How human-centered leadership can transform your organization.
By Pete Mercer
In the last few years, we have seen several major movements happen in the workforce. During the height of COVID, employees across all major industries resigned en masse due to a variety of reasons – pay stagnation, inflexible working environments (aggravated even more so by the pandemic), and an overall job dissatisfaction.
This was called The Great Resignation, and it reflected an overwhelming lack of engagement from the American workforce. The fact that the pandemic was a catalyst for this movement is merely circumstantial – this was a workforce that felt undervalued by the leaders and the organizations that they worked for. This is exactly what a human-centered work environment is designed to avoid.
Repertoire Magazine recently sat down with Ryan Estis, keynote speaker and author of Prepare for Impact: Driving Growth and Serving Others through the Principles of Human-Centered Leadership, to discuss what human-centered leadership looks like and how leaders can use it to change their growth strategies.
What does human-centered mean?
So, what is a human-centered organization? Estis described it as an organization “that embraces a philosophy that prioritizes people. They become the center of decision-making, strategy and culture – the way into that is prioritizing people and leading with empathy, trust, mission and outcomes.”
A human-centered organization is led by a leadership team that cares about its people, largely placing people over profit. Leaders at human-centered organizations understand that the priority is to help other people become the best possible version of themselves. This approach stems from a servant leader mindset.
These organizations are highly collaborative environments that allow for creativity and are constantly looking to improve their processes to allow for that collaboration and creativity. Estis said, “From an enterprise perspective, it’s one that prioritizes people over process, or deeply considers the impact and outcomes around people. It includes an organization that was purpose-driven, with a very clear thesis on the impact and vision of the organization that people could align with and support.”
Address the employee engagement crisis
It’s important for leaders to understand the changing dynamics of the workplace. There are greater expectations for how an organization and its leadership team should operate and employee engagement is at the forefront of the conversation.
Employee engagement is at an all-time low these days. Gallup’s 2024 State of the Workforce Report found that only 23% of employees across the world are thriving at work today. With those kinds of engagement numbers, it’s bound to affect customer relationships at one point or another. Think of it as a trickle-down effect – when your team is not actively engaged with their work, the customers will feel it.
“The way customers feel about doing business with you is very often informed by how employees feel about coming to work,” Estis said. “Those two things are interdependent, and we’re seeing a sea change in both employee attitude and expectations and customer requirements in real time right now.”
Estis said that one of the most meaningful things a leader can do is have one conversation a week with each of their employees, but there are a variety of factors that prevent that kind of connection from happening on a regular basis.
“I think fundamentally, people want to be seen, heard, understood and valued. Leaders need to invest the time to build those high-trust relationships to nurture, care and develop people and put them in a position to be successful. That’s our responsibility, but it takes time and competency to do it.”
Balancing driving results with a healthy culture
As with all things, operating with a human-centered mindset requires a certain amount of balance to maintain results and a healthy culture. Culture should never be sacrificed at the altar of results, but you can’t run a company without results – balance is key.
“If you’re going to be a leader and earn fellowship, you have to take care of people, love people, value people, and invest in people. One of the most loving, kind things you can do for people is to hold them accountable to very high standards of excellence,” Estis said.
The most important component in the results-culture equation is honesty. Without honesty, your team is much more likely to flounder without making much progress. Open, honest and consistent feedback is essential for these environments. For Estis, the best leaders for these environments are coaches.
“The best, human-centered leaders hold that balance very closely. They prioritize people, but it isn’t a soft skill. Finding that balance is one of the hardest things we can do. But the leaders that get that right are the ones that I think are putting both their individual contributors and their teams in a position to be innovative and successful.”
Integrating automation and AI
As the world continues to shift towards AI and automation, it’s important to understand their utility in the workspace. These are incredible tools that can seamlessly integrate into our daily processes and improve efficiency, but it can be tempting to overly rely on these tools.
Your customers are smart enough to tell the difference between human-generated communications and communications that are pushed by CRM software. Estis said, “That isn’t what people respond to the best. They respond much better when we make an effort and a commitment to understand them personally. The right way to think about technology automation is that they are tools that can create more efficiency to empower us to do the things that only humans can do.”
All it takes is to find a natural way to integrate these tools with your existing workflows to improve efficiency without replacing the human element that makes your organization so special. More than ever, people are looking for connection at every touchpoint – by operating with a human-centered lens, your team will be more equipped to meet the needs of your customers.
“People can solve incredible problems in innovative ways for customers, but we have to create the right culture, structure and processes for that human potential to be unleashed in the right direction.”