People are often thrust into leadership roles without training or coaching and that impacts the workplace wellbeing and business success, according to Bob DeKoch and Phillip Clampitt.
“Never assume experience equals competence,” Clampitt said.
The two presented a summary of their book “Leading With Care in a Tough World,” at a fundraiser Thursday for Samaritan, a counseling service based in the Fox Valley. The Ethics in Business breakfast focused on the need for businesses to address workplace wellness by developing “deeply caring” leaders.
DeKoch, with 40 years of executive leadership experience including 20 at The Boldt Co., and Clampitt, a professor with 40 years of experience at the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay, said businesses need to take the next step after servant leadership, first espoused in the 1970s to become deeply caring leaders. They emphasized that is a process that involves life-long learning as well as a rigorous commitment to leadership training and coaching.
“Our people need leaders who care deeply about them and our organizations need leaders who care deeply about outcomes,” DeKoch said.
They said caring deeply about people and outcomes is key across the entire organization.
“The mood at the middle defines the organizational culture” Clampitt said.
Caring deeply is long term, development focused, change enabling, solution motivated, visible, proactive and empowering. It requires leaders to embrace uncertainty, make progress, live the leadership values, be a lifelong learner and to be kind, but not soft.
The results lead to an organization that is deliberate about advancing its goals through exploring and refining. Balancing taking risks and making mistakes with perfecting the processes that are successful.
All of this matters according to the pair, because workplace wellness effects workplace performance and according to a survey of more than 1 million people across 50 countries conducted for the book “Wellbeing at Work” 70 percent of employees said they would work harder if they felt appreciated and 15 percent were fully-engaged at work.
Data from the book shows that organizational performance is 5 times better when employees feel their career wellbeing is being managed well.
They offered a handful of techniques and ideas for becoming and developing deeply caring leaders and encouraged those in attendance to use their book as a study guide for ongoing growth.
