Early in my career, I deployed and analyzed employee engagement surveys. When the results came back, they revealed a startling disconnect: frontline employees felt senior leaders were living in la-la land, entirely out of touch with their realities. Why the dramatic mismatch? Unfortunately, the constructive feedback was being filtered out – the managers, and in some cases – executive team members – didn’t have a solution and didn’t want to take the heat. As a result, the CEO and executive team missed crucial perspectives that impacted the day-to-day employee experience.
This lack of connectivity does more than erode trust – it weakens the company overall. Employees have valuable insights to improve operations, products, policies, and more. By making an effort to listen, leaders tap into intel that proactively uncovers emerging challenges and opportunities. Connecting with staff also demonstrates that their voices and opinions matter, dramatically boosting engagement, retention, and performance across the organization.
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Yet consistently connecting with staff gets harder as you rise in an organization. Strict hierarchies, information filtering, and intimidating authority figures lead to isolation for C-suite leaders. Remote and hybrid work eliminate organic interactions. If you’re not being intentional, you’ll inevitably be cut off from the frontlines, and the heart of your business.
It’s critical to stay plugged into employees at all levels, especially as CEO. You have the furthest to go to connect with individual contributors and non-management staff. Not convinced? Here are four compelling reasons CEO accessibility should be a top priority:
Gain Unfiltered Frontline Perspectives
By getting out and frequently engaging staff directly, you gain raw insights about what’s working well and what needs to improve from the unique vantage point of regular employees. Skip levels, walk the floors, join new hire orientations—whatever it takes to get unfiltered perspectives.
Identify Issues Faster
When employees feel senior leaders are approachable, they will be more candid about concerns that need addressing, allowing for faster identification of brewing issues before they boil over. But openness starts at the top. Employees take cues from the CEO. Your accessibility sets the tone.
Boost Employee Engagement
Employees crave having their voices heard and valued. When leaders, especially the CEO, connect directly with staff, it signals genuine care for employees as humans, not just workers. This emotional connection drives discretionary effort and engagement across the company.
Lead the Full Company
A CEO guides the entire organization—not just the executive team. You cannot effectively lead blind spots. Proactively connecting across levels ensures you understand and unite all employees from the frontlines to the C-suite behind a shared mission and values.
The Challenges of Leading from the Top
Of course, it’s essential to acknowledge the natural obstacles CEOs face in connecting with everyone. Days packed back-to-back with meetings leave little time for wandering the halls. You likely operate from a different physical location than most staff. Your calendar is managed by assistants who optimize your schedule efficiency, not casual face time. You inhabit a role that, by its nature, intimidates others. These dynamics conspire to limit unstructured interactions.
While remaining realistic, the benefits warrant overcoming the hurdles. The place to start is simply believing employee connectivity is a business imperative, not a nice-to-have. The rest follows from that mindset shift.
Small Steps to Get Started
Even with packed days, there are quick ways CEOs can immediately boost accessibility:
- Have your assistant schedule skip-level meetings on your calendar, however frequently you can.
- Join the last 15 minutes of virtual new hire orientation to share your vision.
- Respond personally when employees email you (within reason!).
- Engage an outside perspective (shameless plug for me) to conduct a connectivity analysis through surveys, interviews, and focus groups to identify quick wins and longer-term initiatives to improve leader-employee relationships.
Investing even small amounts of time consistently goes a long way. Employees want to see, hear, and speak to real leaders, not mythical figures, behind closed doors. As a CEO, you set the tone. Make connectivity an organizational priority through your words, actions, and time allocation.