Healthy organizations depend on healthy leaders. Healthy leaders are connected to their employees’ reality, allowing them to more fully understand the needs, wants, challenges, and obstacles that employees face.
To understand employees’ realities, the leader must invest time and energy into being truly connected to each employee. This is not a friendship, though real friendships shouldn’t be discouraged between leaders and employees, but a deep concern for the welfare and success of the employee.
This deep and sincere concern for the well-being of the employee means the the leader has a better understanding of who the employee is, how to successfully lead them, how you inspire them to success, and how you help them develop into the person they want to be. Surface level interactions and transactional relationships do not yield this level of understanding and success.
