2020: The Opportunity of a Lifetime

I AM A BIG BELIEVER that growth and transformation happens outside of our comfort zones. And this year has been anything but comfortable. Transformation is coming. This pandemic has wreaked havoc on our country in more ways than one. We are being forced to grow and adapt or fall by the wayside. While I am not advocating that a crisis is something to pursue, I do believe it forces us to grow in ways we would not have otherwise.

This will be the greatest opportunity in our lifetimes to start over. A complete reset, to create, cultivate and maintain a cohesive culture at work. It can be a fresh start forced upon us by something out of our control. What has been a tragedy on many levels can be used for good. This can be life changing for so many.

In order for transformation to come, we need to face reality for a second. If your company culture was toxic before, I can’t imagine what it will look like when you get back into the office. Dysfunction isn’t static. It’s either being addressed and fixed or it’s growing. Communication, which was likely already at a minimum in the workplace, became even quieter and more distant. If people were cynical and unhappy before, then what will getting back together look like? If they didn’t like their coworkers before, they won’t like them now. If they didn’t like their leadership before, they won’t now. Six months at home with their family, away from the drama around the office, and limited distractions has only reinforced their desire to stay as far away from the office as possible.

A cohesive culture is impossible to achieve when your people aren’t at the office. So how do you make your company culture a place people are drawn to and not away from?

Great cultures don’t just happen overnight. You can’t just hire your way to a fulfilled workplace of engaged employees and team members. There’s so much more to be done. It has to be strived for, all day every day. Conversations need to happen to establish what the purpose is, both for the company and the employee. We need to talk about where we want to go together and how we want to treat each other on the journey. Once we can agree to those things then we need to realign to them every single day. Everything we do should be done through the lens of purpose. If we can’t connect the task to purpose, then why are we doing it in the first place? A culture with a good purpose will protect itself.

We need to affirm the intrinsic value in our people, choose to see the diversity they bring to the table and how we can achieve our goals by unifying together. These conversations won’t be casual breakroom talk or quick hallway catch-ups. They will be authentic and real unity driven conversations that foster community among employees and leaders. It is the role of a leader to get to know their people’s passions and soft skills—what makes them unique. Then learn how to apply those passions and soft skills to help us accomplish our purpose together.

If we as leaders do this, we might look back some day and say that the silver lining, in a very difficult year, was the real and lasting change that made the workplace a destination, not just a means to an end.

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Chris Meroff, is the author of Align: Four Simple Steps for Leaders to Create Employee Fulfillment. He has made a career of testing new leadership ideas to see what works—and what doesn’t—in service-oriented leadership. What he has gleaned from his research has helped him build a fast-growing organization with a diverse and engaged workforce that understands the mission of his organization and their place in it. His business, Alignment Leadership Consulting, exists to teach leaders how they too can boldly pursue a workplace culture that prioritizes employee fulfillment. Learn more at AlignLeadThrive.com.

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:38 AM
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