3 Powerful Strategies for Creating Stronger Employee Relationships

Welcome to Leading Disruption, a weekly letter about disruptive leadership in a transforming world. Every week we’ll discover how the best leaders set strategy, build culture, and manage uncertainty all in service of driving disruptive, transformative growth.

In the past 20 years, the way we view our customers has evolved tremendously. Whereas once we only thought of them transactionally, now we think in terms of customer experience and the kind of relationship we want to create.

We don’t just want our customers to buy from us; we want them to trust us, too.

Unfortunately, the employee relationship in most workplaces hasn’t evolved the same way. Employees continue to feel like easily replaceable assets that are taken for granted. Yikes.

To create an intentional culture, we need to change our approach to building employee relationships –?just like we rethought our customer relationships.

So how can we rethink this approach? In Tuesday’s livestream, I shared the three indicators of positive employee relationships – and three steps to help you deepen yours.

Essential elements for employee relationships

To create strong employee relationships, three things need to be present.

The first is integrity.

Your employees want to know that the company’s leaders are honest with them. They don’t want to be kept in the dark; they want to know what’s really going on.

As leaders, we need to build a relationship with our employees that encourages honesty. Our employees must trust that, if they confide in us, we’ll treat them fairly – whether they’re happy or unhappy, staying or going.

The second element is agency, the belief that you have the power and ability to make decisions and take accountability for your actions. When your employees have agency, they understand how they can be more innovative and disruptive, and take ownership of the process.?

Instilling agency requires leaders to clearly delineate an employee’s role. What can they do? What are their responsibilities? What falls outside their purview??

Effective leaders need to be aware of their employees’ capabilities, encouraging them to step up, prove their abilities, and accept new responsibilities. This drives even more agency.

The final component, openness, is how leaders create trust by sharing.

As a leader, your default must be openness. However, you also need to clearly outline what’s open and what’s closed: What will you share? What do your employees need to know? What isn’t disclosed?

To measure openness within your organization, ask your employees how confident they are telling you or their boss what’s going on and the problems they’re encountering. Are there mechanisms or hierarchies in place that ensure their concerns get addressed?

If your employees don’t feel comfortable being honest, trust, agency, and integrity diminish, and your employee relationships suffer and fuel a less-than-ideal culture.?

How to create a new dynamic

If any of these elements are missing within your organization, you can take definitive steps to redefine the employee relationship and create a more collaborative, disruptive environment where everyone thrives:

1. Clearly define a great employee relationship –?from the employee’s perspective and the employer’s. Ask yourself what beliefs underlie the relationship. What behaviors show up? How does each party feel about the relationship? And what processes and policies need to be in place to guide that relationship?
2. Borrow best practices from your marketing department. Marketing has deep experience listening to customers and mapping out and developing customer relationships. Apply that knowledge and expertise to help you develop stronger employee relationships.?
3. Take an active interest in your employees’ long-term goals. Get to know them. Who are they? What do they want to do? What are their ambitions? The more you can tap into their passions and the things they’re curious about, the more you can create meaningful work for them that’s aligned with their values, as well as the organization’s objectives.?
4. Infuse integrity and agency into your relationships. If you can pinpoint the places where trust and agency are low and identify triggering issues, you can take intentional steps to provide more information in an open, honest, and clear way.

When you’re committed to taking these actions and shifting your view of employees from asset to human being, you’ll foster an environment of integrity, agency, and openness – and create a strong culture built on trust, where people are excited to show up, contribute, and execute your strategy.

Next week, we’re continuing our cultural series with a livestream about the future of work. I’ll share why it’s not about technology and dispel some common notions about the future. See you on Tuesday, August 24 at 9 am PT/12 pm ET!

Your Turn

How would you describe the employee relationship in your workplace? What words would you use? I think you’ll find this exercise interesting, especially if you ask your company’s leaders and your team members. Share what you come up with –?I love hearing from you!