Since our workplaces started to open up, after Covid-19 lockdowns, there has been much emphasis on workplace productivity, with so much time, money and effort poured into employee culture programs.

In this time, we have seen significant spending on learning and development programs, workforce productivity tools and employee psychometrics like LSI, MBTI, HBDI, Disc and Hogan.

And, while I have administered and facilitated hundreds of these tools and programs, they mask a crucial blind-spot: It is the quality of leadership which has the biggest impact on workplace performance and nothing moves the dial anywhere near as much as the behaviour of leaders.  More bluntly, leaders investing in initiatives and programs to help employees be more productive is relatively futile if they are not, first and foremost, good leaders.

How you lead matters far more than any tool, L&D training or culture program you invest in – nothing matters more for how people do their work.

So, while it is true that work no longer occupies the same place it once did in peoples’ lives, it is time we stopped blaming employees for their lack of engagement and started asking what we can do, as leaders, to better engage our people; how we can change our own behaviour to cultivate a more productive, committed, innovative and service oriented culture.

I understand how challenging it is at the moment and the very real war for talent. What’s more, people entering our workplaces do not have what I call the ‘3-Superpowers of Performance’ – empathy, curiosity and enterprise.

This makes leadership even more critical; this makes unlocking latent potential even more urgent.

And, how do we grow when capacity is limited by a lack of capability? How do we deliver for our customers when there isn’t a culture of teamwork, collaboration, effort, growth, innovation, service and quality?

There is hope.
What drives culture more than any other factor is the behaviour of the leaders. And, the leadership behaviours that drive employee engagement and discretionary effort and higher performance, are still the same (even if it is harder now).

Talk to us if you need to build your leadership muscle and unlock the potential of the people you lead.