There’s An Uplifting Movement To Teach CEOs And Executives To

Empathetically Treat Workers Humanely

After nearly two years of enduring a brutal pandemic, we’re having to cope with Omicron surging. Despite the overhang of gloom, we see people striving to make this world a better place.

Pre-pandemic it was a standard and accepted practice to have dictatorial CEOs, executives and middle managers rule with an iron fist without any concerns about the mental health and wellbeing of their workers.

The virus outbreak has made many leaders rethink the way they manage their staff. In a war-for-talent and Great Resignation era, they finally realized it's imperative to display empathy and enact employee-centric policies and procedures to empower their workforce. From a practical standpoint, taking great care of workers is one of the best ways to attract, recruit and retain people.

A leader in this new humanistic approach towards managing people is the Potential Project. The global organization has a bold mission to vastly improve the lives of workers by training and teaching leadership how to effectively and humanely run their companies.

The Potential Project, a Danish based consulting firm, has a global roster of top companies advises an impressive roste of corporate clients including Cisco, IKEA, Microsoft, Unilever, Pfizer, Disney and Accenture.

The organization educates C-suite executives to keep employees feeling happy and engaged. Potential Project calls for a modern day model for leadership, focused on making work more “human-centric” by prioritizing compassion and reducing busyness and creating a more human work world.

Jacqueline Carter, is the director of North America at Potential Project and author of the forthcoming book “Compassionate Leadership: How to do Hard Things in a Human Way.” She is involved with leadership development, change management, consulting, and research along with her colleagues around the world.

The management consulting firm has helped over 550,000 individuals at more than 600 clients to adopt new ways of working and leading. Potential Project delivers solutions globally in 28 countries in 17 languages, in-person and digitally.

Carter points to Satya Nadella, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft, and CHRO Kathleen Hogan as examples of progressive leadership. She says that the tech giant exemplifies what new leadership really looks like—the ability to combine a drive for high performance with a drive for high care for employees.

In an interview on Yahoo news, Carter said about Nadella, I think he's humble and he’s really committed to being able to support the development of people. She highlights that the tech CEO possesses two attributes that are the cornerstone of leadership. The first is having a growth mindset. This mindset means you are willing to let go of things that don’t work and switch gears to try different ways of innovating.

Nadella’s leadership is built upon his focus on empathy. He has the ability to see, feel and connect with others. He infused these two principles into the culture of Microsoft.

Carter says that this is what employees today are looking for. They want leaders to be able to make sure that they can make the tough decisions, drive the results, and also create an environment of flexibility, where workers feel cared for, connected and have a sense of belonging, meaning and purpose.

One of the ways to do this is by offering daily pulse checks to determine how the staff is feeling. It's just a simple question to all of their employees worldwide and to be able to find out, how are we doing today?