Results

There’s room for improvement! Let’s take “Daring to Care” for your organization a step further…

Your responses demonstrate that you’re well on your way to creating a “Camelot Community,” but there’s still some work to be done. Let’s dive into a few areas that will help your organization get there.

First and foremost, you can’t fake caring about your employees. They will see right through it. You either care about them or you don’t. And if it’s the latter — you may need to embark on some self-reflection and then return to these guiding principles or find someone else who will better care about your employees and designate them at the helm of your organization. It’s as simple as that — either care and take proactive steps to improve or find someone who will. 

Here are some practical ways you can build faith:

• React from a place of positive intent to overcome the challenges of negativity and high emotion.
• Circle back to the notion and practice of leading together. This will make you all stronger and more aligned.
• Begin communicating by listening first.

It’s important that your employees feels heard and valued, but before you can even get to that point, they must first feel completely comfortable with being open and honest with you. Being asked to leave our personal lives at the door has never really been possible, but employers and employees both pretended that it was. Companies need to adapt or risk falling off the radar of current and future customers and prospective talent. Today, in our work-from-anywhere environments, we must understand that employees are whole people and we shouldn’t attempt to separate ourselves into parts. Likewise, you need to be vulnerable yourself and share perhaps more than you are comfortable with to make the employee also feel comfortable opening up to you. It will pay off.

Here are some questions to discuss to better understand how you can support your employees:

• Is there anything in your life that might affect your ability to be 100% on the journey with us?
• Why do you choose to work for me?
• Under what circumstances would you leave?
• How can we best support you in doing your work?

Just as your customers are experiencing you— your employees are also experiencing their employer, but are you being purposeful about what they experience? It is a subtle (but important) shift in thinking and a shift in how you engage with each other. 

You can learn more about how to meaningfully engage your employees in my new book, Dare to Care In the Workplace: A Guide to the New Way We Work. If you want to dive deeper into how to implement these practices on your team, let’s connect to talk about whether consulting would be valuable for your organization. Alternatively, if you’re interested in partnering with my company, TalenTrust, to help source your next top talent, you can request an appointment to discuss our recruiting services.

Finally, my calendar for 2022 is now open for booking. If you have a conference, association, or meeting and need a speaker, feel free to submit a booking request. I love sharing real tools and ideas on how your organization can best create a “Camelot Community.”

My guiding principle of “putting people first” has seen success through decades of changes and shifting landscapes. It has endured through a Great Recession as well as a global pandemic and I know that it will continue positively impacting workplaces for many years to come. I invite you to follow my lead. In fact, I dare you to!

Warmly,