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Take a quick test: whom do you like and trust more? Your boss, the more senior layer of managers above him, or the CEO in your organization?
Ready? If you are like most people, you prefer your boss to the next layer up, and the next layer up to the following one. You then usually give the CEO some credit and rate her/him higher than senior management. That’s what I’ve personally experienced with every engagement survey I was part of, and is consistent with what top leaders tell me. But even for how we rate our CEOs, proximity
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matters. Search any sizeable company on Glassdoor and compare the CEO rating based on all reviews, with the rating based on headquarters reviews only: headquarters will almost always rate the CEO better.
Trusting one’s senior leadership is important: it is the only way a strong company culture can flourish. Without it, your organization will be a collection of fiefdoms, each with its own culture and allegiances. So as a senior leader responsible for a large and geographically dispersed number of employees, many of whom will never get the chance to speak with you, how do you communicate closeness and trust?
“I make a point of visiting faraway offices frequently and speaking to the team on the ground”, you’ll say. You might add: “skip-level lunches”, “talent meetings”, or whatever the jargon in your organization is. These are absolutely needed, but don’t expect to establish a genuine connection by sitting down with a group of “talents” and asking “OK, so what is really happening around here?”. After you leave, people are likely to say “yeah, well, we did the usual song and dance”.
But what if you actually are a singer or a dancer? Or a passionate runner, an avid fisherman, a martial arts practitioner? Whatever it is, people everywhere in your organization are likely to know about it and to trust it reflects who you really are, since passion is hard to fake. It’s great if it’s something you can actually do with them: Arne Sorenson, former CEO of Marriott, used to go on runs with colleagues from every office he visited around the world; Dennis Muilenburg, former CEO of Boeing, cycled with them. But even if it is not something you easily can do together (say you love open water fishing) or if you simply prefer to keep it for yourself (you love cycling, but as “me” time), your employees will embrace your sharing about it as an ice breaker and will be readier to share their own stories about their own passions. People who have not been carefully selected by HR will walk up to you, to ask you about the best bait for white marlin fishing or about gravel versus asphalt cycling. This provides a rare wavelength for an actual, genuine conversation with employees in the furthest corners of your “empire”: a precious opportunity to nurture and use wisely.
“I make a point of visiting faraway offices frequently and speaking to the team on the ground”, you’ll say. You might add: “skip-level lunches”, “talent meetings”, or whatever the jargon in your organization is. These are absolutely needed, but don’t expect to establish a genuine connection by sitting down with a group of “talents” and asking “OK, so what is really happening around here?”. After you leave, people are likely to say “yeah, well, we did the usual song and dance”.
But what if you actually are a singer or a dancer? Or a passionate runner, an avid fisherman, a martial arts practitioner? Whatever it is, people everywhere in your organization are likely to know about it and to trust it reflects who you really are, since passion is hard to fake. It’s great if it’s something you can actually do with them: Arne Sorenson, former CEO of Marriott, used to go on runs with colleagues from every office he visited around the world; Dennis Muilenburg, former CEO of Boeing, cycled with them. But even if it is not something you easily can do together (say you love open water fishing) or if you simply prefer to keep it for yourself (you love cycling, but as “me” time), your employees will embrace your sharing about it as an ice breaker and will be readier to share their own stories about their own passions. People who have not been carefully selected by HR will walk up to you, to ask you about the best bait for white marlin fishing or about gravel versus asphalt cycling. This provides a rare wavelength for an actual, genuine conversation with employees in the furthest corners of your “empire”: a precious opportunity to nurture and use wisely.