claude Silver⁴ as its first Chief Heart Officer. As CEO Gary Vaynerchuk explained at the company's all‐hands meeting, “We want to build the best human empire in the history of time.” For Silver, this meant, “Let's create an emotionally and physically safe place for people to bring their whole selves to work, so our employees can achieve both success and happiness.”

With 80% of the workforce made up of millennials, the key to achieving this was to “help employees find meaning in what they're doing, and guide them in how to identify and remove their own roadblocks,” says Silver. “Millennials are looking for any kind of magic tricks for how to get promoted and move up the ladder quickly, so if I can help them understand their strengths and play to those, they'll genuinely thrive, which is a win‐win for them and VaynerMedia.”

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Silver's approach has been to create one‐to‐one coaching sessions, which she calls “whiteboard sessions,” with an aim to “help employees find their personal mission statement or guiding principle, key to unlocking growth on a person‐to‐person level.” She asks a range of questions to help the answers unfold, with examples including “Why does your team feel you're valuable?,” “What are you good at and love to do?,” “What do you value the most?,” and my favorite, “When you're standing in front of the mirror brushing your teeth, who are you?” It's a very visual process that includes whiteboarding responses to help map out and identify patterns and themes.

At the end of the session, employees leave with drafts of their personal mission statements/principles. Throughout the coming weeks, Silver sends them coaching questions and assignments, and they then return for another session to finalize their “sentences.” “This approach has been extremely effective in helping employees take part in defining and ‘being present’ in their futures,” says Silver.

This approach and these coaching sessions have contributed to low attrition rates at the company, which is no surprise, since it supports the needs of millennials to understand and be provided with real growth opportunities. They've also contributed to the achievement of one of Silver's key objectives set by her CEO: to touch as many employees as possible, having her energy rub off on them. This has certainly happened, with employees benefiting from Silver's blend of passion and compassion, turning employees into champions, as she explains—finding their path, their voice and their whole self.

Situation

The leadership team at St John Ambulance (SJA), the UK's leading first‐aid charity, decided to try out a new approach to making certain key decisions: to go to the charity's 2,500 employees before making key decisions. I'm not talking about sending out surveys or conducting employee focus groups, but doing what I'd call “real” consultation.

According to Steve Foster, Director of People & Organization, “I know it's incredibly obvious to do this, but many companies just don't. They're afraid of what employees may say, the extra time it may add to processes, or the concept of ‘turkeys will never vote for Christmas’ meaning will they make the right decision if it affects them personally? If you want to build true engagement, you have to give your employees a real voice in decision‐making.”

They've seen positive results based on this new approach, having used it for decisions relating to organizational design, pay & benefits. “The impact has been that decisions have been considerably better than had we not involved our employees. They surprised us with different perspectives and things we would have never thought of, even though, with hindsight, we should have thought of them,” said Foster.

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The approach SJA used was rebellious in how and when it was done. The “how” was by holding functional and regional workshops, which on its own is not rebellious—however, they ran these events with defined objectives and parameters, but without a proposed solution. Instead of going in with a prescribed list and then asking employees to agree or disagree, they went in with objectives and a “clean sheet of paper.” “We were upfront in what ‘sandbox’ they were playing in, but then gave them the freedom and opportunity to come up with their own ideas,” says Foster.

The “when” was throughout the project, not just at the beginning, but as an iterative process, getting employee perspective at various important touch points.

This approach could make some leaders nervous, believing they should make decisions or have the most information/experience to do so. However, SJA found that by genuinely including employees in the process, they ended up with better decisions for the business and their workforce. An example was when they created admin hubs, with their thinking changing considerably based on the expert knowledge of front‐line employees, resulting in a different approach to the design and location of hubs. They also found that employees gave their true opinions even if it put their own jobs at risk, so the assumption about “turkeys not voting for Christmas” turned out to be untrue.

Situation

Halfords, the UK leisure and car accessory retailer, has an ethos based on customer service that “drives every single person in the Halfords team—whether you're on the shop floor, under a bonnet [hood of a car], or going above and beyond to help your customer.” According to Jonathan Crookall, Group HR Director, customer service begins and ends with the store manager. “A store is like a family unit: If you don't get engagement with the leader right, you can feel the difference as soon as you walk in.”

But when Crookall joined the company, he felt there was a leadership challenge, one that had to be overcome to ensure the family unit—the store—ran like a proverbial well‐oiled machine. He set out to develop a leadership model to drive engagement and results across its 460 UK stores.

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The leadership model Halfords designed includes what Crookall calls the “big four.” They are: clarity, praise, using strengths and having a genuine concern for others. “If leaders get these right, they'll have engaged colleagues, superior customer service and strong business results,” says Crookall.

These aren't just words handed out to leaders; they've incorporated the model into how they run the business. “We talk about the big four all the time, reinforcing them from day‐to‐day and from week‐to‐week,” says Crookall. An example is in how they were launched—bringing together all leaders for a three‐day event to ensure a deep understanding of what the model was and how it should be used.

Another example is the “leadership index,” which is a score coming out of its employee engagement survey. The index has an important role to play for the leader, since it sheds light on how their employees believe they are as a leader, and what they need to do to improve. It's used for performance planning, learning and development, and even as an element of the leader's bonus.

The model has helped Halfords improve employee engagement, customer service and profits. Over the past five years, engagement has increased by 15 points, customer satisfaction has moved by more than 10 points and total sales have increased by over 25%. In addition, it's helped Halfords move from the 18th to the 13th spot in the UK's Sunday Times “30 Best Big Companies to Work For.”

Finally, “Focusing on great leadership is really paying off, not just for our employees, but for our customers and shareholders, too,” says Crookall.