MICHAEL C. BUSH
I’m a great believer in catching people doing things right. The first time I heard Michael Bush speak at a conference, I knew he was a great believer in catching organizations doing things right. As a result, he took the helm at Great Place to Work and has been traveling around the country looking for organizations that have a servant leadership culture. I think you’ll be fascinated by the common characteristics these great companies have when you read Michael’s essay. —KB
MY ORGANIZATION, CONSULTING and research firm Great Place to Work, has spent more than two decades studying and celebrating the best workplaces around the world. Since 1998 we have produced the annual Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For list as well as other best workplaces lists. We operate in more than 50 countries and each year our Trust Index© survey captures the views of roughly 10 million employees globally. We, along with other scholars, have documented the way the 100 Best have outperformed peers in terms of profitability, revenue growth, stock performance, and other key business measures.
But we also see a shift to a new era—a new frontier in business. This largely uncharted territory is about developing every ounce of human potential so that businesses can reach their full potential. To do those things, the best workplaces know they have to create an outstanding culture for everyone, no matter who they are or what they do for the organization. The best workplaces have to build what we call a Great Place to Work For All. These companies have employees across the board who consistently trust their leaders, take pride in their work, and enjoy their colleagues—the three core elements of a great workplace.
These emerging organizations develop and support leaders toward a servant mindset and approach—that is, they cultivate servant leaders who create cultures where all people feel trusted, empowered, supported, and treated fairly.
In these companies, leaders relinquish the autocratic, command-and-control ways that dominated business cultures in the twentieth century. Thanks to a shift to servant leadership, lower-ranked employees experience more passion about work, collaborate more, and engage in innovation behaviors that propel the business. These leaders also reject what’s been common management practice for decades: claiming people are your greatest asset but really valuing only about 10 percent or so of the souls in the upper echelons of the company. That elitist approach to business leaves human potential on the table, ultimately letting down individuals who work there as well as the business itself.
By contrast, the leaders of companies identified as Great Places to Work For All appreciate and develop the talents of everyone at every level of the organization—from the basement boiler room to the penthouse C-suite.
What does servant leadership look like at a company identified as a Great Place to Work For All? Five features stand out:
• Trust at the top. Leaders at Great Places to Work For All establish trusting relationships on their executive team. They know servant leadership is only effective and sustainable when the executive can fully trust the people they work with. If a high level of trust is not present, the leader cannot humbly serve and selflessly support people. The trusting mindset servant leaders need to maintain is possible only when the leader is surrounded by people they see as highly credible, consistently respectful, and fair to everyone they meet. The leader, of course, must be seen in an identical way. Trust at the top is the first step in becoming a servant leader. We find the hard work related to this step often is avoided due to the “but that person is an outstanding individual performer” excuse. But when this first step is avoided, it leads to a servant leader being a servant leader to some but not all.
• A generous trust mindset. Leaders at Great Places to Work For All trust people in general. They see others in the organization as glasses half full rather than half empty. They extend trust widely to a large number of people, including those on the front lines and those who may look different from them. And they extend trust deeply, giving each person the benefit of the doubt. That’s not to say these leaders are naïve—they will not tolerate the same mistakes endlessly. But their default position when a teammate fails is curiosity rather than condemnation. They have an abiding faith that people can grow and that they generally want to do the right thing. It’s a mindset summed up by Jim Goodnight, CEO of software firm SAS Institute, a longtime Fortune 100 Best company: “If you treat your employees like they make a difference, they will.”
• Decentralized power. Leaders at Great Places to Work For All free people to work autonomously and include others in decision making. They know people need significant control over their jobs to reach their full potential. There’s no room for micromanagement. Beyond providing employees with autonomy in their day-to-day tasks, leaders at these companies actively seek their people’s input and feedback on matters ranging from team projects to organizational strategy. Leaders in these settings do not abdicate their power. In fact, the respect they show to employees—their vulnerability in sharing authority—increases their own influence even as others have a voice. Construction firm TDIndustries, a Fortune 100 Best mainstay, captures the wisdom of employee empowerment with its principles around communication: “No rank in the room,” “Everyone participates—no one dominates,” and “Listen as an ally.”
• Caring support. Leaders at companies identified as a Great Place to Work For All care for their people. They support them as holistic human beings, encouraging their well-being both in and out of work. This starts with getting to know employees as people, extends to training and development opportunities, and includes benefits such as health insurance. While servant leaders in the past may have been motivated by a sense of duty, today a raft of science justifies a big heart. Google, for example, has found that psychological safety is the key factor in its most effective teams. Our own research, meanwhile, has found that a caring community is one of the strongest drivers of revenue growth at small and medium workplaces with high-trust cultures. We have also discovered that a key disparity at work between whites and ethnic minorities is whether employees perceive a caring climate.
• Intentional fairness. Leaders at Great Places to Work For All work deliberately to treat all people fairly. They know that fairness is at the heart of the employee experience. It is central to trusting relationships, serves as a foundation for empowering employees to make decisions, and is crucial to people feeling genuinely cared for. Fairness is a simple concept. But it is not easy for leaders to achieve—especially in large, complex organizations. Fair treatment in pay and other matters isn’t necessarily equal treatment, given different job levels and responsibilities. Persistence, courage, and creativity are required to change a socioeconomic system that historically has been unfair. But the Best Workplaces have made significant progress over the past twenty years, according to results from our Trust Index Employee Survey. Employee ratings of fairness have improved 22 percent at the 100 Best from 1998 to 2017, outpacing the other four workplace dimensions we measure (respect, credibility, pride, and camaraderie).
Leaders at Great Places to Work For All who establish high-trust executive teams, who trust people, share power, care for employees, and strive for fairness serve their people well. They also serve their business. Our research into the 100 Best shows that companies identified as Great Places to Work For All grow faster than their less inclusive competitors. In studying the 100 Best alongside the nonwinning contender companies for 2017, we discovered that the more consistent an organization is regarding key factors related to innovation, leadership effectiveness, and trust in the workplace, the more likely it will outperform peers when it comes to revenue growth.
The Great Place to Work For All Score (see Figure 7.1) is a composite measure of how consistently employees rate their workplace on metrics related to innovation, leadership effectiveness, and trust, regardless of who they are and what they do within their organization. Companies in the top quartile on these metrics enjoy three times the revenue growth of companies in the bottom quartile.
To see how servant leadership focused on fairness pays off for all parties, consider the $3 million investment that Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff and his team made to address gender pay inequities in 2015. Along with a host of other equality efforts at the software firm to make all employees feel fully valued and included, this move has reaped results:
• Better for business. Salesforce is becoming a beacon for talented women in technology and is enjoying the fruits of a more fully engaged workforce. The percentage of women employees who say they want to work at Salesforce for a long time rose from 85 percent in 2014 to 93 percent in 2016. Also, 92 percent of female employees in 2016 said people look forward to work at Salesforce, up from 85 percent in 2014. Not surprisingly, the company has been growing faster than its rivals.
Figure 7.1 Great Places to Work For All race ahead
• Better for people. In the wake of the pay equity push, women at Sales-force have a better work experience and all staffers feel more pride about their employer. In 2014, 84 percent of women at Salesforce felt pay was fair at the company, compared to 91 percent of men. By 2016, the share of women perceiving their pay as fair had climbed to 90 percent. The focus on leveling up women didn’t make men feel overlooked—91 percent of men continued to believe people get paid fairly. And for both sexes, levels of pride climbed such that in 2016, a whopping 97 percent of both men and women reported feeling proud when telling others they work at Salesforce.
• Better for the world. Happy Salesforce employees go home to be better parents, friends, and neighbors, even as the company—like many other best workplaces—gives generously to the community. Against the backdrop of the pay equity initiative and a major focus on mindfulness as a way to prevent stress, the share of employees who rate Salesforce a “psychologically and emotionally healthy place to work” rose from 83 percent in 2014 to 89 percent in 2016. Also, Salesforce operates a 1-1-1 integrated philanthropy model, through which it contributes 1 percent of its equity, product, and employee time back into the community. As part of that giving back effort, the company has donated more than $137 million in grants since it was founded in 1999.
Salesforce, as well as most of the organizations we work with, is secular by nature. But the leaders of companies building Great Places to Work For All act in keeping with the great faith traditions, regardless of personal religion or spiritual beliefs. They demonstrate humility, elevate the least powerful, and treat all people with dignity. In fact, these leaders turn work into a kind of church. Great Places to Work For All bring out the best in people as individuals and as members of the human community. We have documented, for example, how employees at the 100 Best have felt increasing levels of solidarity and connection with colleagues over the past two decades.
The world desperately needs more of these companies—companies that can help heal the economic, social, and political divides that have emerged in recent decades. Great Places to Work For All can act as servant institutions, as conceived by author Robert K. Greenleaf: “If a better society is to be built, one that is more just and more loving, one that provides greater creative opportunity for its people, then the most open course is to raise both the capacity to serve and the very performance as servant of existing major institutions by new regenerative forces operating within them.”1
At Great Place to Work, we have a vision similar to Greenleaf’s. Our mission is “to build a better world by helping organizations become Great Places to Work For All.” Servant leaders are needed in these organizations. Given that Great Places to Work For All are the way forward for business, we are hopeful that more and more leaders will see themselves as servants first; that these leaders will establish the trust on their teams that is the crucial first step; and that these leaders will put themselves in service of a better future.
Michael C. Bush is CEO of the SaaS-enabled research and consulting firm Great Place to Work (www.greatplacetowork.com). Michael is a founding board member of Fund Good Jobs, a private equity seed fund, and was a member of President Barack Obama’s White House Business Council. He is the author of A Great Place to Work For All: Better for Business, Better for People, Better for the World.
1. Robert K. Greenleaf, “The Institution as Servant” (Westfield, IN: The Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership, 1972).