Building High Performance Teams & the Future of The Workplace

Our April 8 Tea with IBC included a team effort, of sorts, discussing both effective leadership in the workplace and how the workplace may also physically look in the future. Our first guest speaker was Wes Boosyen, formerly Executive Vice president and CFO of Envision Healthcare, America’s leading medical group, though he is currently in transition and looking for a new, international role. Our second guest speaker was Emerik Giorgetti, Global Sales & Business Development Leader for Cisco Webex.

Wes began by speaking with us about his personal method of the 7 Leading Others Habits. Primarily, he stressed, leadership should be caring about others, what he calls “love leadership.” He described each of his 7 habits of leadership for us.

1)     Right person in the right role: Evaluate both new and existing talent - both the “what” and the “how” is important. The technical “what” capabilities is obviously paramount, but don’t overlook the “how”, it is as important.  For example, try to assess if they take pride in what they do.  Hiring the right talent is critical and getting it wrong is costly. There is value in having peers meet a potential new hire to assess fit for the team.  Sometimes it’s also necessary to move people around to find the right roles for them and their skills within the company.

2)     One must also create a sense of tribe, which is much stronger than a team or a group of individuals. A leader must be intentional about creating this type of work environment, by encouraging a sense of trust, which is the foundation that helps everything move faster and work better. (Wes highly recommends the book The Speed of Trust by Stephen Covey.)

3)     Furthermore, establish a greater purpose. People want to feel that they are part of something bigger than themselves. Create a vision within the tribe so that everyone understands what the greater purpose is. Wes mentioned a study that asked whether people would prefer a salary increase or to be part of something greater wherein 80+% of respondents chose a greater purpose and sense of belonging. 

4)     Wes also stressed the importance of recognizing and celebrating—the simple act of saying thank you. He likes to write notes thanking teams for their work. Also, praise in public is helpful. Perhaps create some type of meaningful, fun award that people can aspire to winning.

5)     Moreover, everyone’s voice must be heard. Wes agrees with Sinek, “the purpose of a great leader is not to have all the great ideas, but to create an environment where great ideas can be born.” One way to do this is to open the door to share differing points of view and to ask questions about what factors the tribe may not be considering for a problem or what they could be getting wrong.

6)     Also, a good leader develops their people—personal development plans work really well. Wes recommends setting personal goals with managers and team members and asking how they can be supported. Transparent and sincere feedback is critical to bring out the best in people.  Do it in a respectful and thoughtful way.

7)     Wes’s last point was about simplifying and aligning. He quoted Steve Jobs: “Simplifying is not easy. People think simplifying is easy, but it’s hard work, and it’s really understanding your subject matter well.” Simplifying goals and objectives and purpose is a powerful tool to use on a daily basis in leadership.

Emerik leads business development initiatives within Cisco and by collaborating and supporting customers across the globe and industries (including major corporations and governments) to build their workplaces of the future and high-performance teams. They do this by leveraging the policies and processes and technology in place at Cisco. Cisco is consistently in the top 5 Best Places to Work by Fortune magazine and ranked Number 1 worldwide the past two years.

Cisco began transforming its corporate workplace model about 10 or 12 years ago, by implementing a more flexible work model. Employees are allowed to choose what workplace model works best for them. Emerik says that one of the many benefits from this hybrid model have helped Cisco improve its real estate footprint, which reduced by about 30% over the past few years. Also, this helped reduce Cisco’s operating expenses by hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Emerik revealed that the biggest impact, though, was on people. Cisco saw employee satisfaction and engagement ratings increase 80% after implementing the hybrid work model and better workplace policies. Cisco has also created a more inclusive workplace, regardless of where an employee physically works. There is no perception of a “hierarchy” of employees who are physically in the office more often than those who may work more from home. Everyone has a voice.

Though a great deal of technology goes into this work model, which Cisco has been working on for the last decade, there is more to it than just workplace design and technology. It’s also about policies and processes. Cisco’s corporate mission is to empower a more inclusive workplace for all. One way of doing this is company leadership communicates directly to employees bi-weekly. Every employee is invited to those sessions, thereby ensuring that the entire workforce is engaged in the corporate mission, purpose, and goals. Executive communication to the workforce about shared goals and a sense of purpose helps inspire employees.

Cisco also completely eliminated employee performance appraisal processes, which have been replaced by personality assessments and mechanisms for leaders to connect and “check in” with employees face-to-face, on a regular basis. The first question is always about employee well-being: how are you doing? How are your stress levels? What is exciting to you? This approach helps to determine where and how the company can add value, by having the right people in the right positions.

Cisco changed its onboarding processes. For example, sales resource employees go to headquarters for a week so that they can hear directly from leadership and learn best practices from the top sellers. This experience is a lot like bringing people to the campfire during ancient times, to help create that sense of tribe and community.

In closing, Emerik emphasized that the current workplace solutions made necessary by the pandemic were never meant to be permanent, and he urges companies and employees alike to review the solutions and processes currently in place to support hybrid work and to create models that are sustainable for the long-term.