While we’re planning to the return to the office, we risk facing a great paradox. We might see people more in the office, but we risk hiding all of those life dimensions that became visible while they were working remotely. Those dimensions could become invisible: seemingly irrelevant to our professional lives, fitting in before and after our time in the office.
The relationship between work and life was a problem before the pandemic. It was normal to talk about “balancing” these two aspects, as though conflict was inevitable. But it was really about being aware of slow growth, meeting resistance in a working system that was born without having to think about families. Even though families have been a key part of women entering the workplace over the past 50 years, the world of work has continued to see them as an exception.
In order to change a system that “works”, we need a shock. Without that shock, things that were already there will always win over the uncertainty of change. We prefer to keep making the same mistakes, no matter how big they are, rather than trying something new. The shock came, but maybe it’s not enough. The system that we’re up against has a powerful structure and resilient dynamics. It’s easy to go back to our old ways. They’re so comforting, after all. The rigidity of the old way of doing things gave us stability. Narrow minded views reduced our perceptions of complexity. Through these mechanisms, power dynamics were born – and they’re naturally resistant to change. Scientists and opinion makers continue to tell us that we “can’t go back”. We’ve “seen” and now we can’t go back to being blind.
But there are two human factors that mean it risks being an option.
The first is effort. Uncertainty and a sense of urgency naturally push us towards what we already know. The word “return” is reassuring in itself. Almost as though we’re returning to safety, to normality, to the office. If this effort is multiplied by the number of people that managers are responsible for making decisions for, the pressure to restore our former ways only increases. The alternative would be carefully listening to both ourselves and others to define new frameworks and new mistakes. Mistakes that seem unsustainable in today’s world because they would tip our fears over the edge.
We tell ourselves that we can’t cope with any more uncertainty. Hybrid models are uncertain. If we make space for hybrid models, we need to be ready to not be sure of what lies ahead. If a person doesn’t turn up to a meeting and tunes in remotely, are they still feeling motivated? If I can’t see who is there and who isn’t at the start of the day, what can I understand about my team? If I can’t use my old ways of measuring presenteeism, how can I measure or understand it? As the psychologist and Columbia University professor Tomas Chamorro-Premuzik said in a recent Fast Company article:
We cannot un-know what we’ve learned about our teams: Who they are outside of the office is a critical part of who they are, period. We now have a unique opportunity to invite that whole person back into the workplace and make sure they feel not only that they belong but also that they are cherished for the whole person they represent.
The second risk factor is our rational intelligence. It’s our powerful ability to optimize, to find the most simple and direct path, helping us to find and choose certainty. We have entire statistic systems that are born to help us be rational and reduce our risk. But statistics themselves know that this is impossible. Our species’ survival has counted on a different characteristic, one that’s much more useful and efficient in times of change and uncertainty. After all, change has been constant and complex for our entire human history, both in small and large events. We all have this natural ability because it’s part of our species. It’s called emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence is a superpower that has two effects that are vital in these circumstances. It helps us to understand how we are and it allows us to help others to feel well in themselves. Self-awareness and the ability to manage our emotions, as well as knowing and recognizing them, are the keys to emotional intelligence. They allow us to keep a constant picture of who we are, even while we’re changing. This social awareness and relational ability, guided by the mysteries of empathy, allows us to “feel” who those around us are feeling. It allows us to understand that which our rational minds can’t grasps, even when we’re missing information or living with uncertainty.
Emotional intelligence can touch where rationality can’t. When we trust it (and ourselves), we can go back to seeing others without forgetting all that they are. Maybe we’ll feel ready to make new mistakes to change things. We can’t go back. But maybe we don’t want to either.
This article was originally written by Riccarda Zezza and published on the Il Sole 24 Ore blog, Alley Oop. To read the original article (in Italian), please click here.
When we talk about motherhood, we’re clear about the needs. But we now have the resources and the opportunity to bring society into a new era, redefining what it means to be a mother in the 21st century.
I’m saying mother and not parent, I’m saying mother and not father for a single reason. We have now realised that children are often “dependent” on their mothers – even though bizarrely we’re still discussing how much leave new fathers should have. When we’re designing the future, we can’t ignore the status quo. Neutralizing the status quo in the hope of going beyond it is the biggest risk we run when planning for change. Especially when we’re trying to resolve a social problem.
To reach a place where we’re not “just” talking about mothers, we need to look clearly at the concept of motherhood in our countries. That narrative is still going on in the background, so much so that we talk about “reducing” the problem, as though it’s obviously and inevitably a problem for us all. We’re “helping” families, “compensating” children, “supporting” women choosing to work. Solutions that seem to reduce the negative effects of a stagnant social problem: motherhood. Before births, before parenthood: the problem is motherhood, and the difficulty we have reconciling it with everything else. Especially when it comes to the way in which productivity is defined in our society, at the speed of the market, schools, services and life in the west.
The women that choose to become mothers are courageous, and need to be protected and supported.
Motherhood is a choice that goes against the grain, and so needs to be celebrated.
Motherhood is a choice, and women must be free to make it.
But what else is motherhood? That narrative that goes on in the background, that part of the story that we don’t talk about? Which stereotypes are we talking about? Quale narrazione corre sullo sfondo, quale parte della storia non viene raccontata? Are we focusing too much on the only real driver in life?
Western culture implicitly links motherhood with weight, motherhood with illness, motherhood with sacrifice. When we think about production, motherhood interrupts a linear journey: a fracture that needs us to bridge the gap in order to compensate negative consequences. When we think about personal satisfaction, motherhood is a radical choice between one thing or another. Family vs career, woman vs mother, a conflict between different identities – or rather head vs heart. When we think about society, motherhood is a temporal discontinuity: a momentary pause as we carry forward complexity that conflicts with the norm and makes everything so much more complicated. Think about changing stations on trains, space to breastfeed, school times, the length of summer holidays, ramps on stairs, areas that are off-limits for children. They are all exceptional services that have been built by able-bodied people.
In the narrative that reaches our young women, motherhood is tiring, risky, uncertain and difficult. It’s something that holds our own bodies hostage, and an experience that needs to be compensated and protected because it’s an add-on. It depicts motherhood as being scary, something that requires courage. There’s not a baby bonus or child benefit that can compensate for the tales we’re telling about motherhood. We need to talk about it: we need to make the status quo visible. It’s the starting point.
Just like in the story The Emperor’s New Clothes, we need to see things as they are before we clothe them in something new. And once we’ve seen the weaknesses in this way of narrating things, we can see how it falls short when compared to the whole experience. We need to invest in narrating a new story, one that’s fuller and richer. A story that talks about what it’s really like to have children and care for them, raising people that are stronger that we are and that will outlive us. It’s a story that sees having a child as a wonder and a point of strength. It’s inviting for women, fathers and also people without children. A collective dream for a better future. A generative life, and so much more than that. There’s an individual aspect that we can work on: the opportunity to become a mother will always be inaccessible if we don’t let ourselves talk about it. We need to have those courageous conversations about what happens when we “grow up”.
This is what I’ve learned over the past 13 years, since my eldest child Marta was born. It’s how I narrate being a mother, but it’s often contradictory to the story that my country tells me.
My children save my life every day. They are my training ground, my refuge, and the meaning behind everything that I do.
They remind me that the world exists without me. At the same time, they make me feel responsible for everything that happens in the world. There’s nothing that I’m indifferent about.
By becoming a mother, I’ve understood that they are my children. It’s not a delusion of being omnipotent, but rather a sense of responsibility.
And I’m not scared by it. It’s the reason that I write, work, dream and plan new things. Each day, I have more energy and more willingness to move forward than I did the previous day.
That sense of life that many of us seek and easily lose, that vision that makes us immortal, that sense of responsibility that saves us. Having a child makes this a concrete reality, enriching all other aspects of our lives. Even if it’s just one part of the story, why are we not talking about it?
This article was originally written by Riccarda Zezza and published on the Il Sole 24 Ore blog, Alley Oop. To read the original article (in Italian), please click here.
Sometimes we end up repeating the same questions because we struggle to recognize a response, even if it’s a simple one. Maybe that’s exactly why we do it. It happens when we talk about leadership, contrasting old and new models. There’s an old model that never goes out of style. It’s formed most of the way we work and are measured today, the so-called “command and control”. We’ve adopted it for so many years, it’s become familiar and secure. But it has it’s limits too. We know that in a fast-paced and interconnected world, like the one we live in, it’s unsustainable to give a select few this responsibility. They’ll never know enough or act fast enough to “save us all”. So the potential for the independence and efficacy of a better-distributed leadership is there, based on radically new foundations. One of these foundations is relationships: the quality of relationships, raising others as we grow ourselves.
But relationships can only be managed up until a certain point. They hardly ever go straight from point A to point B. That’s perhaps the reason why we struggle to see them as a key part of leadership. It would mean tolerating lots of things being undefined and lying outside the shared map. So how can we lead in this way? How can we guide others while leaning on the mobile ground that is human relationships?
A recent Forbes article delves further into this topic. In order to create an empathetic connection between people, to help them feel free to grow, to give them independence and the ability to express themselves, the ability to do more – we need to be present. So far, these concepts are almost spiritual, touching mindfulness and profound connection. This type of relationship seems like a luxury in the frenetic nature of our office work. But Forbes suggests the opposite. It translates being present into a dialogue between managers and employees. Here are 3 ways that we can put empathetic leadership into action:
1) don’t get distracted. When you’re with someone else, be with them. Don’t look at your email, take off your WhatsApp notifications, don’t look at your phone. Be there. There’s a reason we say “pay attention”. Attention is a currency when it comes to relationships: it costs more and is worth more than time. 5 minutes of attention are much better than 30 of half-hearted attention. In fact, half-hearted attention doesn’t exists: for our brains, you’re either there or you’re not.
2) Be prepared. Aristotele said: Liberty comes through discipline. If you prepare for your meeting, you’ll not waste time trying to understand it during the meeting and you’ll have more space to think.
When you’re prepared, you can fully listen to the other person. You don’t have to waste part of your listening ability trying to keep up with the thinking processes that are going on in the background.
3) Park your agenda. This is perhaps the most difficult one. It means avoiding going into a 1:1 with the aim of bringing something out of it.
If you show up with an agenda, you’re not there to guide the person, but rather to manage their tasks. Present leaders know how to ask questions and feel comfortable with the silence that follows.
If you don’t have an agenda, you can be curious. Curiosity has the same route as the word care. Recent research shows that practising curiosity can help you make less mistakes and make better decisions, with less conflict and more open communication. The result? A higher team performance.
Paying attention, being prepared, being curious. They might seem at odds with the pace of our ways of working. Yet we “know how to do it”. When we use these skills at work, our colleagues and clients will transform us into empathetic leaders that know how to make others feel better and activate better resources.
This article was originally written by Riccarda Zezza and published on the Il Sole 24 Ore blog, Alley Oop. To read the original article (in Italian), please click here.
In an increasingly competitive market, engagement, retention and wellbeing gain strategic relevance for companies. Having said that, it’s not always easy for teams to understand how they can achieve results in these areas. According to Harvard Business Review, most companies offer to increase salaries, financial or training benefits and welfare offers to retain their employees.
There’s no doubt that these elements are important, but research shows that it’s the working environment that’s most likely to keep an employee happy in their role. The first element to help businesses stay competitive is recognising their employees identity dimensions. Not just as professionals, but also (and most importantly) as people.
Employees that differ from the majority of their colleagues in terms of religion, gender, socio-economic background or age are often hiding important aspects of their identity for fear of being judged negatively. It makes it difficult for companies to attract their talent, as it directly affects their reputation, productivity and competitive advantage. For employees, it’s quite impossible for them to feel connected to the company that they work for. The key to inclusion is understanding who the employees really are.
Lots of organisations carry out engagement and pulse surveys. But many fail to carry out a deep analysis of this data by truly listening to their people. And as a result, they lose out on opportunities to identify any problems that are hindering the Diversity&Inclusion strategy.
That’s why Diversity enriches us, but only if it’s managed. Otherwise, it can actually conflict with other objectives and initiatives. It adds value to teams when they are aware of it. Companies can no longer afford to respond with gender and work-life balance.
It’s not enough to include different profiles within the organization. Simply employing more women or people from different ethnic backgrounds won’t enrich the company in itself. D&I needs to be constantly worked on. Otherwise it becomes a passing trend that no longer stimulates research or questions, becoming a check-box exercise. That’s why it’s key for companies to invest in valuing their differences. It all starts with training managers in caring leadership models and working on recognising their employees’ transferable skills, starting with those gained through their life experiences.
DISCOVER HOW TO UNLOCK YOUR PEOPLE’S POTENTIAL
All we have to do is think about the paradox that our CVs (curriculum vitae) have become. The name literally means an ‘account of life’, but nowadays it only contains details of a person’s working experiences. LinkedIn noticed this too, after young mother Heather Bolan alerted them to the fact that she couldn’t choose anything other than pre-selected professions to add to her profile. This meant that people who had ‘taken a break’ from work, perhaps to travel, support a family member or recover from an illness, found themselves with an embarrassing ‘gap’ on their CV. This lead to suspicion and probing questions from recruiters.
But it’s through life transitions and caregiving experiences that we learn the most soft skills. These same skills can be valued in professional terms too. Even LinkedIn has become more flexible and allowed users to detail their life experiences that have boosted their professional profiles, even if they weren’t directly linked to a professional role.
Recognising and valuing diversity is the key to enriching the company. For this to happen, we need to be able to read the data that the company collects. We need to learn to ask the right questions, addressing people in their entirety, to avoid generalising. People Analytics shouldn’t just look at the tip of the iceberg. Rather, they must look at all of a person’s dimensions.
Alongside so-called Big Data ), we can dive into an exploration of Small Data. People’s self-narration can help us see the parts of the iceberg that lie beneath the surface. To do so, managers need to be trained in order to listen to people ‘while’ they are learning.
Discover the Mondelez International Case Study
Diversity is innovative if companies are able to highlight the diversity that lies in all of us, and show how it can be positively used through thinking outside the box, creativity and action.
Even feedback needs to consider all the elements that make up the person in front of you. Otherwise, this rating system won’t stimulate improvement, but rather negatively impact employee productivity, as well as the brand reputation. It all starts within the company.
Listening requires dedication. It’s tiring. But it’s also an investment. The time that managers dedicate to listening to their employees will unlock future benefits. They won’t be afraid of the changes that evolve within the company: every transition – whether at home or at work – can enrich us if it’s managed correctly. We just need to learn how to do so.
Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) isn’t something that’s just for management and HR teams. It’s about transforming the society that we live in. Building an inclusive company means contributing to a more inclusive society. It’s about being aware of the fact that we’re all different, and that everyone can bring their own unique contribution to this collective mission.
The pandemic has had an impact on corporate D&I strategy. In times of crisis, they’re called to care for their employees. So how have companies kept their commitment throughout the Covid crisis and changing priorities? Which initiatives have they launched? It’s something we talked about at the online workshop Promoting diversity in the new normal organised by Comunicazione Italiana in collaboration with Lifeed.
First of all, it’s important to consider the approach that companies have towards D&I. “To evaluate the differences, we need to see them. We need to recognise the things that make each person unique, their experiences and changing roles in every life dimension, both personal and professional“, explains Chiara Bacilieri, Head of Data at Lifeed. Diversity is about valuing the characteristics within a team that “can become more effective if people know how to learn from each others differences”.
It translates into people’s “role enrichment” as they transfer soft skills between their roles and life experiences (parenthood, caregiving, pandemics, a divorce, moving house, a professional change). Furthermore, Lifeed’s recent analysis on emotions and desires linked to our life roles revealed the key values that people share and hope for the future. These values also cover new ways of working and an improved work-life balance: respect, inclusion and valuing each individual. These indications are essential to consider when building a D&I strategy.
DISCOVER LIFEED’S D&I SOLUTIONS
D&I can be considered “an ingredient in the recipe’ for organisational wellbeing”, suggests Alessandra Benevolo, HR Director Italy & HR Cluster Head South Europe at Ipsen, a pharmaceutical company that’s certified by the Winning Women Institute and the meritocracy forum. When we consider the whole employee, without making distinctions between their personal and working lives, it’s important to remember that “everyone has a talent for bringing added value to the business”. According to Benevolo, “we need to know how to effectively speak to them about Diversity and Inclusion”. It’s not about gender politics and quotas, but rather integrating diversity into our everyday practice.
The pandemic has accelerated D&I initiatives at work. Lina Donnarumma, Human Capital and Organization Manager at the Italian Institute of Technology, believes that inclusion over the past year has translated into the “ability to keep engagement alive even when people are physically distant, when they’ve expressed the need to feel involved”. The company therefore built its D&I strategy on four pillars: wellbeing (caring for people, also through psychological support); gender equality (gender equality plan, salary equality, wellbeing); D&I culture as added value (putting the individual’s authenticity at the centre); social impact of local country policies.
Listening to people as part of an inclusion strategy was a concept highlighted by Lavinia Lenti, HR Director at Sace. According to Lenti, “team cohesion is fundamental in reaching objectives”. In fact, D&I is also a performance element: “If people feel listened to, they work better”. Aside from numbers and KPIs, the company has focused on D&I to get managers used to D&I topics and collaboration between different generations. They’ve done so by activating a reverse mentoring project between junior and senior members of the team, as well as a project supporting parenthood, in collaboration with Lifeed.
In a certain sense, the pandemic has ‘helped’ managers to better understand their people’s needs, as highlighted by Raffaella Maderna, People & Communication Director at Lundbeck Italia. She’s seen gender diversity backed up by numbers, with women making up 58% of the corporate population. “We’re working to promote virtuous behaviours when it comes to topics such as violence against women and mental health. Through the crisis, we’ve accelerated our People Care initiatives to better understand people’s problems and support their mental health. People need to be listened to and understood”.
Gessica Perego, Global HRBP Information Services & Regional HR Director South Europe, Middle East & Africa at Coface Assicurazioni also believes that listening is a key part of D&I strategy. “D&I shouldn’t be divided into ‘silos’, it’s about listening to people’s needs more”. Perego talked about multiculturalism: “We work with lots of different cultures, and through the pandemic and period of remote working, we learnt to listen to people more. For example, we understood whether in certain cultures people preferred to work from the office instead of from home”. Respecting other cultures and ways of thinking is a key part of implementing D&I strategy too.
The pandemic and smart working have broken down some traditional barriers, such as the gender division of roles in the family sphere. According to Luca Miglierina, HR Business Partner and D&I Lead at Sanofi, “the emergency has also stimulated new initiatives and increased inclusion”. Within the pharmaceutical company, this means focusing on four main areas: gender balance, disability, LGBT, Ageing. “At a global level, we’ve launched the ‘All in’ strategy based on 3 pillars : reflect on the diversity within the areas we work in; unleash our employees’ potential; transform society in a positive way”.
Finally, we can ask ourselves whether we need to implement ad hoc D&I initiatives. It’s something that Antonella Zaghini, Responsabile CSR, Peace Manager at Guna asked: “We haven’t needed policies, we don’t live Diversity because we’re always trying to put people at the centre, without having to balance different D&I components, such as gender or salary equality. Through the pandemic we’ve helped those working from home both with psychological and organisational support. Internally, we’ve favoured the use of portable devices to boost inclusion even when we’re working remotely. Ethics are at the heart of what we do”.
Companies are increasingly active in promoting their Diversity & Inclusion initiatives. Such initiatives benefit both the individuals within the company, as well as the business itself.
“Inclusion” refers to closing in on a defined space. But following the aftermath of the pandemic, we’re increasingly aware of just how many identity dimensions we all have. This multidimensionality has broken down the boundaries of space and time. It’s also broken down office and house walls as many of us have been working from home. That’s why it’s time to substitute the word “inclusion” with “opening”.
Through self-discovery and sharing reflections with others, as well as breaking down past taboos, people become more aware of their identity dimensions and characteristics. This makes them more effective at work, as well as more engaged and happier. And companies can have larger maps available to them. By looking at the bigger picture of diversity and complexity, companies can benefit from this “opening” at both in terms of individual and collective performance.
It’s what Riccarda Zezza, CEO at Lifeed, talked about in the round table Organizations for people and people for organizations? It was held in honour of the 50th AIDP National Congress. A number of executives took part, including Michele Viale, General Director at Alstom Italy and Switzerland, Marco Piccolo CEO at Reynaldi, CSR Delegate at Confindustria Piemonte and Elena Caffarena Senior Partner at Praxi.
During the session, it became evident that people’s and companies’ interests have collided. That’s why the organizational structures and the people that make them up are so important. By revealing the differences between people (and changing our behaviour as intermediaries) we can achieve better results.
On the other hand, the Taylor model no longer makes sense in our society. Time spent at work needs to be valued within the context of life. Companies are called to take responsibility for their territory, supporting people and seeing them for all they are, aside from their working roles. In other words: with humanity.
The initial phase of the pandemic created a sense of uncertainty and disorientation among people. Today, companies have the opportunity to start a new chapter. In this context, leaders are concentrating on finding suitable strategies to favour the gradual return to the office for their employees.
Now more than ever, people need to believe in the future and that they can contribute to it directly. During transitional phases, it’s possible to do so when HR managers innovate with attentive listening. It’s a simple action that can leverage organizational wellbeing, productivity and valuing talent.
Recent data emerging from Lifeed programs suggests that 62% of people feel anxious about the idea of “going back to normal”. 69% of employees expect their company to make space for their thoughts and feelings, to favour their return to the office. What’s more, 68% of Lifeed participants believe that the ideal manager should be a ritiene che il manager ideale debba avere la dote dell’ascolto.
In particolare, ci sono 5 comportamenti manageriali che possono facilitare il passaggio dal senso di smarrimento al nuovo inizio.
The pandemic has triggered a working revolution, undermining managerial practices that had become static over the years. Today’s leaders have emerged from this time with new questions. How can we manage this transition and save the business, without forgetting about our people’s needs?
This was just one of the questions that was discussed at the recent HRC event: New flexibility and its impact on leadership. How can we guide teams through uncertainty and which priorities will help us to adapt to change? Managers and HR directors from various companies took part in the discussion.
Once the pandemic hit, companies found themselves living through a period of forced change at work. They were searching for answers, without being able to fall back on predefined stereotypes. Recent Lifeed research shows that employees within the individual context developed self-awareness, problem solving and other skills relating to themselves. When they were working with others, they developed skills relating to team work. “On the other hand, we’ve seen that collaboration, supporting others and delegation are the skills that people develop most in their private lives”, explains Emanuela Vignotti, Chief Revenue Officer at Lifeed. “That’s because life transitions – including the pandemic – play a key part in developing people’s skills”.
The biggest thing that tomorrow’s leaders will have to face is “being flexible and continuing to facilitate people working productively in different ways. They’ll have to leverage the soft skills that they have developed in their private proprio lives”. We can’t forget that people are at the heart of business. When companies truly know their employees and value their skills, they will be more likely to be able to reach corporate objectives in the ‘new normal’.
Leaders walk a delicate line, now more than ever. “The main priorities are empathy, the need to listen and to build relationships based on trust. It’s about going beyond the dimension of control” says Francesca Fraulini at The Kraft Heinz Company. So what are the characteristics of a good leader? Fraulini believes they need to know how to inspire their team and create external connections.
HR managers have found themselves facing unexpected situations through the pandemic. They’ve felt the need to adapt to change as it’s happening, supported by their value systems and corporate cultures. Gianpaolo Corti at The Kraft Heinz Company says that they “need a system of soft skills through informal networks to change the traditional ‘command and control’ approach. Many companies still use this approach, but nowadays it’s no longer the most suitable leadership model”.
Change must move in line with the corporate identity too. Antonio Guarrera at Aboca underlined that tomorrow’s leaders need to have three characteristics: skills (technical preparation), virtue (be a good example) and care. Or rather serving others “because the company is like a living organism where trust is key”.
For Stefania Capelli at Cisco, although the pandemic has been tiring, it’s also given us lots of opportunities to “evolve managerial culture”. New dimensions that have encouraged Capelli to think about an “open source” future. A future where true leaders focus on inclusion to reach their objectives. It’s a change to make space for people’s creativity and initiatives, because “trust always wins the day”.
Flexibility and trust. They’re two concepts at the heart of a new leadership style. According to Fabio Comba at KPMG, “networks are cornerstones for team leaders. We need to create conditions where people can perform but also have fun. Every investment in corporate wellbeing essentially boosts client satisfaction”.
An energetic and welcoming leadership doesn’t just enhance performance, it also helps everyone feel “part of the team, regardless of where they choose to work”. Massimiliano Sacco at Electronic Arts highlights the importance of finding balance through this hybrid phase, where some working processes are more challenging to complete entirely remotely. Leaders will have to calibrate these phases to value and strengthen teams in order to hit targets.
Ugo Venier at Snam puts the focus on leaders being aware of how to manage their teams and listen. It’s “key for leadership in uncertain times, because if they listen to people and understand their needs, they’ll find everyone is more effective”.
Leadership has been put to the test over the past year. But new opportunities to change our work-life balance have emerged. Monica Chiari di Cameo highlighted how tomorrow’s leaders “unfold within change. Leaders must care more about relationships than performance. People that lead are no longer controlling the situation, but rather guiding people in the right direction and building trust”.
Transformative leadership redefines values that respond to new needs. Maurizio Audizi at Ania “because context has led us to focus on things that were previously regarded as less relevant”.
Lots of keywords emerged from the session, painting a picture of tomorrow’s leaders. Trust was a recurring theme. Trust in team behaviours, in corporate values and in building a new leadership for a better future.
All life events can enrich our CVs. So why is it that life experiences are usually seen as “career breaks” in our professional careers? Take these for example: the birth of a child (20% of Italian women resign after maternity leave) and time dedicated to caregiving (28% of caregivers say that there’s a stigma surrounding this responsibility). But these life experiences activate 63 skills! It’s time to radically change our culture and consider these experiences as feeding our education. Experiences that are worthy of putting on our CVs.
That’s why we’ve created #MyRealCv. It’s our digital campaign designed to increase our awareness of skills trained through life experiences (such as becoming a parent, caring for a dependent relative, going through a divorce, a house move, a change in role). When we recognize that their complexity is enriching our CVs, we’ll be able to boost our work-life synergy too.
#MyRealCv has been created by Lifeed, the social impact EdTech company that transforms life events into learning experiences and involves their companies as agents for change.
The campaign, created in collaboration with communications agency Cookies & Partners, wants to encourage cultural change by involving the community on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. In September, the initiative will grow as selected influencers will get involved to show how important work-life synergy is and how life events can help with that.
“It’s called ‘curriculum vitae’ (or rather an account of life), but we often forget about the life part. This means that we’re wasting resources that could be put to use at work and in society. Riccarda Zezza, Lifeed CEO said – With this campaign, we’re proposing a change to the paradigm that makes everyone more aware of the fact that life events generate skills that deserve to be valued in our professional lives, because they “work” there too.
The campaign is playful and open to all. It’s a simple test that asks users questions to identify the main changes that people are going through. It invites people to choose which skills they most identify with. The person then receives a report with the skills that they’ve developed so that they can then update them in their CV.
Lifeed has an innovative approach to the workplace, and is the first Italian company to be selected by the Unreasonable Group. This international network brings together disruptive innovators and entrepreneurs to co-create the future of work.
The world of work is unbalanced, and it’s not sustainable. Even more so, because it’s invisible: it flows in the background and is ignored by most. We’re talking about the way that we (don’t) talk about the responsibility that employees have towards their managers. If we plug in the keywords “employee”, “responsibility” and “manager” into a search engine, the only connection that emerges is the responsibility that managers have towards their employees. There’s nothing that goes in the opposite direction.
It’s true, managers can do a lot in terms of enabling the people that work with them. We know that workers’ wellbeing often depends on the quality of their relationships with their “superiors”, and that’s where the focus tends to be. We look at their ability to foster a productive working relationship. Managers are trained to coordinate, understand and guide their employees, staying grounded in difficult times and able to give clear answers. Managers are trained to improve their empathy skills, while “caring” leadership also requires them to be close to others and to pay attention. But the responsibility all seems to be on the managers’ side.
The word “responsible” could potentially be a synonym for the word “boss”: maybe that’s why we find it hard to understand why responsibility should cascade down the levels. So employees can’t feel responsible? They are definitely responsible for their own work and results: employees responsibilities towards their employer are outlined in their contracts. But for everything else, many relational responsibilities aren’t given to them, and they are treated more like teenagers than responsible adults. A managerial dynamic that seems to mirror paternity in the 20th century.
Even though we often talk about horizontal and diffused leadership, the direction and overall decisions seem to move from the top down, while requests and waiting for direction seem to come from the bottom up. Yes, people are waiting, and this attitude aids people removing themselves from responsibility in a “command and control” model, much like old-fashion leadership forms. People avoid thinking when they’re in this context, believing that the solution is in the hands of the leader. That’s just not the case. Or maybe, it is, but only temporarily while we establish a new culture?
When change gains momentum, it’s essential to move together. It’s a way of keeping our work productive and alive. So why are workers not being asked to care for their managers? Why are managers not being listened to? Employees aren’t children, but even children grow up to ask their children to form a different relationship, rather than constantly telling them what to do. It touches a nerve: at least in Italy where children stay at home longer than they do in other European countries. Children are still “dependent” and parents struggle to see them as fully fledged adults. So to suggest equality means giving up a part of the control, but it’s also a way to gain alliances. The same thing is true at work.
We’re teaching managers to recognize their vulnerability, to ask for help and to admit that they don’t always have all the answers. But at the same time, we’re also asking employees to fill the spaces that emerge: space to take risks, to show themselves that they are strong, to reveal new skills and able to put them to the test? Which corporate training program teaches them to cultivate a relationship with their manager, involving them and feeling that you can both contribute equally? It goes beyond “giving each other feedback”. Feedback is about giving something back because you’ve received, not having the responsibility to give anyway.
“We need to stop treating our employees like children“, said professor Isaac Getz, author of “Freedom inc”. What would happen if we moved the focus to our employees, starting to treat them as adults: people able to care for their managers, to lower their expectations and to contribute more?
This article was originally written by Riccarda Zezza and published on the Il Sole 24 Ore blog, Alley Oop. To read the original article (in Italian), please click here.
