Great leaders always care about what their front-line staff think; after all, no one knows the nitty-gritty of how an organization functions better than the people actually making the product or delivering the service. But even the best leaders sometimes have trouble figuring out how to encourage their teams to speak openly. Often, for example, people who have suffered under bad leadership are afraid of speaking up for fear of reprisals.
So what's a leader to do? Greg Moran, COO of Aware, has practical tips based on his years of experience with companies of all sizes. Hint: technology is here to help. His own company, Aware, developed a system that reviews (non-private!) chats in Slack, Yammer, and other company messaging tools to determine what your people are *really* concerned about...and help you develop solutions for them. You become more aware, and they become more engaged!
Greg Moran is a C-level digital, strategy and change leadership executive with extensive global operations experience. He led corporate strategy for Ford and designed the plan that Alan Mullaly used to turn around the company. Greg held C-level IT positions in app dev, infrastructure, and core banking applications at Ford, Nationwide Insurance, and Bank One/JPMC, respectively. He began his career in consulting with Arthur Andersen Accenture, working across industries with 100 companies over the course of a decade. He is passionate about leadership and culture, and displays that passion as COO at software company Aware – and shares it by teaching part time at Ohio University.
To learn more, listen to our complete conversation with Greg here on YouTube in our "Full Interviews" playlist. For daily leadership musings, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter (we're @IL_Institute).
