There is an evident shift occurring across workplaces: a growing emphasis on human centricity, not only in leadership roles, but also encouraged across teams, cross-departmental work groups, and in both B2B and B2C engagement.
The four cornerstones of human centricity are empathy, emotional intelligence, adaptability, and agility — a rather interesting combination, but one that is positioning organizations large and small for the increasing rate of change and expected speed of performance in the workplace. One could contend that human centricity is futureproofing organizational sustainability through amplified employee engagement and more effective talent recruitment.
Methods for Embedding Human Centricity as Cornerstones for Your Organization
- Establish clear purpose and provide illustrated examples for employees to realize how their efforts and contributions directly contribute to success.
- Create a mentoring and reverse mentoring program that will not only provide professional development for your employees but will also foster positive results through shared experiences and knowledge bases and put relationships atop the list of organizational priorities.
- Exemplify agility, exhibit responsiveness, and posit yourself as a change agent rather than belaboring over transactional decision-making that is one root cause of employee disengagement.
Some Reflection Prompts
- When is the last time you studied change and its effect on human condition, rather than its impact on organizational goals?
- Have you begun to infuse human centricity into your leadership repertoire, into your team dynamics, or into your general work environment?
- Agility demands focus and speed. Have you taken a deep dive to review your existing processes and identified where you are losing speed and or disabling ideas from your team?
- Have you implemented any facets of the coaching style of leadership? Effective coaches are powerful motivators, showing they are agile and adaptable in every minute of a game, and lead their teams to be the same.
Success Story
With a fellow board member, I recently compared the changes he was fielding to that of a carnival ride: “Keep your hands and feet inside the ride at all times.” While in jest, in reflection it became evident that while organizations wish for rapid change and will continue to do so at a higher rate as time goes by, I speculated whether the organizational leadership had prepared their teams for change through human centricity. All individuals have a threshold in terms of outputs, and while these outputs can be propelled using new tools and resources, strategic workforce planning dictates that we need the right person in the right job at the right time. Enter human centricity, where human condition is considered first. If aligned to strategic workforce planning using processes and motivators that engage, agility will result and continue to multiply over time.
The Takeaway
Remove the dross and out comes material for the silversmith. When leaders consider human needs first, employees are empowered to show the best version of themselves and their work.