Creating A Culture Of Leadership Accessibility

3 recommendations

How does your organization create an environment where people can thrive? It’s a question that I think about every day in my role at Dawn Foods. It is a question that our global leadership team thinks about every day. Dawn is a global bakery manufacturer and ingredients supplier that has inspired bakery success for more than 100 years. But how does an organization with more than 4,000 team members around the world stay engaged and support its team to contribute their ideas, work through challenges, and grow their careers? One way is by a commitment, from the top down, to put people at the center of our leadership strategy.

At Dawn, we have what is called our Circle of Excellence. Our own iconic symbol that represents our commitments to our people, our products, and our customers. By intent, the word ‘people’ is at the top of the circular icon because people are our greatest assets. People are what sets us apart from the competition. Recently, our human resources team was renamed the people team because people, not resources, have dreams and ideas that can help your business succeed. For people to feel that their ideas matter, that they are heard, and that the company cares about them, businesses must provide managers and executives with support, insights, and tools to help them create an environment of accessibility with their teams. It is through this that we can elevate relationships, morale, and even talent retention. When advising executives on leadership accessibility, there are three recommendations I provide most often:

Leaders must be intentionally accessible, not only when it’s required. A passive leader will make themselves accessible after an issue occurs, such as dealing with a difficult situation after a mistake is made or only providing feedback at scheduled times dictated by a performance review process. In contrast, an active leader consistently and proactively makes themselves accessible to their teams throughout a project or task to ensure an understanding of expectations, processes, procedures, metrics, and feedback. This is critical to help mitigate potential challenges or pain points along the way.

If your workforce is physically on-site, a simple example of active accessibility is walking around and checking in with team members on both a personal and professional level. At Dawn Foods, a popular pre-COVID example was riding along with our distribution drivers. Senior leaders would join a driver’s route and work with them for the day. These actions were important because they created a direct line of communication for employees to leadership and vice versa.

If your workforce is remote, proactively checking in on teams through one-on-one discussions, and project follow-up meetings demonstrate the care you have for them as individuals and as part of the team. Remote working conditions may require you to be overly communicative to seek feedback from the team and build relationships with them.
Regardless of the location of your team, making time for opportunities to ask for an employee’s point of view on a current project or business update shows your interest in their ideas, opinions, and solutions. The combination of in-person and virtual practices can help make the organization feel smaller, build leadership relatability among team members, and increase worker comfortability with asking for guidance on a project and sharing new ideas.

Practicing vulnerability means identifying your weaknesses and strengths and being open about the challenges you’re going through. This encourages authenticity throughout your team and makes leaders relatable to their teams, who are likely facing similar realities.

This is likely top of mind as more offices begin to reopen this summer. Team members are likely concerned about what their company’s office reopening plan will entail and how it will impact the routines they’ve established over the last 14 months. Being vulnerable while discussing these topics can be intimidating for company leaders – especially if they don’t have all the answers. However, it’s critical to give team members and yourself space to share thoughts or flag concerns through direct conversations, opinion surveys, or town halls.

In fact, at a recent Dawn Foods town hall, I publicly shared my own personal struggle during a time in the pandemic and the positive experience I had when I reached out to my boss, who is our CEO, for help. That showed our team members that it’s okay to not be okay. Creating opportunities like this for feedback and open dialogue allows everyone to feel they are being heard, especially by those they trust to lead them. Regardless of role level, identity, or background, this helps people understand that they have a seat at the decision table.

Engaging in the activities or behaviors you are asking of others seems obvious, but it bears repeating. As a leader, everyone is watching your behavior, so it is critical to model the same behavior you seek from your team. If you or the company are asking colleagues to go through health checks, wear PPE, or follow a new policy, you must model that yourself.

The old mentality of, “do as I say not as I do,” will only deteriorate leadership credibility and accessibility and create a culture that is detrimental to morale and success. Modeling behavior you wish to see communicates that you believe in what you’re saying and that you do not see yourself as above certain behaviors. It shows you’re in it with them.

Team Members ultimately do not need commands. They need to believe when their leaders communicate their decisions, that they have the best interest of their workforce in mind.

As people team/HR professionals, we must work to orient organizations around our people. At Dawn, I’ve seen how a people-first mentality has benefitted everyone within our organization – it has provided us with a better understanding of what our teams are looking for in their careers and what our leadership’s vision is for the organization. This would not be possible if leaders weren’t in the practice of actively making themselves accessible to our workforce, approaching employee questions and concerns with vulnerability, and modeling the behavior they want to see throughout the company.

Our roles make us uniquely qualified and positioned to advocate for this type of leadership accessibility at the executive table, especially given the dynamic nature of team member needs in our post-pandemic world.