Inclusive Leadership; leveraging diversity and building community with employees and customers
I hated my first job. It was selling aluminum siding over the telephone. I didn’t even know what it was, how much aluminum siding actually cost. I didn’t know who owned the company or what happened once a live person showed up at the house of the perspective buyer. But I was good at it.
Even with those factors, I was able to develop relationships with people on the phone, and was the highest performer in the office. I got more appointments that led to more sales than anyone else, and got the biggest commission checks.
But I hated that job, I was bored, the manager was just time keeper. She even timed our bathroom breaks, we couldn’t talk to each other, she listened on our telephone calls, and told us how incompetent we were. Yelled at us in public and I only knew the name of one other person in the whole company.
One day I walked away, I could not take it any more. No one ever even called to find out where I was, perhaps they didn’t even know that I was gone.
I had no relationship to the rest of the company, or the people in it. Like a lot of other employees, all I did was do my job, and little else.
How many of your employees are saying, “I just did my job?”
How many have walked away and you’re still paying them?
What are you doing to leverage the diversity of your organization, and make people feel included and want to be successful?
When managers are uncomfortable with diversity in their organizations but in denial, they ignore people who are different than themselves because they are afraid of saying the “wrong thing.” Saying nothing is saying the “wrong thing.” It makes people feel invisible, and think that it doesn’t matter if they even show up.
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