Dea Irby is a Professional Speaker/Author who is on a mission to encourage leaders in the marketplace to build a culture of belonging. She is also a TEDX speaker, Lover of Truth, Wife, Mother, and Grandmother. In today’s episode Wade and Dea discuss why building community is the most valuable aspect of leadership and ways leaders can satisfy their people’s need for love and belonging.
Who is Dea Irby?
Dea Irby is a Professional Speaker/Author who is on a mission to encourage leaders in the marketplace to build a culture of belonging. She is also a TEDX speaker, Lover of Truth, Wife, Mother, and Grandmother. She believes building community is the most valuable aspect of leadership and spends most of her time sharing her message of belonging.
Why You Need to Create a Culture of Belonging in Your Organization
Are you a leader in the marketplace? Would you like to know how to put a fire on your team members without burning them? Maybe you’d like to keep great workers without shackles? All that is possible with a simple tweak to your leadership style – creating a culture of belonging.
What happened with the great resignation and quiet quitters was that people weren’t quitting their jobs. They were quitting their bosses. A recent study compared businesses that built a culture of belonging to those that just got the job done. They found that when you have a culture of belonging, production increases by 58%, and turnover decreases by 50%. The even more impressive statistic was that companies that fostered a culture of belonging had a 75% decrease in the number of sick days.
The study proved that creating a culture of belonging is not a woo-woo or a kumbaya subject. It’s important. Leaders need to bring everyone on board, tap into each employee’s need to belong, and then teach them to create that same sense of belonging for those around them.
How to CLAIM Your People at Work
Do your people enjoy working with you? Do they love working in your organization, or do they smile back at you because they know they’re guaranteed a paycheck at the end of the month? You see, finding and hiring top talent is difficult. Finding quality candidates who are passionate about working for you is a whole different story. High-performing individuals already know they are good at what they do. So a higher salary is not going to keep them. They want more. They not only want to be connected, but they also want to be claimed and feel a sense of belonging in everything that they do.
With Dea’s CLAIM system, you can achieve just that.
- C – Chosen. People want to know that they are chosen. How you hire them and bring them into your culture has to ensure that they feel included and chosen for the role.
- L – Loved: Who doesn’t want to be loved? According to Dea, team members working in a loving, caring culture report higher levels of satisfaction and productivity.
- A – Acknowledged. People want to be heard and empowered. Not every productive employee is appreciated, but every appreciated employee is productive.
- I – Invested in. Top leaders understand that they need to spend money, time, and resources to support their teams.
- M – Made for Greatness. People want to know that they matter and that their contribution is helping drive the bottom line.
Compassion and Empathy in the Workplace
We already know that empathy and compassion are important in the workplace. Unfortunately, many leaders don’t know how to relate to the emotions and experiences of their people. They also equate empathy with being soft and letting people get away with everything.
Being an empathetic leader is not just about spreading joy and positivity. According to Dea, having compassion and creating that culture of belonging means you still have to make tough decisions. You have to push people and motivate them to become their best selves. And this also involves leading others to feel empathy towards themselves and others.
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