We hear a lot of sayings about how to lead a good and successful life.
“You reap what you sow,” “grow where you’re planted,” and “the early bird gets the worm,” are all pretty popular idioms that were coined to help us navigate through life and become the best versions of ourselves.
But lately, one of the most common sentiments about success is that you must be willing to “Do the work.” At face value, it seems to make sense when it comes to achieving goals — you have to get your hands dirty and dedicate yourself to completing the job to be successful.
In the professional setting, that could mean you show up to your meetings, ensure you’re on time, and build your schedule for maximum productivity. After all, when you dedicate yourself to these things, you’ll get work done. But what about the intangible things in business?
How do you go beyond the systems that make a business fiscally successful and get into the nitty gritty of fulfilling your company’s mission, vision, and values?
Now, more than ever, it’s the intangibles that people are looking for in a job. They want to feel supported, cared for, and thought of as more than cogs in a machine.
So how do you make that happen as a business owner? Do you find ways to invest in your employees’ retirement funds, increase their benefits packages, and open the option of unlimited PTO? Or do you do something more?
At DotConnect, we believe that highly successful corporations do much more than offer a good salary with excellent benefits packages. Instead, they focus on conscious leadership that grows an inclusive corporate culture.
How do they do that? We’re glad you asked.
How Can You Build a Conscious Corporate Culture?
Culture is everything when you’re talking about employee happiness and retention.
If you want to build a culture that keeps people at your corporation, you need to look at the way you try to attract talent.
Are you trying to bring people into a competitive environment that focuses solely on making financial progress, or are you focusing on building a culture that promotes collaboration and drives the whole team to succeed?
To create that space that fosters personal and professional development, you need to focus on a “we culture” instead of a “me culture,” which means you need to learn how to emphasize collaboration from day one.
What a Business With “Me Culture” Looks Like
To make the transition from “me” to “we,” you first need to know what it means to have a “me culture.”
At its core, “me culture” revolves around competition.
If you’re writing a job description for your next open position and the focal point of your business is that it’s a “fast-paced environment with opportunities for expansion,” you may be developing a me-focused culture at your company.
Here’s why: Instead of focusing on your team members as entire humans, your job description is essentially telling applicants to prepare to compete with their peers for advancement. Regardless of how “friendly” you want it to be, this competition encourages coworkers to move up the corporate ladder by any means necessary and to focus more on making the business grow than building up their coworkers.
As a result, your team will feel unwilling to help each other grow and ultimately stifle any conscious efforts toward the positive culture you’re trying to make in your business.
What a Business With “We Culture” Looks Like
On the flip side, corporations with a “we culture” take a collaborative approach to work.
For example, if you want to develop a people-focused environment at your office, your company description might say, “a collaborative environment that thrives on problem-solving.”
Instead of turning your company into a fast-paced competition, this description promotes the idea that you want your team to grow. The focal point of collaboration and problem-solving doesn’t mean that you’re offering “easy work” for people. In fact, it’s letting potential employees know there will be problems to solve that involve hard work but that your team will work together to overcome them instead of competing over who works the hardest.
As you focus on truly building that culture of collaboration, you’ll find that your team will be more willing to help each other, which will grow the business in turn.
What Does it Mean to Be a Conscious Leader?
Creating an environment where people build each other up sounds great, doesn’t it? Of course, it does! But to build a business with a conscious corporate culture, you need to be a conscious leader.
So, what does conscious leadership look like?
In short, a conscious leader is someone who is radically responsible, self-aware, and focused on building a collaborative culture. And that all begins with your personal development.
Becoming a conscious leader requires actively pursuing personal growth because if you want to create an authentic space for others, you need to be authentic to yourself. That means you must start digging deep into your personality to learn who you are as a leader.
Remember that “hard work” we talked about earlier? Here’s where it comes into play:
Becoming a Conscious Leader Isn’t Easy
If you’re truly dedicated to becoming a leader who builds an environment where people want to work, you will need to dig deep within yourself.
You need to find ways to become in tune with your emotions and how you have treated yourself and others in the past and actively work toward creating a better work environment for yourself and others. In many cases, transitioning into conscious leadership is a proposition that’s easier said than done.
However, if you’re willing to put in the work, the place to begin is with honesty.
The more honest you are with yourself and others, the more you will learn how to connect with others in your organization — and part of that honesty is a willingness to be vulnerable.
To break down that “I’m the boss” persona and restructure your leadership style into one of conscious connection, you must be vulnerable with your people. You must embrace a spirit of openness and allow yourself to candidly interact with your teammates, regardless of their positions on your org chart.
Now, we’re not saying this change is going to happen overnight. It could take weeks, months, or years to wholly embrace the idea of conscious leadership. But if you allow yourself to be open to advancement and embrace some flexibility, you can become a more conscious leader.
We know it’s possible at DotConnect because we’ve seen it in our CEO, Dominique Farnan.
Using Conscious Leadership to Connect the Dots
Dom wasn’t always the powerfully conscious leader who prioritizes culture above all else, but that all changed when she started on her own extensive personal development journey.
In March of 2021, Dom realized she wasn’t the most authentic version of herself. She was struggling with challenges brought on by a global pandemic, frustrated with her home life, and in need of guidance. That’s when she connected with her coach, Angie Wisdom, who encouraged Dom to begin down a road of personal growth and healing.
During that time, Dom began writing about her life and reflecting upon her growth on the popular platform, Medium. In one of her Medium articles, she wrote:
“Reflecting who I am today means taking a look at where I’ve been; what I’ve done and the lessons I’ve learned. I’m not a product of my environment; I am not held captive to my home or my space. I am a product of the world I live in and the world is mine to make of it. I will strive to reflect who I am and be that of a solid human; not just a shell but a heart and a soul.”
The journey that led Dom to understand that she needed to reflect her heart and soul to the world has turned her focus toward what it means to be a conscious leader. To her, that means building meaningful relationships with everyone on her team and with her clients.
Working With DotConnect is Different
We hope this article inspires you to take steps toward becoming a conscious leader who emphasizes a positive, inclusive culture in your organization. After all, the relationships you build with your team members and clients are the most important thing in the end.
At DotConnect, we believe that people are just that — people. They aren’t seats in a cubicle or names on an org chart. They are living, breathing individuals with desires, emotions, and experiences that make them who they are.
That’s what makes working with us different. We aren’t looking to fill desk chairs or increase the number of employees at a corporation for the sake of making a profit. We want to get to know everyone we place at a company on a personal level, and we want to ensure that our clients provide an environment that gives their teams a chance to grow.
We’ve helped companies like Samsung NEXT, Beautycounter, and ZenDesk develop conscious corporate cultures that encourage personal growth. Check out our case studies to learn more about how we do what we do and what separates us from a typical recruiting agency.
And if you’re looking for a recruitment option that is different from anything you’ve experienced in the past, we encourage you to get in touch with us — we’d love to get to know you better.