Create Great Culture & Hire for Best Fit: Conscious Leadership and Trust

On June 1, Alec Broadfoot of VisionSpark and Jaime Taets and Chelsey Paulson of Keystone Group International, came together to lead an interactive workshop around building a foundation of conscious leadership and trust. 

The workshop was delivered using the LexGo platform, which promotes more personal interaction and community building to online events. 

If you’d like to watch the presentation recording, you can do so here.

Jaime moderated the panel discussion and began by introducing the Keystone Impact Model, which helps organizations understand the factors that balance business and human needs.

The foundation part of the model encompasses conscious leadership and trust. The presentation was centered around how to build this in an organization and how to hire for it. 

Conscious Leadership

Chelsey defined conscious leadership as the way we think, act, and interact, and how those actions impact everyone around us. This starts with self-awareness, coaching, intelligence, growth mindset and well-being. 

Most organizations have a trust deficit with their leaders. Chelsey recommends that leaders take an assessment to determine their conscious leadership so they know where they can learn and develop.

Tools for Hiring Conscious Leaders

Alec cited a Gallup study that found that 82% of companies fail to choose the right leader. He recommended hiring conscious leaders with the use of two different tools. 

The first tool is high quality, behavioral-based interview questions that ask for examples. 

He provided three sample interview and follow up questions you can use on your next interview:

Example 1: “Tell me the five words you believe would be used by your supervisor, and/or the people that report to you, to describe you” followed by, “Give me an example as to why you chose these words.”

Example 2: “The way a leader makes people feel is a true measure of their impact. Please tell me how you treat your team members.” Followed by, “If you could listen to one of your team members talking at the dinner table with family members, what would they say about you?”

Example 3: “How much feedback, and it what form, do you like to get from people you report to and those that report to you?” followed by, “Now tell me about some feedback, and the source, you have received recently.”

The group discussed why these questions are so telling and impactful.

Alec said the second tool for hiring conscious leaders is an assessment that measures personality dimensions and mental aptitudes. 

He walked the attendees through a scored Integrator assessment example with data, and pointed out the results in the categories of flexibility, emotional development, assertiveness, competitiveness, and mental toughness. He said assessments are a great way to learn about someone’s core behavior. 

Trust

Chelsey explained that conscious leadership creates trust. She said that trust is the cornerstone to culture, leadership, and any relationship. There is strong psychological safety, mutual respect and honesty component necessary to building trust.

If your organization has low trust, she said you will notice symptoms such as competition and cliques, guarded communication, mediocre work/not achieving their goals, lack of collaboration and lack of ownership.

The attendees then broke into smaller groups for deeper discussion.

When they returned to the main room, they shared findings and “ah ha” moments from their breakout sessions.

Mark Your Calendars for the Next Workshop

Alec, Chelsey and Jaime will be hosting their next “Create Great Culture and hire for Best Fit” workshop on Thursday, August 11 from 1-2 p.m. ET. The focus of the workshop will be “Purpose”. Learn more and register here.

Do you have questions about this workshop or would like more information about hiring conscious leaders? Contact us using the links below!

VisionSpark – Alec@vision-spark.com

Keystone Group Internationsal – Chelsey@keystonegroupintl.com

LexGo – alex.bratton@lexgo.work