Leading Human Centered Organizations: Leaders/Managers as Social Workers
By: William Mcpeck
Tags: Leadership, Leadership Development, Management, William Mcpeck, Leadership Skills

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My recent observations are the movement to humanize or, as some are saying, to re-humanize the workplace is continuing to gain considerable traction and momentum. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, I am also observing the need for leaders and managers to become more like social workers by really ramping up their “people” skills.

I specifically chose social workers as the comparison for two specific reasons:

1. Social work is known as a people focused and people serving profession.

2. I am no doubt biased because my graduate school education was in social work. I believe the knowledge and skills I acquired during my professional social work education have served me well over the course of my work and career. A career not only initially in community mental health, but subsequently also in public safety, physician regulatory management and investigation and finally, in employee health and safety.

Humanized workplaces or human-centered workplaces will require leaders and managers to have significant knowledge and skills in people management. This will include all of the so-called soft or people skills which are generally inter-personal skills. But I also see leaders and managers needing to be authentic and comfortable in their own skin which means leaders and managers need to be knowledgeable and skilled in terms of intra-personal skills.

People work is messy work. To be good at people work requires authenticity and being comfortable with your own Self (your own identity, etc.).

Leaders and managers in the human centered workplace need to be change agents. Not only will leaders and managers need to help employees with change at the personal — individual level, leaders and managers will need to also address change at the organizational level.

This means that leaders and managers will need knowledge and skills related to the organizational environment. Having knowledge and skills related to the organizational environment are critical as it is well established that human behavior and performance are highly influenced by the environment in which the human operates. In the case of employees, the environment includes, of course, the workplace.

Knowledge and skills related to the organizational environment would include such areas as:

· Leadership and supervision

· Organization culture and culture change

· Workplace climate and climate change

· Psychological safety and psychosocial safety climate

· The evolving nature of work and workplace organization and structure

· Organizational justice

· Organizational support

· The employee experience

· Employee into and ownership of solutions to problems and challenges

· Leading and managing in the hybrid and all virtual organization

· Corporate social responsibility (CSR)

I would suggest that leading a human centered organization is very different from the type of leadership and management behavior we generally see today. Above all, people work is messy, time-consuming, energy draining and it requires commitment. Most leaders and managers today were most probably trained and developed under a command and control leadership development model. A model which focuses more on business and technical skills, not people skills.

Being a human centered organization means first and foremost leaders and managers need to be given the time necessary to do the needed people work. People work must be the number one priority and not something that is only done when all other tasks and responsibilities have been addressed. People work must come first. Secondly, leaders and managers must be hired or promoted based on their affinity for working with people, not because of their technical or process related expertise or success.

While people skills can be learned, the learner must have the necessary people focused mindset attitudes and beliefs. In other words, leaders and managers must be teachable and coachable.

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