The Caring CEO: How chief executives overcome toxicity to create cultures of care and high performance
Self care, humility and empathy are recurring themes from chief executives speaking on The Caring CEO podcast.
Our federal Parliament has been inundated with graphic accounts of workplace toxicity, including misogyny, sexual assault and rape allegations.
Our Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, recently claimed it was a triumph for the protesters that they weren’t “met with bullets” during the March 4 Justice rallies.
Morrison says ‘the house’ is just like any workplace. Politicians with broader career experience like Julie Bishop and Malcolm Turnbull say things happen in Parliament that would never be tolerated in other companies.
The implications for this toxic culture are profound, as research shows that it leads to a decline in employee engagement and discretionary effort. Negative cultures also lead to 50% higher voluntary turnover.
There are examples of extraordinarily successful chief executives who focus equally on building a culture of care and high performance. Late last year I asked people to nominate leaders they had worked for that fit this profile. This year I have interviewed the leaders who were nominated for The Caring CEO podcast. After listening to the interviews, people who work in the chief executives’ workplaces have shared on LinkedIn how much they admire them.
There were consistent lessons and themes that emerged from these leaders, including:
Encouraging self care
Amanda Yeates, deputy director general of the Department of Transport Queensland, believes her own wellbeing was paramount during the pandemic. She had regular gym workouts with her teenage daughters, which was physically good for them, and established a strong sense of comradery. She was so committed to employee wellbeing that she chose to chair the department’s wellbeing committee. This led to a regular timetable of wellbeing events that promoted physical health and connection.
Lisa Claes, chief executive at CoreLogic international, and her team increased employee engagement in the last year, by regular events that increased employee connection.
Research shows that if a leader practices self-care, 91% of employees are motivated to do their best by the company, versus 38% where there is no leadership support.
Staying humble
Nobody embodies humility more than Mike Schneider, chief executive of Bunnings. Although he leads a team of 55,000, he lives by his own four Hs of leadership — honest, humble, helpful, and happy. Could this be why Bunnings is the number one most trusted brand in Australia?
He openly shares his need for seeking help and cites having coaches for business and running, as well as a psychologist for stressful times.
Pat Grier, the former chief executive of Ramsay Healthcare, practiced ‘leading from behind’. His focus was on seeing the 80% of good in people, encouraging them to reach their potential.
Each of these leaders are also strong advocates of the R U OK? movement, with Ramsay twice winning R U OK?’s best workplace awards.
Emma Hogan, Secretary of the NSW Department of Customer Service, volunteered that the R U OK? movement should evolve to three questions — ‘Am I OK?’, ‘Are we OK?’ and R U OK? — which truly recognises the benefit of a caring culture.
Care and empathy
“If you are living with domestic violence, the full resources of the company will support you.” This is just one example of how care and empathy radiated from Chris Sutherland, the former chief executive of Programmed. The simple one-page policy pledged access to money, legal support, security, and transport — with no cap.
Grier was also instrumental in creating the company’s values, The Ramsay Way — with the tag ‘People caring for people’. During his time with Ramsay, they grew from 12 hospitals to over 100, and massively outperformed the ASX in return to investors.
Gallup research has shown that the more employees that strongly believe ‘My supervisor cares about me’ — the higher the profit, and the longer an employee stays with the company.
Generosity over toxicity
Hogan is very generous with praise of those around her. She continually shares what she has learnt from others. Although she has only been in the public sector for 3 years, she stresses the impressive depth of talent that she has found there to help solve complex problems. This was consistent with the other leaders interviewed, who spoke about ‘we’, not ‘I’.
The year ahead will continue to be uncertain and stressful at work. Successful leaders will demonstrate that their main priority is to build more caring and resilient teams, who enjoy growing together. The rest will be blaming others.
