Executives, let's redefine connection at work.
In the last month, I took part in a panel discussion about Quiet the Quiet during the World Economic Forum's annual gathering in Davos. Workforces are changing fast and I am struck that as the leaders have been asking a lot of the right questions: what are the advantages and disadvantages of working remotely, the risks and opportunities that are presented with AI as well as the need to develop better and more sustainable companies.
However, one issue is deserving of greater attention: If the workforce of our generation is evolving and technology is evolving, and post-pandemic behaviors as well as expectations changing...don't us as leaders need to evolve too?
There's an entire new generation of natives who are digital who are entering the work force. They grew up creating and sharing videos , not making calls or texts or texting, and they consider TikTok or YouTube their primary source for information. In their personal lives they're hyper-connected, and equally hyper-engaged.
But in their workplaces there's a completely different picture. There are dramatic declines in employee engagement and satisfaction in remote Gen Z and younger millennials. Fewer than four in ten young remote or hybrid employees are aware of what's expected of them when they work as well as more than half Gen Z employees are ambivalent or aren't engaged in their work. If we think of the level of engagement among employees as the leading indicator for workforce productivity, this has major implications for every company and every bottom line.
Why is this connection not working? As in work and in life, we all want to be part of some bigger picture than we are. It is our natural desire for belonging, to feel a sense of community that is transparent, unfiltered as well as real. However, the more our population grows digitally distributed and AI-powered as a result, it becomes more challenging it becomes to experience true connection every day. Particularly if we've not redesigned how we work to meet the next generation. We still ask our employees to digest dense documentation, write lengthy emails, and attend boring meeting. We learn about layoffs as well as the company's priorities from communications which are so automated and scripted that they could have been generated through ChatGPT. Our only insight as executives have is through surveys of engagement that are cookie-cutter, live events with low tune-in and high drop-off rate, as well as the sometimes snarky chats or Q&A.
The old model of management is not working for us. It's time to change how we as leaders show up and interact with our staff. Just as we are focused on reskilling our workforce in the face of changing population, demographic and technological advancements and trends, we should also upgrade our skills as leaders so that we can create trust and connections on a scale.
I've experimented with much of this over the last couple of years . Here are the skills I'm learning and adopting and believe will enable us to be more present and be more effective in our leadership:
1. Realize who you are, and be yourself.
At the start of the outbreak, I hosted an international town hall from my home at Flint, Michigan -- tired and slumbering in my velvet pajamas with both my toddler son and my grandmother shuffled in and out of the background.
This could have been the most successful communication in my life.
Why? because it wasn't scripted, vulnerable, and messy. People tend to be drawn to "us versus us versus them" dynamic when working within a business, particularly in times of stress and challenges. It's it's easy to see "leadership" as an unnamed machines that have no face. Being video-first and visual in your communication can be a potent deterrent. It forces you to remove the mask and protection of writing and editing comms. The most effective way to get past this is to present yourself as you are.
In the end, there is a lot of instances of leaders being vulnerable and it backfiring...but I suspect in most of those cases the problem was that the leader was performing too much. You have to be willing to allow that part of yourself to fail before your team. Flaws are what makes us humans. And we all want to see our leaders be bold. This only inspires us to follow them more.
2. Start with the "why ."
Like many leaders have had to make difficult choices over the course of the year. In the past, I've made executive decisions and laidoffs to the reorganization and shutdown of projects in the name of efficiency. My job is to take the tough, unpopular calls and enact swiftly across the company.
Increasingly, I see employees seeking transparency in these decision-making processes, not just the "what" but the "why". The desire is to know the larger market or competitive context, the trade-offs considered and balanced, as well as the procedure that was used as well as when.
The conventional comms strategy suggests that when there is a piece of critical communication and limited attention, you start with the "what" then get right to the core and the necessary actions. But I have been far more successful getting people to accept a tough choice when I view my team as key participants who need to be aware of the situation.
As a result, starting with "why" is a first rule for any communication . There are of course constraints to being fully transparent (legal and PR, as well as management, risk to the customer) however I've observed that the majority of perceived obstacles to transparency can be described as. Perceived. People will not always agree with your choices, but you could say that if they disagree, you probably aren't doing your job. They will however respect and embrace those decisions when you start with the reasons behind them.
3. Invest in in-person, and get personal.
Sure, I see the irony in the CEO of a video-related company telling this. One of the biggest learnings from the past couple of months is that we've have waited too long, and we weren't deliberate enough in connecting our teams closer in the real world.
In January, a week after announcing layoffs, we hosted a company kickoff in NYC. The event brought in employees from over a dozen nations. Our employees were based in Ukraine who took trains or planes to reach us. We ditched the typical event party confetti, and went with a low-key vibe with a tight budget. This was among the most stimulating and necessary investment decisions I've ever done.
This is made even more effective in the event that, as leaders you take a flight and visit your team wherever they are. I have a fully distributed executive team spread across eight locations from Seattle from Seattle to Switzerland. Many were hired during the last year and they are relatively new and just beginning to become a cohesive team. In order to speed up the process of forming a cohesive team the team, we began hosting offsites at the homes of each leader's city. We met our CFO's mom by her fire pit in Vermont. Our Head of Sales wore his apron, and we made frittatas to eat breakfast. We held working sessions around our Chef of Product's table.
The outbreak provided us with the ability to see into other's homes and private life. If we take advantage of that and integrate it into our lives day-to-day activities and work, we can have the chance to build stronger, more connected and better-performing teams.
4. Go between "lean back" to "lean forward" experiences.
An essential communication ability is the capability to create "lean forward" experiences, instead of "lean back" broadcasts. As humans, our attention spans are getting shorter (now lower than eight seconds which is less than the length of the time it takes to catch a goldfish!). But we continue to communicate by one-to-many communications, either by email, which you can read or an elaborate town hall that you sit and enjoy.
At we see this tax on engagement surfacing within our own records and the amount of time to end a session of watching videos has been declining over the past few years. If we do not change our strategy, the practice of letting people tune out can seriously impact our ability to keep our teams aligned and efficient.
It is crucial shifting our thinking and willingness to try different things. We have a new generation working in the workforce that have a head start on us with their ability to design and record authentic and rich information. They are ahead because they are free of the constraints our generation experienced over the years in conventional working environments.
It is said that employees do not leave jobs; they quit managers. Well, CEOs are the most effective managers and according to the findings of a study of more than 113,000 executives most important factor for efficient management is the trust of their employees. We as leaders must show us how to conduct ourselves in more authentic, interesting and reliable ways. I'm betting on the CEOs who embrace this brave modern world will be more effective in managing the next generation of workers. They'll better educate and involve teams distributed across the globe, align people to better outcomes and develop lasting relationships that bring out extraordinary work. They'll stop communicating but instead connect better.