CEOs, let's reimagine connection at work.
This month, I was a participant in a discussion on Quiet Quitting during the World Economic Forum's annual gathering in Davos. It is a fast-changing world for workers, and it strikes me that leaders, like us, are engaging in many of the right questions: how to balance the benefits and drawbacks of remote work The risks and potential presented by AI as well as the need to develop better and more sustainable companies.
But one question is worthy of more attention: if our workforce is changing, technology is changing, and post-pandemic behaviors as well as expectations changing...don't our leaders have to change too?
There is an entire Generation of Digital Natives making their way into the working world. They were raised creating and sharing videos instead of messaging or calling as they are able to consider TikTok or YouTube their best source for information. When it comes to their private lives, they are hyper-connected and also extremely engaged.
However, in their professional lives there's a completely different picture. There are significant reductions in engagement and employee satisfaction among the remote Gen Z and younger millennials. Fewer than four in ten youngsters who work remotely or in hybrid settings understand what's expected of them when they work, and more than half of Gen Z employees are ambivalent or not engaged at work. When we consider employee engagement as the most important indicator for workforce productivity and productivity, it has significant consequences for all businesses as well as every business's profit.
What is causing this disconnect? At work, as well as in our lives everyone wants to be part of some bigger picture than we are. It is our natural desire to be part of something bigger, and to experience an identity which is unambiguous, transparent and real. Yet the more our workforce is digitally dispersed and AI-connected, the more difficult it is to feel a genuine connections every single day. Particularly, if we've not changed our methods of working to accommodate the next generation. We still ask our employees to read through a mountain of documentation or write lengthy emails and take part in unproductive gatherings. Employees learn about layoffs and the company's priorities from communications so scripted and robotic that they could be produced through ChatGPT. Our only insight as managers have is via cookie-cutter surveys on engagement, live events with very low turn-in percentages, as well as occasional snarky chat or Q&A.
The old model of management is ineffective. It's time to adapt how we as leaders show up and connect with our employees. In the same way that we're focused on reskilling our workforce in the face of changes in population size, demographics as well as technological trends, we also need to upgrade our skills as leaders so that we can create trust and connections on a scale.
I've experimented with much of this in the past few years at . These are the things I'm learning and embracing which I think will help us show up differently and lead more effectively:
1. Realize who you are, and be yourself.
When the epidemic, I participated in an international town hall from my home at Flint, Michigan -- tired and slumbering in my velour pajamas, with both my toddler son and my grandmother moving through the background.
It might have been my most effective communication ever.
Why? because it was not scripted chaotic, vulnerable, and messy. It's easy to fall into "us against them" dynamics when we work in a workplace, especially when we are under stress or the need to overcome. It's very simple to imagine "leadership" as an unnamed and faceless machine. Making sure that you are video-first in your communication is a powerful antidote. This forces you to shed the protection and mask of written and edited comms. The most effective way to make it clear is to appear just as you really are.
In the end, there are definitely examples of leaders being vulnerable and it backfiring...but I think that in the vast majority instances the problem was that it was too performative. It is important to allow to let that part of you to make mistakes before your group. We all have flaws that make us human. We all wish to see our leaders be brave -- it only makes us want to be more like them.
2. Beginning by asking "why ."
As with many other leaders, I've made difficult decisions over the course of the year. From layoffs and executive changes to restructuring and closing down projects in the name of efficiency. It is my job to make the hard decisions, which are not popular and implement changes quickly across our organization.
More often, I observe employees wanting to know the reasoning behind their decisions-- not just the "what" but also the "why". The desire is to know the larger competition or market context that is that are balanced and weighted, as well as the procedure of who was in the loop as well as when.
The old comms playbook will say that when you have a piece of critical communication with limited time, start with the "what" then get straight to the essential steps. Yet I've found myself far more successful in getting people to embrace a difficult decision when I treat my team as key stakeholders who deserve to understand the context.
As a result, starting with "why" is a first rule for any communication . There will always be limitations to fully transparency (legal, PR, governance, customer risk), but I've found that, in the majority of cases, perceived obstacles to transparency are simply that. Perceived. Some people may not agree with your choices, but it is possible to argue that if they do they are not performing the job you're supposed to do. They will however appreciate and accept your choices in the beginning when you understand the why.
3. Spend money on in-person meetings or in-person meetings, and make it personal.
Yes, I recognize the irony of the CEO of a video company telling that. One of the biggest learnings from the past couple of months is that we've have waited too long, and we weren't intentional enough in bringing the teams we have on a daily basis.
In the month of January, one week after announcing layoffs, we organized a corporate kickoff event in NYC. We flew in employees from over 12 countries. Our employees were based in Ukraine that took trains, planes, and cars to get there. We eschew the usual event party confetti, and went with the more casual look with a tight budget. It was one of the most enjoyable and essential investment decisions I've ever done.
This is made even more effective when, as leaders, you get on a plane and meet your team where they are. We have an entirely geographically dispersed executive team, spread over eight locations that range from Seattle up to Switzerland. The majority of them were recruited in the past year, so we the team is still in its early stages, and we are just starting to gel as a team. To speed up this process of gelling, we started hosting offsites in each leader's home city. Our CFO's mother gathered us at her fireplace in Vermont. Our Head of Sales was wearing his apron, and we made frittatas to eat breakfast. Our working sessions were held around our head of product's table.
The pandemic gave us an unintentional glimpse into others' homes and personal lives . If we take advantage of that and integrate it into our lives day-to-day activities it is possible to build stronger, more connected and better-performing teams.
4. Go between "lean back" to "lean forward" encounters.
An essential communication ability will soon be the ability to develop "lean forward" events, not "lean back" broadcasts. We humans have attention spans are becoming shorter (now just 8 seconds and less than that of a goldfish!). But we continue to communicate through one-to-many messages, whether via an email that you open or an extremely produced town hall that you sit and watch.
At we see this tax on engagement appearing within our own records, where the average time to stop watching a video has been declining over the past few years. If we do not change our strategy, the practice of letting people tune out is going to seriously hamper our capacity to keep our teams in sync and productive.
It is crucial changing our perspective and openness to new things. There is a new generation entering the workforce who have a head start on us with their ability to create as well as capture authentic, rich information. They're ahead due to the fact that they are free of the restrictions that we experienced for decades in traditional communication modes at work.
They say that employees don't quit their jobs, they just let managers go. Well, CEOs are the best managers. And as per an survey of over 113,000 managers, the number one factor for effective management is the trust of their employees. We as leaders must show ourselves how to show up with more genuine, engaging and authentic ways. I'm betting on the CEOs who embrace this brave new world will be far more effective in overseeing the future generation of employees. They'll be better informed and engage distributed teams and align them to greater productivity, and establish long-lasting relationships that produce extraordinary work. They'll stop communicating and communicate more effectively.