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Authoritative leadership is out. Leading with integrity and purpose is in.
The proof is in employees’ sentiments: those in high-trust workplaces are 76% more engaged and 29% more satisfied with their lives.
As CEO and founder of Creative Noggin, an advertising and marketing agency whose mission is to empower smart, passionate women to enjoy their work and life, I’ve seen the evidence firsthand. Leading with integrity and purpose has resulted in a culture of trust where team members stay for an average of over eight years.
I’ve also experienced the flipside.
Before founding Creative Noggin, I worked for several organizations, some of which lacked a clear purpose. Despite checking all the boxes when it came to benefits, birthday cakes and happy hours, employees didn’t feel a part of a larger driving purpose beyond achieving revenue goals. Burnout was commonplace, morale suffered, and turnover was high.
These experiences taught me leadership isn’t simply about perks or policies. It’s about always doing the right thing and giving team members a real reason to come to work daily beyond checking boxes or selling widgets.
When a client double-pays for an invoice, there is never any question about what will happen with the extra money. That clear sense of integrity goes a long way in fostering genuine trust with our team and clients.
As a company with an all-female leadership team, I find that women are uniquely capable of engendering this trust. When you consider common feminine characteristics like loyalty, optimism and compassion, it’s no wonder.
If you’re interested in learning how to instill a sense of trust in your workplace, there are three core practices you will find in leaders who exemplify integrity and purpose.
Related: 4 Reasons Values Matter So Much in Business
1. Lead by example
As a worker, I often heard: “You should mirror your boss if you want to be successful.” As a leader, I take this to heart.
My goal is for my employees to show up daily as their whole selves and work — and play — hard. To achieve this, they need to be present in their personal lives and be there for their families. As a leader, it’s my job to model living a balanced life. I often tell my team we should all be “working to live, not living to work.” While I never hesitate to work hard, elbow-to-elbow alongside my team, to get projects done, I don’t shy away from leaving in the middle of the day to pick up my kids from school.
Mary Barra, the first female CEO of General Motors, is another leader who makes a point of leading by example. Her inclusive leadership style involves building teams and working together to solve challenges. With her purposeful leadership at the helm, General Motors has consistently scored well in gender equity reports and was one of only two global businesses without a gender pay gap in 2018.
Related: How to Find Your Purpose and Power in Your Lowest Moments
2. Empower others with a purpose-driven culture
When employees understand the purpose behind their work, they’re much more likely to be engaged and perform at their best. At Creative Noggin, our purpose-driven mission to empower women takes shape in many ways. To name a few:
- We donate at least 5% of our profits to community-based organizations supporting women, such as Women’s Empowerment and Saint John’s Program for Real Change.
- We partner with purpose-driven organizations. Over 70% of our work has been for mission-driven organizations.
- We each take ownership of our work and roles and improve the business operations as a whole. I give my team autonomy over their responsibilities, and as a company run on the EOS (entrepreneurial operating system) platform, my team regularly identifies and solves issues within the company, such as improving our business services, systems, and processes. No one on the team has a “that’s not my job” mentality; instead, they all work together to level up the business.
All of these practices have contributed to rallying my troops around a central driving vision for the organization and provided a strong foundation for our purpose-driven culture.
A leader I admire who also prioritizes purpose-driven cultures is Sarah Friar, the former CEO of Nextdoor. She aligned her personal commitment to fostering a better world through the transformative power of community with the company’s mission: to be a globally impactful platform that helps neighbors connect and strengthen their communities.
Related: This Simple Habit Will Make You A Great Leader
3. Prioritize transparency
It literally pays to be transparent with your team. Disengaged workers have cost the US economy up to $600 billion annually in lost productivity, and 80% of workers want to know more about how organizational decisions are made.
I strive to be open with my team about where we are and where we’re headed. This goes beyond professional matters. For example, during my divorce in 2018, I chose to share my situation with my team despite initially keeping it private. When I realized I wasn’t showing up as my full self at work or performing at my best, I held a meeting to explain what was up. They were incredibly compassionate and supportive, which helped me through a difficult time in my life.
Being transparent with my team built a foundation of trust. Many have disclosed their personal situations to me in the years since that meeting. I feel grateful they’ve felt safe to do so, and as a leader, it’s given me insight I otherwise wouldn’t have so that I may better support them personally and professionally.
Leading with integrity and purpose remains integral to our success. As women continue expanding their presence in the workforce, the need to shift from authoritative to more compassionate forms of leadership will only grow. Those of us who embrace and lean into it will thrive. Those who don’t may get left behind.
Leadership isn’t about power, after all. It’s about purpose.
