Managers

Tim Richmond & Michael C. Bush on Leadership Blind Spots

2023-05-01T00:39:34-04:00

On this episode of the Better podcast, we hear Tim Richmond, EVP, Chief Human Resources Officer at AbbVie, and Michael C. Bush, CEO of Great Place To Work®, talk about blind spots many leaders have around culture and engaging employees.

They talk about a new way of leading where leaders feel accountable for every manager down to the front-line supervisor, why listening is the most important leadership behavior, and how they create a sense of well-being for themselves as leaders.

On why leaders don’t prioritize culture

Michael: This willingness to do something uncomfortable takes courage and change. Leaders are big on change in other people and companies, but not big on changing themselves. Culture work is hard. If you want to choose the easiest path, this isn't it.

You’ve got to have a lot of great leaders who are all out of the box being uncomfortable, learning, testing, knowing that humility that comes before curiosity. And then you get some of the best people in the world wanting to work in your company, which is what's needed to tackle more productivity, more performance, higher rate of innovation and decreasing our carbon footprint.

It's more complicated now and therefore you got to have the best people, which means you have the best leaders.

Sometimes people will ask me, "What if you don't have the support at the top?" I've never seen it succeed.

On the importance of keeping leaders accountable

Tim: We use surveys to get down to any manager with five or more employees and they get direct feedback across a number of dimensions and questions. We hold leaders accountable. The best managers are celebrated and the managers who are below a certain level on engagement or inclusion get extra help from the HR team.

We actually require them to resurvey. If I can elevate those that are below the standard for whatever reason -- there's been something acute going on – to the Abbvie standard fairly quickly, I've protected that experience for those employees, and that's positive for our culture.

Michael: It's pretty easy at the top to get high leadership scores, but what's happening seven levels down? And does this CEO feel accountable for that? That they can't feel like they're a great leader unless that frontline supervisor is creating a great experience? It sounds basic, but it rarely happens.

This responsibility for the whole chain of leadership and a leader at the top judging themselves by that frontline and mid-level experience, this is the breakthrough we feel and the difference over the next five years. This is the future of work.

On the most important leadership behavior

Michael: It's listening. Number one, to listen, you have to be humble because you're about to have an experience in a conversation. You have to dump your fears and preconceived notions and be willing to have your point of view changed.

So you're starting there and then you're asking questions. You have that journalist mindset because you want to learn. And you think that whether that person's an executive VP, a director, one of the leading scientists in the world, or the person working at a reception or behind the wheel of the truck in delivery and distribution, you talk to them the same way, and you think you can learn from them just as much as you can from that senior VP.

On the role of culture in Abbvie's business success

Tim: One of my proudest moments in my career has been the creation of the culture in our company. The reflection on that? It’s not easy. There were consultants back in the beginning who wanted to work with us, but told us to expect to not accomplish much. For reasons you might expect, we said, "Well, we're not going to work with them." We want to have aspirations, and we want to do the hard work. And it is hard work, and it has to be a priority.

The benefit that we had was that our chairman and CEO, Rick Gonzalez, who's still our chairman and CEO today, prioritized culture. And not all new CEOs do that. To have culture one of your top four business strategies is really powerful.

On self care

Tim: I My advice is to make your health and wellness a priority. You cannot be a good member of a family or your best self as it relates to being a member of a family or a community at work if you're not well.

Michael: I do know when my meditation game is on, I do a little better on the exercise game. I'm a road warrior, so I pack the shoes and go work out at 2 a.m. sometimes due to time zones. But boy, do you get rewarded for doing that.

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5 Key Elements of Highly Effective Executive Teams

2021-03-31T18:29:32-04:00

Professional services firm Plante Moran surprised me during a business meeting a few years ago.

It wasn’t what their top executive at the time, Gordon Krater, said during the session. It was what he did during the lunch break.

Gordon stood up, opened the food containers, and set the table for all of us, who were gathered to talk about Plante Moran’s workplace culture.

During my 10 years as a management consultant, I’ve rarely seen the senior-most executive play such a servant role to their team. And nearly as remarkable to me was the way the rest of Gordon’s executive team responded to his humble behavior. They took it in stride, as if it were no big deal.

During this lunch break, and throughout the entire meeting of the team, hierarchical status simply didn’t color people’s interactions with each other.

It turns out my observations were consistent with the data. Plante Moran ranks among the highest companies on the Great Place To Work® Executive Team Effectiveness Index.

Other organizations seeking to improve their cultures, and their bottom lines, would be wise to learn from Plante Moran and its peers when it comes to executive leadership excellence.

After all, our research shows that companies that score in the top quartile of executive team effectiveness enjoy 5 times the median year-over-year revenue growth, compared with Certified companies in the bottom quartile.

What determines the effectiveness of executive teams?

Executive team effectiveness is determined by four areas measured in Great Place To Work’s leadership effectiveness index. Executive teams’ success is measured by how much management:

Aligns their words and actions
Avoids favoritism
Demonstrates competency, honesty and approachability
Shows genuine interest in employees as people

You can get your team’s leadership effectiveness index with our culture management tool.

카지노 커뮤니티 랭킹 research into hundreds of companies shows that the most effective leadership teams are more than a collection of individual top performers in areas like strategic planning and operational excellence. Instead, they are strongly aligned and show up as a unified “team” to everyone in the organization.

Both our research, and my experience with clients over the years, shows that within highly effective executive teams, all members have high levels of professional respect for each other and truly believe in each other’s competency. They are honest, ethical and transparent with each other and with the rest of the organization.

When executive teams disagree, they know how to have constructive discussions to find solutions that put organizational interests before personal interests.They intentionally work through their differences of opinion based on the foundation of trust and respect they have built.

As a result, employees experience good coordination from the top. These leaders’ actions match their words, and their staff receive consistent instructions and guidance from each executive.

The transparency and clarity create a workplace where politicking and backstabbing are not welcome and people know what it takes to be successful in their roles and how they fit into the success of the organization.

5 key elements of highly effective executive teams

1. They are not strangers to their employees

Employees know who the executives are because they are continually visible through the organization. They are intentional about creating spaces to connect with all levels within their department, and across departments. The executives know many or most people by their first name.

At Fortune 100 Best 카지노 커뮤니티 추천, many CEOs and top executives conduct “roadshows” at least once a year. That is, they travel across the country to visit all locations and talk to their frontline folks, because they genuinely value the input from every single person delivering their brand promise.

2. They are accessible and approachable

Take the simple example of elevator rides. If you share an elevator with an accessible and approachable executive, there is no sense of nervousness. They will greet you and take the opportunity to chat with you as a regular person does.

3. They understand that people are not only motivated by a sales target or a profit margin

These leaders get the importance of a higher purpose. They continually connect the special purpose and meaning that everyone’s contribution has to the mission of the organization. The impact of this connection is exemplified by a comment from a Plante Moran employee:

We just had our annual firm conference which is open (and encouraged) for all staff to attend… During Gordon's ‘farewell’ speech, he asked all of the non-practice staff – essentially administrative, marketing, tech, and internal accounting staff – to stand. He had us stand for several minutes while he talked about the value that group of people brings to the firm, and that the CPAs wouldn't be able to do their jobs without the group standing. He understands, and that mentality is being passed from literally the top down!

4. Their feedback is constructive and frequent

The best leadership teams do not shy away from difficult conversations. In fact, they can turn cultures of “niceness” into cultures of high-performance. In all companies, leaders need to make difficult decisions, give bad news, or convey difficult feedback to people they value.

Highly effective executive leadership teams, though, do it in a trust-building way – where they respect the person and their dignity. These conversations, in turn, set the standard for acceptable ways of giving and receiving feedback throughout the organization.

5. They genuinely care

Executives deliver meaningful feedback and listen to their frontline people because they genuinely care about everyone’s success in the organization. They are approachable because they genuinely care about people as human beings, not just as employees.

Gordon Krater retired a few months after the meeting I described above. After a careful planning process, Jim Proppe, a Plante Moran executive, was chosen as Gordon’s successor.

When I visited them again in 2018, the leadership team’s egalitarian, transparent way of working together felt the same. In fact, their scores on executive leadership effectiveness had remained steady. The staff knew Jim and often commented on how much they respected him. This is no small achievement.

카지노 커뮤니티 랭킹 research shows that a new CEO is a significant cultural challenge, even for the Fortune 100 Best 카지노 커뮤니티 추천 to Work For^®. In some cases, Best 카지노 커뮤니티 추천 with a new CEO have fallen 10 ranking spots or more.

But on the strength of its executive team effectiveness, Plante Moran’s ranking on the 100 Best list went from 51^st to 20^th in the year following the CEO transition. Plante Moran hold steady on the 100 Best list and in their most recent survey of employees – in 2020 – a remarkable 93% of employees reported a positive experience with the same leadership behaviors mentioned above.

Plante Moran is a living example of the resilience and continuity built by a highly effective executive team. And they are reaping the business benefits of this leadership team excellence: In the last 20 years, the firm has more than tripled its staff, increased revenue by more than 500 percent, and expanded to 20 offices throughout Michigan, Illinois, and Ohio, along with international locations in Mexico and Asia.

Want to measure the effectiveness of your executive leadership?

If you want to get clear insight on how employees are experiencing your executive team, we are here to help. Reach out to us about how our survey and culture management platform can help you measure your team’s effectiveness.

If you see these characteristics in your executive team, Great Place To Work wants to know more about your company! You might have what it takes to get Great Place To Work-Certified™.