Are you a CEO? Do you know how many a female CEOs there are in the top S&P 500 companies? Take a guess…50%? 35%? How about 8%?! And the rate of growth has been abysmal over the last 20 years, from zero female CEOs to a whopping 41 today, out of 500*.
A friend of mine worked with an amazing leader during the early days of pandemic chaos. They all went home on a Friday, and then stayed there for two more weeks. As they tried to navigate their next steps as people now working from home, they looked for ways to connect.
One of the ways they already communicated was through internal channels, and they were always looking to improve connectivity and build community. And what they discovered was that video was the quickest way to build trust. Typically, most internal videos required a tech team, a full production crew and a project manager. During the pandemic making a high production video, many times perceived as high value, wasn’t possible.
So the leader started a call for everyone to send in a video of their makeshift home office, home gym, etc. and she got plenty of content!
It was a wide range of different scenes, folks sitting on the floor with their computer on top of a stack of books, kids sitting next to their dad’s with their computers doing school work, cats walking across keyboards, dads doing pushups with kids on their backs, moms doing yoga with babies, makeshift home gyms being built in basements, and the list goes on and on.
The videos were put together with the CMO narrating how resilient her teams were and how the heart of her company was in the strength of each and every person that worked there. It was a very interesting time, and it’s times like these when true leadership really comes through.
As we know now, this pandemic lasting another 2 years, but I always remembered that story of true people-first leadership, it remains a best in class for me.
Remember, you are the CEO of your life and your business, be that as an employee or a business owner. Keep looking for examples of the kind of leader you want to be.
