Experience Leadership - The Future for Employers

Experience leadership is a phrase that you have heard in the past associated with people having or getting experience in order to be good leaders.  I would like to contend that in the future however,  there will be new meaning for this phrase and one that you need to pay close attention to as you choose who will be promoted to lead in your organization.

Right now our country, the USA, is trying to elect someone who will create the experience we want in our lives, living in our homes, villages and cities, and doing our work.  As we look at the candidates we have to ask ourselves the question, “what is the experience they have created for the people around them in their other leadership roles?”  What a leader does, with even one person working for them gives us an idea about all their values, strategies and tactics to handle challenge and growth.  An experience leader who creates an good experience for the person assigned to the task usually ends up with a sound outcome and results that move things in the right direction.

So the question on the table is, who are the leaders in your organization that will allow it to be a place that attracts and retains the best people for your mission and strategy?  Are they leaders who know and understand and will be more attuned to what is happening for each person?  Will they will note that with so many different generations in the workplace, what is working with one group may in fact be creating a totally different experience for another?  Then will they move to create good experiences for both?  Will they will be aware that an experience in one division may create a totally different and not as productive experience in another?  As an experience leader, will they will encourage their managers to try different things?

Experience leadership is about understanding the multi-faceted approach that will become the cornerstone of businesses in the next decade.  Moving away from from “for one and all” to encouraging the creation of “different strokes” for differing people and areas of responsibility.

One of the best ways I saw this manifested many years ago was when a call center offered each of its clients a different pay plan for the agents that would serve them.  This allowed them to create an “experience” in each unit around gain-sharing, bonuses, hourly rate increases, etc.   The leaders of this organization understood that they experience that each unit created correlated to the service of each customer.  The organization had long term employees, ecstatic clients who in turn had happy customers.

When I fly an airline I can see that the experience of the agents, flight attendants and pilots is most likely based on the experience that has been created by their leaders.  There are vast differences in my experience from one to the other  and I wonder about the leaders who create such a far reaching impact by the experience of how they work with the people who report to them.

The question that will be critical to the promotion of anyone who will lead an area or even manager one person will be, “What experience are you capable of creating?”  With strong experience leadership an organization will be able to address the differences in the workforce, the differences in the divisions of their organization and most importantly, the future.

To find out more about integrating experience leadership into your organization check with me about a “Leadership Mastermind” for your group at barbara@letsplaymore.com.

Read more about experience leadership looks like in the on-boarding process.