Blog
Generosity – The Key to Unlocking Your Organizations Potential
Working remotely for almost a year has made it challenging to keep culture consistent and growing.
As a leader in your organization, you are charged with making your place “somewhere different” to work that will attract and retain top talent.
What’s one action you can do? Work towards integrating generosity into your culture.
Being generous includes giving your time, attention, ideas, and skills.
Why Generosity Matters:
It probably comes as no surprise that practicing generosity:
- Decreases stress
- Promotes mental and emotional well-being
- Increases self-confidence
While these benefits are amazing for an individual, imagine how they’d benefit an entire organization.
What if your company gave your Core Leaders permission and space to create a culture of generosity for your organization?
When companies promote a generous culture, they see an increase in:
- Collaboration because Leaders have a mindset of being generous with their ideas and all team members benefit from the discussion and multiple perspectives.
- Workplace happiness (even virtually!) because Leaders find that they can help their peers and colleagues. And helping others makes us happier.
- Listening and communication skills because Leaders that have a mindset of being generous with their time and attention are more likely to persevere through the hard conversations rather than rushing onto the next “task they have to do.”
How to start:
Let’s be real: you can’t ignite a huge culture shift in one day. But there are activities that you can start to implement to get there.
- Start a small, virtual volunteer program for your team. One place to start is by writing cards to hospitalized kids. This activity could be a 45-minute zoom session to be generous with your time, similar to a volunteer day in a pre- COVID world. Two places to start are Cards for Hospitalized Kids or Judes Card Program.
- Create a “brags and shout-outs” day or @slack channel, and encourage teams to be generous with their words and recognize the amazing work that they see other employees doing.
- Challenge your employees, really listen to someone, and be generous with their attention.
Encourage them to put away their phone and close all other tabs and applications during the zoom call, and see what happens. Having the full attention of someone you are working with can make a huge difference.
- Be generous in developing your Leaders. Whether it’s setting up an informal mentorship opportunity or a more formal leadership development initiative, your employees will feel the impact of the generous investment you are making in them.
When companies foster a spirit of generosity, everyone benefits.
And if you want to explore more about how to foster generosity in your organization, I’m happy to chat!
