This content is locked. Please login or become a member.
Invest in Social Capital Create an Environment Where People Want to Go to Bat for You and Your Company, with Alisa Cohn
Don’t motivate by fear
Motivating by fear never works. It never works from the start and it never works at the end. People will do what you want them to do if they are afraid of you. That is absolutely true. And then you’re gaining their compliance and not their commitment. Ultimately, as a CEO, your job is to build commitment and buy-in with everybody in the company so that during difficult times they will have the creative solutions that will work with their discretionary effort and that all the people in your company will be loyal to you and the company because they all know that they’re sort of serving the greater good. They’re all moving in the same direction for the same purpose and also that they have a personal loyalty and attachment to you. So fear doesn’t build that, psychological safety builds that. Also what builds that is straight talk. People appreciate that you set boundaries and make tough decisions and give them straight talk. They want to feel listened to. All of those things are kind of the social capital that helps you create an environment where when the times get tough people are going to really go to bat for you and for the sake of the company.
Build psychological safety
The CEO’s job, ultimately, is to be a conductor of this workforce so that they can use all their talents in service of the company and the purpose and ultimately grow the business. So if you think of the CEO from that point of view, building psychological safety is really the most important characteristic. People can make mistakes and recover from their mistakes and learn from them and be able to move on together. That’s really a critical component of the CEO’s job. So then how does a CEO do that? The CEO can do that by first of all owning up to his or her own mistakes immediately and humbly and matter-of-factly without an overabundance of guilt. And certainly without an experience of having to cover it up or hide it. So that’s number one.
Number two, the CEO can ask for feedback and suggestions. So when the CEO asks for feedback and suggestions you begin to build a culture of a learning organization where we all develop together around here and we all give each other suggestions for how we build ourselves around here and how we develop ourselves around here. Once you see the CEO publicly modeling that it becomes a culture and environment where people are comfortable asking for feedback and input, giving each other suggestions and ultimately it really de-stigmatizes mistakes and helps everybody steer away from criticism and blame and focus instead on development and future-oriented activities and working together to achieve certain goals.