Effective leadership will always be key for organizational success, organizational change, culture, workplace dynamics, and workforce health. There are many definitions of leadership, the following defines leadership as the process of influencing others to understand and agree on what should be done and how to do it, and the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to achieve shared goals. This definition highlights the importance of leadership on workforce dynamics and organizational goals.
This is increasingly important because today’s workforce is expecting a healthier and more human-centered workplace. They are looking for more than just a paycheck. Today’s workforce is looking for purpose, continual learning and development, autonomy, and for their leader to appreciate what they do. They are expecting leaders who listen, are empathetic, compassionate, and care for them.
This is particularly important for organizations to focus on for the following reasons. Workers can expect to spend about 90,000 hours in their lives at work. Work has been cited as the fifth cause of death due to stress. This is further accentuated by those in the workplace being expected to adapt by multi-tasking. This is when neuroscientists have pointed out multi-tasking actually leads to less productivity, ineffectiveness, and even impacts the worker’s health. Add to this that when it comes to the worker’s health, managers have been found to have a higher impact on their workforce’s health than their doctors.
This is not helped by managers struggling with burnout leading to 62% of the workforce not being engaged and having low trust in their leaders. These issues get magnified when change is continuing to accelerate and almost 90% of executives see adapting to the changing work environment as an imperative along with almost 50% of HR professionals. Yet almost 70% of change efforts fail.
Human Intelligent (HI) Workplace
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Workers today are prioritizing well-being over pay and in more cases prefer to work in different settings that include remote or hybrid work environments. Some of the things mentioned that workers are looking for can lead to a happy employee which has been found to help employees be less sick, absent, more loyal, and productive. In essence, happiness at work has been found to enable happiness in life. The research continues to highlight what today’s workforce is expecting from their organizations and leaders beyond a paycheck. Unfortunately, most organizations have not evolved to keep pace with these changing worker expectations.
Much is being researched and written about the importance of what our brain wants through neuroscience and Neuroleadership. It has been found that our brain needs a leader who listens and creates a safe and certain environment and communicates effectively by making them easier to understand.
A couple of ways leaders can help themselves and their workforce is by tuning into two FM stations. The first is WIIFM, What’s In It For Me. As leaders educate themselves and shift with the changing times, this helps them become more effective leaders and create a less stressed environment for themselves that can lead to burnout. The second station is WIIFT, What’s In It For Them. By recognizing the changing psychology of their workforce and adapting to do better they might position themselves, their workforce, and in turn their organizations for success. This can be done by modeling the right leadership behaviors that include listening, empathy, compassion, recognition, flexibility, maximizing the diversity of the workforce, and creating a psychologically safe environment.
In summary, organizations and its leaders need to not only look in the mirror as to how are they helping themselves and their workforce be healthy. They also need to check with their workforce. Because unfortunately there are still those out there who believe they are doing fine while their workforce sees it differently. The opportunity is there and now is the best time. Because adapting now to changing times can lead to a better tomorrow.
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