Last week, I introduced you to the infinite stake leadership explorer with four crucial stages. I wrote on the adjusting and the pruning stages. Today’s engagement is on the supporting and renewing steps of the explorer.
Though I will provide a synopsis of the adjusting and pruning stages to iterate and connect my line of thoughts, it is better to read last week’s article for us to be on the same page.
Adjusting to a situation is essential for leaders. A typical example and reason for organisational leaders to adapt my infinite stake theory is seen in the millennial’s attitude, characteristics, and disposition at work. The Millennials and Generation Z reached adulthood in 1995 and those born from 1996. They are people with a quest for instant gratification. They bring different attitudes and challenges to the workplace. They prefer collaboration ahead of supervision. They are intuitively independent and demand flexibility. They embrace the word ‘entrepreneur’ even when there are no justifiable activities to earn such a title. They are prone to changes and keeping them engaged and satisfied is a huge task.
They interface with the customers, operate the process, uplift the brand, and collectively produce the quantum result.
An infinite stake leader will adjust to the characteristics of this group by developing a culture that focuses on creativity, flexibility, and collaboration. In simple terms, we need to align their personal aspiration and lifestyle with achieving the organisation’s objective to maximise the engagement value of the generation Z.
Achieving the adjustment is not difficult. We do it at Mentoras Limited as a culture and business sustainability consultant. It could be a simple tweak in processes, reporting line, communication and job flexibility that birth the magic nod to exploring more significant commitment from people.
The pruning stage is the implementation phase of the adjusting stage. Here, you treat and relate with the staff that are the majority in influence, number and collective productivity as the owners and the future heirs of your business. You align their future aspirations with their current expedition to guarantee a sense of security and invoke the desire to contribute and commit to the organisation’s future.
Last week, I made it bold by saying that no employee gives his or her ultimate best if the future could be better elsewhere.
At the supporting stage of the infinite stake leadership explorer, leaders develop a system where identification of the growth and developmental needs of employees are future-oriented and not necessarily a reward in any sense. The support given to the employees is seen as empowering them to grow, commit and engage more with the organisation and its stakeholders. These supports are not position-based but growth-focused. The intent is to produce and develop a total organisation-person at all levels.
I will give a practical example of the support we instituted for one of our esteemed clients. A client noticed changes in some of the employees producing results for his team. These employees are what I have termed the employee retailers and capitalists. They interface with the customers, operate the process, uplift the brand, and collectively produce the quantum result. We have adjusted and pruned a substantial number of staff within this group. They are indeed the future of my client’s business.
Some of them have been elevated to directors and their equivalents. We noticed a change whenever the employees got married. Much of the shift is a drop in performance, poor attention to detail, and increased errors and customer complaints. Some are with positive outcomes like increased productivity and an ambience of a proud wife or husband. We develop a supporting model for all married and newly married people in the organisation. We also made it a culture for the newly wed or the new hires with the spouses to attend the exceptional couple support programme.
Read also: The infinite stake leadership explorer
At the event, customarily organised like a Bootcamp, we invite the employees and their spouses. At the end of the Bootcamp, we would have aligned the expectations from the employees with the aspiration of the family in terms of anticipated reward, commitment required, and the level of support needed by the spouse to ensure their wives or husbands remain productive for themselves, their family and ultimately the organisation they work for.
Indirectly, we are enlisting the employees’ spouses as brand ambassadors that understand what it takes for their husbands or wives to be effective at work and the consequent rewards that add to the family fortunes and status.
With the level of support we offered, our client witnessed a reverse trend in attitude, productivity, the engagement level of the newly wed and those with marital issues affecting their performances. Why do we have to provide such a level of support? We did so because we see the employees as the future owners of the organisation with more rungs of the corporate ladder to climb, more years to commit and huge energy to make the difference than those with a big title but limited years of service.
In summary, the supporting stage is a continuum. It constantly provides institutionalised support that improves employees’ mental health and wellbeing within and outside the workplace. It is a consistent identification of employees’ capacity, emotional, and developmental needs that produce exceptional golden eggs year on year.
Renewing is the final phase of the infinite stake leadership explorer. It is simply to repeat the adjusting, pruning, and supporting stages consistently with a prime objective. The prime aim is to identify those that need to be advanced, mentored or exited after coaching and other mind and attitudinal empowerment programmes. Renewing focus on maintaining, adjusting, pruning the culture of infinite stake in the organisation and institutionalising it to achieve sustainability.
The infinite stake leadership explorer is a guide for implementing the infinite stake theory in any organisation, be it private or public, profit or not a for-profit entity. Implementing the phases of the explorer will birth a culture of infinite stake relationships, develop infinite stake leaders, and build an infinite stake brand for the organisation.
