I have spoken with thousands of job candidates during my career as an executive recruiter and career coach. You hear their career stories and get a pretty unvarnished view of their superpowers and their weaknesses, their successes and their failures.
You get more of a read on who they are from how they behave throughout the search process. Do they communicate timely and professionally? Are they polite to the admins and interview schedulers, as well as to the interviewing team? Do they readily write thoughtful thank you notes to interviewers? Overall, do they behave like professionals or like spoiled children?
In a nutshell, you learn a lot about character, both good and bad. And, when you have the opportunity to watch digital trust professionals over more than two decades as they develop their careers, and help some of them develop their careers over a decade or more, as I have, you see striking patterns of success and failure emerge.
I am not pretending that I have a hard data set that I can analyze for answers, but one of the crucial things I have synthesized from my interactions with both my candidates and hiring leaders is that highly respected and successful professionals and leaders possess a mindset of generosity. More powerful still, they LIVE GENEROUSLY by sharing of themselves, sharing information and sharing their time.
Generosity. It’s a powerful force for good. And we need more of it, in our lives and at work. People like working with generous bosses. They like working with generous teams. They tend to stay longer at companies they view as generous.
In April 2022, Fortune released its annual list of best places to work. Three of the top 10 companies on that list are standouts when it comes to promoting cultures of generosity: Cisco (#1 Best Place to Work), Salesforce (#4) and Accenture (#6).
Let’s take a quick look at some of the things that these companies are getting right when it comes to promoting corporate cultures that embody generosity.
Employees often cite Cisco’s culture of kindness and giving back. Cisco’s goal is to positively impact 1B people by 2025! The company is doing that through social impact grants and programs that address disaster relief, food insecurity, housing and clean water; they support STEM and digital skill development; and help underserved people gain financial independence through technology solutions. Cisco enlisted PWC to attest to their progress on their 1B people goal, and the company posts its measurable impact numbers with an Ⓐ symbol, indicating that the number has been assured by PwC.
At Salesforce, philanthropy is part of the corporate DNA. Salesforce has centered its employee giving and volunteer programs around the concept of “Citizen Philanthropy.” The idea is that individuals can affect real change by offering up their time, talent and resources. One of the ways this is accomplished is through their annual Giving Tuesday. In 2021, many Salesforce employees dedicated their time to mentoring and pro bono work in workforce development, community resilience and education.
One of the many things that makes Accenture unique is its thought leadership around the future of the workplace. The company is helping to shape that through programs focused on creating more inclusive work environments that combat racism, promote gender equality and promoting well-being.
In an interview with Josh Rogers of AfroTech, Nicole Flowers, Accenture’s Northeast Cloud Practice Lead, commented on steps that Accenture has taken to help community college students to develop in-demand skills: “We have partnered with community colleges across the United States to participate in year-long apprenticeship programs giving participants hands-on experience with advanced technologies.”
It's truly exciting to see major corporations boldly stepping up their generosity in big ways. Given the many, many benefits that accrue to businesses that act generously (improved customer relationships and loyalty, happier employees, less attrition, ease of recruiting great people, higher productivity, to name just a few that have been cited in the business press and by research studies), hopefully other companies will follow their lead.
As individuals we need to do the same because it’s good for us as human beings and it’s good for our careers.
As Joe Gardner wrote in Fast Company, “Being generous carries lifetime value because it becomes part of your lifetime reputation. And you never know when that reputation might come in handy, nor who your future employer, partner, or client might be.”
When we are generous at work, our generosity not only improves our own relationships, productivity, work satisfaction, and goal achievement, it improves all of that for our team as a whole. Generosity begets generosity. People who experience the gift of generosity want to reciprocate and are generous in return. There is science behind that statement!
Nine ways to pay it forward and increase your Generosity Quotient! Ways for everyone to be generous at work:
- Offer expertise and the gift of time; mentor others.
- See others for who they are and how they want to be seen.
- Listen thoughtfully to others.
- Share information.
- Lend support. Show up when people need assistance.
- Affirm, applaud, and encourage others for their work and ideas.
- Be positive in outlook and attitude.
- Share credit but be sure to own your own accomplishments. (This actually empowers others to do both of these things!)
- Connect people in your network who would enjoy and likely benefit from knowing each other.
A quick story I’d like to share with you is about a senior IT auditor who worked for a global tech and communication solutions company and a unique act of generosity. Recruiting for audit at this company was a huge challenge because the team traveled 50-70% of the time, mostly internationally, with global engagements often lasting three to six weeks. A cool aspect of joining audit was the fact that it was a rotational leadership training program. People stayed 2-3 years in audit and then rolled out into myriad interesting roles, often as a manager. Exciting as that prospect was, the travel requirements often caused candidates to shy away.
On her own, this senior IT auditor came up with the idea of creating a recruiting brochure for the entire team. She pitched this to management, got an OK, and then saw the project through to completion – all the while continuing to travel and work on her audit projects. Her final product was an amazing branding piece for audit. In fact, it was one of the best I had seen specifically for audit back in the early 2000s. And, boy, did it work! As a search partner for the firm, I used that brochure, and saw how it fired up potential candidates.
This project was an act of generosity. The senior auditor saw a need, saw a challenge for the team, and championed a potential fix that worked. It benefited the entire team through better and faster recruiting and hiring. It helped clarify audit’s brand and made the brand something that the audit team was proud of.
How did this help her career? She had a successful career in audit; rolled out into an exciting organizational development role within the company; became a master of both process improvement and marketing; and has gone on to become a senior leader for a major consulting firm, as well as being an engaged parent of two kids.
A key takeaway is that generosity at work takes many forms. By adopting a generosity mindset, you’ll start to see those opportunities where you can be generous in creative ways that are unique to you!
Ten ways leaders can be generous with their teams and employees:
- Adopt an attitude of wanting your people to succeed. See who they are and understand their goals. This might even mean helping them make that move out of your team if their skills, passion and goals lie elsewhere.
- Shine a light on the path forward. Help team members understand potential career paths and options.
- Be available.
- Be a mentor. Offer time, resources and opportunities.
- Provide clear, constructive feedback – and not sugarcoating.
- When mistakes are made, use them as learning opportunities.
- Reward in meaningful ways that are tailored to what matters most to each team member. Praise, flexibility, credit, power, responsibility, opportunity, recognition, information, knowledge – all of these can be as important as money or moreso.
- Offer context and the bigger picture of the business and how the team and individuals contribute to enterprise strategy and goals.
- Share your vision so everyone has a chance to harmonize with the mission and drive toward it together.
- Very importantly: In uncertain times, like now, share what you know about what’s going on. When people are in the dark, discomfort quickly turns to fear. Fear leads to lower productivity, rumormongering and departures for greener pastures.
Now back to the story for a moment. That senior IT auditor worked for audit leadership that was generous in creating an environment that empowered team members. The volunteering of ideas for a better mousetrap was valued and applauded. Thus, when she came up with the idea for the recruiting brochure, she knew she could pitch it to management and they would, at a minimum, listen and provide constructive feedback.
That same company held an all-audit meeting each year, unifying their diverse teams from around the world at the corporate headquarters for a week of training sessions and team building. Team members were highly encouraged to develop and present seminars on topics of interest to the team.
Over the years, I heard from numerous auditors at this company about how valuable that all-audit meeting had been to them in developing skills, giving them confidence in presenting to a large group, improving relationships, and making new friends. It was a generous investment in the team that was invaluable.
In a word, generous leadership begets generous, productive teams that people value being a part of.
Now, while I am making a case for generosity because it makes us better people and better professionals, this is not to suggest that you lose sight of your own priorities, say “yes” too often, or let people use you as a doormat. Adam Grant, Wharton professor and organizational psychologist, expressed this powerfully: “Generosity isn't sacrificing yourself—it’s helping others without harming yourself. It’s not dropping everything for others—it’s prioritizing your needs along with theirs. It’s not giving to takers—it’s giving in ways that nurture more givers.”
Wishing you a productive, healthy, and happy wrap-up of 2022! See you in 2023. Onwards!