Lead with your heart
In challenging times, it’s more important than ever to build relationships with your employees. They need to be able to come to you with concerns and know you well enough to have faith in your leadership ability.
Burns says it’s key to stay on task and keep focusing on the customer, but you need to show your employees that you care about them, as well, and that can start with a simple conversation.
“There is something cathartic about being able to just talk like a human being to each other,” Burns says. “You talk about your kids. You talk about where you are from. … If, as the leader, I’m candid with them and open with them consistently, it makes them feel that it’s safe to be open and candid with me. If it’s treated right, you can foster that process. There’s nothing that makes the bad things go away. It’s just (the bad things) are put in their place and it allows us to stay on task, which is really key in these times.”
If you’re just trying to show your employees that you care about them, you’ll probably fail. That caring and compassion has to be genuine and come from your heart in order for them to buy in to it and believe you have their best interests in mind.
“Everyone says they care and everyone says they love their employees, but I have to challenge myself and ask, ‘Do I really care about my employees?’” Burns says. “It’s a very real thing to say. ‘Do I care for these people?’ People know you, and they know when you are just saying it. When they know you do care, it shatters pretense and it shatters barriers. You have to work at it, and you have to make yourself available.”
As you get out and about in your workplace and talk to people, they’ll start to talk to each other and let their peers know that you are approachable. But again, Burns says it needs to be part of who you are and not a strategy in your day planner.
“Part of my gut tells me if you have to think about it too much, you’re probably not doing it right,” Burns says. “If I’m a credible leader, then being out there and being able to do things and being a substantive leader, it should almost be a self-fulfilling prophecy. That reassurance is going to take place. … I don’t sit and say, ‘OK, today, I want to do things to ease people’s minds so I’m going to do this, this and this. And then I’m going to do my everyday activities.’ I think they are mutually inclusive.”
You need to be cognizant that you’re always sending a message, whether you are giving a speech or just walking back to your office.
“If you’re out doing your day-to-day and you’re not mindful that people are watching you every moment, you’re not thinking about your position,” Burns says. “How is he answering this? What does he think about that? You’re impacting those things while you’re doing your regular work.”
The connection between you and your people is not something that you can go out and look for, in most cases.
“If you go out looking for it, you are never going to find it,” Burns says. “Those things just seem to happen. There are some days when you realize, ‘Wow, this is working.’ There are some days when you think, ‘My stars, could I be any further from where I need to be?’ But that is the nature of leadership. I’ve never found it when I was looking for it.”
The reality is that leadership presence is something that takes time to establish.
“People look at track record,” Burns says. “The way to develop that is honesty. It’s integrity. It’s leading with open ears and then when you make a mistake, being very open and honest about it but not getting dragged down in the dirt and not getting so focused on the mistake that you forget your job is to lead. You really get right back up, you dust yourself off and you keep going. People respect that, especially when you then get success after that. Then over time, the trend is there.”
