“Twenty minutes with everyone?”
“Yes”
“Everyone, individually?”
“Yes, everyone, individually.”
My office manager looked at me with a mix of curiosity, disbelief and a bit of horror.
There were more than 100 people in my Directorate and I wanted to meet them all. Individually. For 20 minutes each. I was a Director, so it’s fair to say my diary wasn’t empty. I know his horror was partly about how on earth he was going to make it happen. But he did. It took rather a long time. Months I think. But we did it and I’m fairly sure that if I was in the same position now I’d do it again.
Why bother? Because getting to know people, finding the time to connect with them and understand a bit about their lives, backgrounds, motivations and dreams shows that you care. I don’t think that back then I’d ever heard of Transformational Leadership, but now that I read the research underpinning these sorts of approaches, I’m relieved that my instincts were right.
The thing is, what do you do as the teams and organisations you lead get bigger and bigger? I just about managed the 1-1s with 120 people but when a few years later it was more like 250 I had to think again. And some of the leaders I work with now are leading organisations of thousands.
I was reflecting on this as I prepared for the class I’m running on leading organisations at IE University. There’s nothing like teaching to make you stop and work out what you’ve learnt.
Here are some of the things that came up:
🪞Role model. You may not be able to go out and meet everyone anymore, but you can certainly role model prioritising human connection with those you work with day to day. Do this with your leadership team and make explicit that this is what you expect them to do too. Never ever miss a team meeting – it may feel routine, but the conversations you have and how you are with people in those moments is the lifeblood of your leadership and the culture you will create together. What you do cascades through the organisation, whether you like it or not, so don’t let that be unintentional.
👀Get out and about. I don’t mean wafting in and out of different offices, only ever meeting with the most senior people when you’re there. Make time to sit with groups of people, eat with them, sit beside them at their desks and see what they’re working on. Added bonus? You’ll find out a lot more about what’s really going on (and going wrong) that way too.
🚪Have a genuine open-door policy. Find ways to make yourself more accessible to people, in person and virtually. One of my mentors used to hang an inflatable bird from the ceiling to show everyone on the floor where she was sitting that day. If your teams are dispersed or remote, schedule Open Door calls where anyone can log in to ask or tell you anything.
👂Listen. You can do all of this and still not create a culture of connection and trust (or the high performance that follows). If you have 1-1s, go on site visits or leave your door wide open, it will all be for nothing if you don’t listen when you’re there. This isn’t necessarily about keeping quiet – in fact as Kim Scott reminds us in Radical Candour, you can be a ‘noisy listener’ always asking people to talk back, to question and challenge you – it’s about how you show that you’ve heard people. Do you check whether you’ve understood? Do you dismiss criticism, or welcome it, even in public? Do you follow up later?
So, the subtitle of my class on leading teams and organisations, large or small, is How to Listen.
I’d love to know how you lead and listen at scale. Please share your learning and suggestions in the comments.
