6 pillars to get the best out of people

I really enjoyed speaking to Katz Kiely recently for my Beyond Busy podcast. She's doing amazing work helping to get PPE to the frontline. If you know anyone working in a hospital, care home or other setting, please make them aware of this website and the fact that they can tweet three hashtags and have people delivering PPE to the door of their workplace.

But aside from just wanting to get that message out last week as quickly as possible, I really loved her thoughts on her purpose - to prove that looking after your people helps generate the best innovation, productivity and collaboration. It ultimately all boils down to the feeling of 'psychological safety' and being in a 'reward' state (where you can chase good things) as opposed to being in a 'threat state' where you feel the need to react and kick back. I've been thinking about this a lot this week, as the current situation has definitely thrown me more regularly into the threat state recently. Perhaps you're feeling that too?

The six pillars to focus on so that people feel valued at work:

Respect - if people feel you care about what they think, they are happier.
Autonomy - when you trust people (or are trusted) then you can all learn from mistakes and people do their best work.
Connectedness - feeling connected to the people around you makes it easier to collaborate, flag up problems and so on.
Fairness - seeing the thought-process of decisions helps you and others to understand them.
Certainty - seeing what's ahead and not being surprised too often (ahem, UK Govt..!).
Empathy - when you understand how your people feel, you get the best out of them.
My conversation with Katz was a really useful reminder. It confirmed to me that at Think Productive, we've created a great culture where a lot of these things happen regularly (and I'm proud of that)... but of course there were a few moments reflecting on these six pillars and thinking "gosh, maybe I could have done that thing better". Eek.

Let's use this week as an opportunity to remember that 'people make the world go round'. Which of these six are you going to work on this week?