Leadership Ripples with Leah Fink

52 - Why Should I Work for You? Pt. 2

• Leah Fink • Season 2 • Episode 2

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Why do employees choose to follow a leader beyond just the promise of a paycheque? Join us to learn about the core needs that are impacting your staff's buy-in and engagement, and uncover the secrets to creating a workplace that thrives on connection, autonomy, and meaningful contribution. 

Have you created an environment that is meeting your staff's needs, or causing them unnecessary stress?

If you want to make sure you are nurturing a supportive, value-driven culture, this is the episode for you!

To have your questions answered on the show, submit your story here: https://allthrive.ca/share-your-story

Leadership Ripples with Leah Fink is live every week at 12:00pm MST.  Please join us to get answers to your leadership questions! https://www.linkedin.com/in/leah-fink-all-thrive/

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Speaker 1:

Every action you take as a leader has a ripple effect, starting with your team, going out to the organization and even out into people's personal lives. Here we offer you the chance to learn from real-life stories of leadership so you can gain a deeper understanding and level up your own skills From communication to culture, to power and equity, to feedback, to resolving conflict and more. Join us and make sure you're creating the ripples you want. Welcome to Leadership Ripples with Leah Fink.

Speaker 2:

Hello and welcome to Leadership Ripples with Leah Fink. This is the second episode of our second season and this is a part two to last week's episode. Why would I work for you? Why should your employees want to work for you at all? Why would they care? Last week we dove a little bit more into the fiscal side and specifically what kind of mindsets you might have around that financial side of having employees that actually impact how staff feel about working with you, what kind of sense they get, and today we're going to be talking more about some of the cultural components that impact why staff may or may not want to work with you.

Speaker 2:

Once again, we're looking at this more from a place of mindset, this idea of the employee's perspective, how they feel when they come into their job every day, how they feel valued or how they feel like a burden to you. And that really is what creates the difference between employees that are here for a paycheck. They just want to get out as soon as they can, and the employees that care, that have some sort of stake in your business, in your organization, and they want to make it better. So when we're looking beyond the financial piece of this job and we're looking at this culture. There's obviously a lot I could talk about, and I want to focus on two main things that I believe have a huge impact on the employee experience, and that's both the work-life balance and then the personal meaning that they take from their work and at the heart of all the things we're going to talk about today. What I really want to highlight is this idea of core needs that all people have, and especially that relate to ourselves and our work life. As humans, we seek connection, we seek autonomy, we seek contribution, we seek being valued, we seek relaxation. There's so many core needs that we're constantly trying to get met. Even if we look at last week's episode, if you look at this idea of getting paid for a job, there's a core need there of safety and security that you will have money to take care of your physical needs and all of those pieces. When we feel that needs are being met, we're in a good, happy, healthy place. That's when all the good stuff is happening, but when we feel like our needs are not being met, that can lead to a lot of challenges. We'll either find unhealthier ways to try to get them met, which is not what we want, or it can be really impactful for our emotional state, our mental state, if we don't feel we can get those met at all and this leads to some really long-term problems like burnout and some of the big problems that we see in workplaces when people choose to leave. So if we look at this in the workplace, it's not saying that work is responsible for meeting every single person's individual needs, but, again, as leaders we are responsible for these components of the environment that will help support people's needs getting met or will hinder that.

Speaker 2:

And let's start by looking at work-life balance as this first factor and generally, when we think about work-life balance, we're probably thinking about some core needs of connection or belonging with the people that you care about outside of work, and some sort of need like relaxation. You need a break for your brain and your body to go home and decompress. There's, of course, going to be other needs, but let's just even talk about those too. And of course, people have an understanding that some of their time and effort and energy is going to be committed in order to work. They want to make money, they're going to go to work. That's going to mean they have less time than if they had no work for meeting with those people that they care about, for relaxation, and that's very understood and pretty healthy for people. Generally, when that's in a good state, they don't mind too much.

Speaker 2:

The challenge is, sometimes these pieces of work start to overshadow those pieces of work-life balance and then those needs start to get constricted. It's much harder to meet them, and that could include things like having too many demands for a job that means there's constant overtime, having a really inflexible schedule that doesn't allow for life to happen, having work that you have to take home every day All of these components slowly start to infringe on this time at home that helps people meet these needs. Now, of course, if there are regular disruptions to staff trying to get away to try to have this connection, try to have this relaxation, this is having this impact on them and this is impact on their mood, their ability to work, their productivity. It can lead to things like them feeling resentment for the company or ending up on medical leave, getting burnt out. All of those are impacts when we start to wear down this opportunity for them to get those needs met and you don't have control over everything as a leader, especially if you are maybe in a middle management position. There are things, though, that you do have control over.

Speaker 2:

One of the things I see consistently when I do my mental health assessments as a hugely supportive factor for people in this work-life balance sphere is some flexibility over time and schedule, and that's both inside the workplace and out of it. So, in an ideal world, maybe you are a leader of an office space and there is a fair bit of flexibility and you can let staff determine some things like maybe they start at 730 versus 830. Or maybe you ensure that if they need to leave for an appointment, they can make up that work at another time. Maybe they even ask if they can have half a day off here and work late some nights, and maybe you have that capacity, and that is wonderful. There's going to be some things that are harder to change.

Speaker 2:

You might be a leader that doesn't have that flexible of an option. Maybe your staff do shift work that's very regimented. Even then, are there ways you can still support this concept that they feel that they can get home, that they can have that rest or they can commit to specific important things in their life? Maybe it's when you're building the schedule, you're having conversations with people and making sure it works the best way possible for your team. Maybe there are specific days that you're prioritizing for specific people. I recognize this takes extra time and effort and you probably also feel busy and stressed as a leader, but this is really how your employees can feel valued. They know about the time restrictions that you have. They know about those things, but if they have a sense that my leader cares enough that they checked in with me about this thing, that they're really trying to help make this flexible for me, you can feel that and the hard part about this is you have to balance what matters to you. Like I said, as a leader, I know you are busy, I know you have lots of competing priorities and there may even be some emotional pieces.

Speaker 2:

Right, like we talked about last week, there's some mindsets. Do you have a mindset that you need a little bit more control over your employees and their time? Do you really fully trust them to do their work by themselves? Now an example I see of this on a large scale right now, some large companies are doing big back-to-work mandates all across the board. Everyone's coming in and I don't see these all as being for the right reasons. I've talked to some of these staff and they're not experiencing this in a positive way. It can come from leaders, once again not having trust in their employees and they're wanting more control over to be able to manage every moment of that employee's time. Maybe they're trying to actually actively shrink their staff team by knowing some people will leave if they do a return to work mandate Lots of unhealthy things like that.

Speaker 2:

And then you hear about how these workplaces talk to their employees about this. I've even heard people tell their employees yes, this is for you, this is for your mental health, this is going to be good for you. First, that can feel, of course, a little maybe condescending or untrue to you. If you were feeling like that work from home helped you balance your life a little bit better, gave you time, helped you meet those needs a bit better, of course it's not going to feel like it's supporting you when they tell you you're coming back to work. It can be incredibly damaging for your team, for your morale, and how do you feel valued as an individual in the workplace when this happens?

Speaker 2:

Once again, you might not have full control over this, but even if you're looking at your team and how you are talking to individual employees about changes like this, you really need to make sure that you're still speaking with them, helping them understand how they could be finding and meeting these needs and how you might be able to support those in minor ways. And this might just be that you're talking to them about concerns around the change. Maybe you're finding other ways you could still be flexible. If they're back in the office, what other ways could they feel supported by the organization? Now that this is happening, can they still get their needs met and what can you do to help? Just those conversations can be again saying that you have an investment in this person and their perspective about it will be different. So if we're looking at that, that was all kind of just touching touching a little bit on these personal needs, these work-life balance needs that people have when they go to work, and there's also the needs that people can have met at work and that can get you some really neat buy-in.

Speaker 2:

And I'm going to focus on two big ones that I see, which are autonomy and contribution. And first of all, autonomy, if you've listened to previous episodes, I've talked about trust. I've talked about giving your employees the ability to decide important parts of their work, and this also comes up when we look at factors that influence mental health in the workplace. Is this about employees? Can they be trusted to do things autonomously? How much control do they have over their own work? How much control do they have over the order that they choose to do their work in or the way that they choose to do their work? Do they have a say in which projects they work on, at which times? All of these components are actually quite impactful to how people perceive their autonomy in their job, if they can truly take this on as an independent adult, because no one wants to be treated like a kid, to be told exactly what to do, to have someone speak down to them or assume that they can't do something properly. They want, on this other hand, to have clear boundaries, to understand what they can do and something properly. They want, on this other hand, to have clear boundaries to understand what they can do and how they can do it, to be able to do the work that they know they can do and have this sense that they completed, that they independently were able to do these things.

Speaker 2:

It is a really important need for people to feel the sense of autonomy, and if you feel like you have a staff member that you are not ready to give that autonomy to, there's definitely some bigger things to look at. You could be looking at your own leadership and some of these pieces, maybe that you're feeling this lack of trust or ability to let go. It could be things like unclear roles and responsibilities in the office that you need to look at. It could be things like their training that they didn't have sufficient training, that you trust them, but that is definitely something to be looking at, because this is something you want to be able to give all of your staff.

Speaker 2:

And the final lead I want to talk about is contribution. People want to matter. They want to make a mark on the world or have an impact on people or do something that has meaning. This is, again, just a core need that people have that can often be actually hard to find in our society. That sense can be a great protective factor, though, against things like depression, as there is a feeling that you, being in the world, your existence, has some relevance, and this also matters, obviously, a lot in the workplace, and this can be tricky, because it really depends a lot on people's motivations for why they're doing the work they're doing and that buy-in that they have. So if you talk to nurses or teachers or social workers who are directly working and helping people, they probably have a bigger sense of meaning in their work. They have this sense of my contribution. I see a direct result of it. I see the positive result. I feel good. So my sense for contribution is well met in the workplace. That helps them get through maybe other challenges they have in the workplace. But some people's roles this could be the opposite case. They could say something like well, I'm flipping burgers, why does it matter? And this is a place where, as a leader, you can have a huge impact.

Speaker 2:

Find out what matters to those people, even in tasks that most people would see as very menial or boring. They have things that they care about. They have things that they value, these core values. Maybe it's they care about people and there's ways you can find that they can support the team or interact with the team in different ways, team or interact with the team in different ways. Maybe they care about quality of service and you can really make sure that their recognition is acknowledging those pieces of quality of service that they did. Do they care about fun? And how could you bring that into the workplace through them?

Speaker 2:

Whatever their core values are, there are always ways to reflect that in a role and again, this might not be easy as a leader. This requires you taking on this extra step of saying what does this individual person care about? What do they need? How can I support them in that and then allow them to step into those roles so they care strong, sense that their life at home matters and that the company isn't going to overshadow that and they have a sense that they can do their role autonomously and that that role, whatever they're doing, has some impact, matters. In some way. You're going to keep employees. You're going to get better employees who are more invested, more engaged, more productive and they'll want to stay with you for a long time because that whole sense is that my organization cares about me and wants me to be here.

Speaker 2:

Of course, this is not a comprehensive list of everything you can do that will have staff want to stay with you.

Speaker 2:

There are many other components of culture and role and circumstance that are going to play into this, but these pieces of the needs you're meeting and how you're seeing your employees are so critical.

Speaker 2:

And that brings us to the end of the episode. Next week, we're going to be returning to more leadership examples and questions, and so if you have a story that you'd like to share with us, we would love to have that. You can find the link for that in the description below and, as a thank you if you do contribute a story or a question, I will follow up with a session with you to make sure that is all answered and to say thank you so much for contributing. And, finally, I want to thank you for listening today, to considering these things, to taking on the responsibilities of leadership that can be harder, that are responsive to individuals, that take a bit more time, but ultimately you see the benefit for them and you will create these amazing cultures and strong relationships, and I am so excited for you to have that. And as we close, remember to ask yourself what kind of ripples am I going to create this week?

Speaker 1:

We hope you enjoyed the episode. Make sure to subscribe, comment and connect with Leah at meetleahca.