Leadership that develops a safe team culture.
Quiet and disengaged team members can create a lot of headaches for leaders and organizations. Having a staff that doesn’t feel safe speaking up kills the creativity, innovation, and productivity of a team.
As a leader, it can be hard to know how safe or not safe team members feel. Unsafe team members feel scarred to share because of the negative consequences that can happen to them. But through purposeful practices, leaders can shift their team culture to one that is safe, engaged, and open.
Developing a safe team culture can feel complicated and unclear. In today’s clip, we have Jessica Sweeney who is the Vice President of Product for FINEOS Corporation.
As a business consultant who helps develop a collaborative and productive team culture. I have worked with a variety of leaders. Jessica is a leader who is extremely thoughtful about her team’s wellbeing while also making sure they get stuff done.
In this clip, Jessica will speak to a holistic approach to help develop a safe team culture.
Transcription
It's okay to be our whole selves and I get to say to my team things are going on in your life. And those things that are going on of course are affecting your work. How could it not? The energy that you spend looking after your family that energy that you spend processing difficult emotions is the same well of energy that we draw from to meet with clients.
And to do our work and to write our documents it all comes from the same place. So, in 2020, I unfortunately lost my stepmother after a long battle with illness not covid related. But of course, covid complicated to an insane degree.
I felt so safe being vulnerable and honest with my team and with my management about the support that I needed the changes that I needed to make to my work schedule so that I could be fully present for my family and for my own emotions and struggles that I was feeling with.