The photo above is my reaction to reading my acceptance email to Leadership Dayton. I’m thinking, “This must be how Harry Potter felt when he got his letter to Hogwarts!” The program is offered by the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce. For 10 months, leaders are immersed in the systems that make our community run. Let’s define leader as anyone who has a sphere of influence. Since everyone has a sphere of influence, everyone is a leader at some level. Why should anyone invest time learning how their community works? Even if you don’t commit to a formal leadership development program, giving time to your community benefits the work-life integration of both you and your workforce.
Empower
Your business exists to solve problems. You want coworkers who can quickly identify organizations that have the problems your business solves. A great way to do that is to join a committee for the non-profit organization of your choice. You’ll see their struggles firsthand and work with other volunteers to creatively solve them. Then you take the new problem-solving skills you learned back to work and show your team how to apply them to your next project. With this evidence, you could petition your C-Suite executives to allow individual contributors to volunteer on company time. The ROI for employees, non-profits, and your community is exponential.
Elevate
As a leader, one of your responsibilities is to reach behind you and pull others up the ladder. We usually think of that in terms of advancement in the company, but what your coworkers experience outside of the workplace affects them at the workplace. What do they need help with while not on the job? Do they need emotional support emerging from the pandemic? Help with a non-responsive landlord? Upskilling? Relationships with SMEs you can contact when your employees require resources like bankers, educators, and lawyers is a valuable benefit of working with you. For example, if one of your individual contributors has a child with special needs and is having trouble tracking down a specialist, if you volunteer on a committee at your local Children’s Hospital, you can connect them with assistance. This may seem way above a manager’s pay grade, but recognizing your workforce as human beings with needs you can meet builds trust, and business moves at the speed of trust.
Emulate
Once you get the hang of working with committees in your non-profit community, maybe even serving on a governing board, you are ready to reproduce yourself. Select a direct report with leadership potential and bring them alongside you to serve. When they get their feet under them, allow them to choose a coworker with similar interests and leadership potential and send the two of them off to start the cycle over. They may choose a totally different cause to support than you do, and that’s okay. Your community is full of diverse needs and needs diverse people to meet them.
I’m excited to go on this journey with my classmates and learn how I can use my T.E.A.M. in service to a community I love. How has taking the time to lead positively affected your company? Please share your thoughts in the comments.