People Matter
This past week, I spoke to thirty leaders from an electrical business at their annual conference in Cairns, followed by a couple of workshops for the national cold storage industry leaders on the Gold Coast. While I offered my insights from the stage, the conversations off-stage were particularly insightful and heartening.
Many highlighted the importance of exercising care for their team: building trusting relationships; ensuring leaders had access to executive coaches; the importance of ongoing training and development; an increased focus on equipping everyone in the organisation with greater awareness and skills to deal with mental health issues. They expressed the challenge of balancing the more operational tasks of their management roles with people management. These leaders exhibited a penchant for ongoing learning with the admission of shortfalls and failure as part of the journey to be more effective.
Leadership is not for the faint of heart. The electrical business owners exemplified the hundred or so conversations I had in the week. They’ve put some hard yards in over the years and shared how important their people were. I could see and feel it in the room. The team weren’t viewed as workers but were treated as people, as family. And in turn, this created a sense of cohesion and friendship amongst the team. No one was protective of their own turf or expressed rivalry with co-workers (except when it came to the lawn bowls turf, and then it was game on).
It was good to be with leaders, who exhibit in words and actions, that People Matter.
Ray
+61 403 341 105; ray@rayhodge.com.au; www.rayhodge.com.au
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*Photo by Luis Quintero