The Role of Mission in Leadership Development: Connecting the Dots for Line-Level Employees
Summary:
In this episode, Dr. Jim interviews Tony Jamous, CEO of Oyster, about building high-performance teams and developing the next generation of leaders. Tony shares his experience as an immigrant and the importance of creating a hyper-diverse and fully distributed organization. He emphasizes the need for leaders to be empathetic and connected to their teams, as well as the importance of aligning individual actions with the company's mission. Listeners will gain valuable insights on talent strategy and leadership development in a global context. Tune in to learn more!
Key Takeaways:
- Global talent acquisition can create a truly diverse and inclusive work environment, negating the dominance of any single culture.
- Emotional sensitivity and empathy are crucial leadership skills that are often overlooked but can be developed for better team dynamics.
- Flexibility in leadership—adapting to situations by either making decisions or empowering teams—is a key factor in successful organizational management.
- Clear communication and consistent storytelling from leadership help align individual employee actions with the broader company mission and strategy.
- Organizational missions play a vital role in nurturing a sense of belonging and purpose amongst employees, connecting granular work to the big picture.
Chapters:
00:00 Welcome: Setting the Stage
00:18 Meet Tony Jamous: From Lebanon to Leading Oyster
01:24 A Global Perspective: Talent Strategy and Diversity
04:51 Building Empathy in Leadership
07:14 Connecting Strategy with Day-to-Day Work
08:41 Key Pitfalls for Aspiring Leaders
10:26 Wrapping Up: The Importance of Mission and Leadership
Connect with Dr. Jim: linkedin.com/in/drjimk
Connect with CT: linkedin.com/in/cheetung
Connect with Tony Jamous: linkedin.com/in/teljamou
Music Credit: Shake it Up - Fesliyanstudios.com - David Renda
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Mentioned in this episode:
Engaging Leadership Outro
Engaging Leadership Intro
Transcript
Joining us today. We have Tony Jamis, who is the CEO of oyster as the featured guest, Tony, welcome to the show.
[:[00:00:26] Dr. Jim: Super excited to have you on the show.
And I think it's going to be important for us to set up a little context. You've got a unique background and perspective in the world of HR tech in the world of B2B tech. So I'd like you to share with the audience a little bit of your story and what you're working on now, and then we'll dive into the conversation.
[:I wasn't my. Mid to late thirties and decide hey, I want to start a new business By this time it had to be a mission driven business a business that I believe in so that led me to start Oyster A global employment platform that is on a mission to make the world more free and equal by democratizing access to global job opportunities
[:And then you spent some time in London. So let's talk sports a little bit. So when you look at France, when you look at England, do you have any favorite soccer clubs that you've identified? Because choose carefully. If I don't like your answer. Interview's over,
[:I have none. I have none because I'm from nowhere, I don't have any national attachment anymore. My home country is a failed state right now there's no. Much sports happening there. Maybe it's a blessing that I don't [00:02:00] need to watch. I don't have to watch these sports.
I can do with something else in my life, but I'm pretty agnostic of these teams.
[:How did that shape your talent strategy when you're building these organizations and you've done multiple exits? So tell me a little bit about how that shaped how you built organizations and what your talent strategy involved.
[:At Oyster, we are 500 people distributed in 70 countries from over a hundred nationalities. Gender equal across the board. So we're very intentional in building a hyper diverse organization that is fully distributed.
[:You're global in terms of footprint. You have [00:03:00] great representation across the organization. What I'm curious about is when you're looking at building an organization like that, there's a lot of cultural differences across borders. So how did you come up with a unified perspective on what diversity means, what it looks like, how it shows up in the organization?
Yeah,
[:So essentially we're looking at humans as humans. We don't see their background. And actually with remote work, because remote work is mostly asynchronous, work people that used to be discriminated in the workplace, such as people of color, let's say they feel so much more at ease in this environment.
[:So that's the issue that organizations need to solve and you could choose to solve it by taking a zoom out philosophy and looking at, Hey, how can we tap into all this great talent around the world? Or you can make the decision to be hyper local. Each has its trade off. It's just a matter of what you are willing to deal with from an organizational structure perspective.
Great stuff so far. I think it's set the stage pretty well for the next part of what I want to talk to you about when you look at a globally distributed remote team, and you're thinking about building the next generation of leaders, what are your best practices in identifying that next generation?
[:[00:04:51] Tony Jamous: Yeah, so when you think about readiness for leadership. You have certain skills that the person have to say in terms of how to manage people, how to give [00:05:00] feedback, how to set goals how to, take care of the people. What I find is missing a lot in many organization is the empathy of the leader.
How do you enable leaders to be more empathic to their teams? How do you enable them to feel more what's going on? Sense the group dynamic. at a deeper level with their team, understand their challenges and make them feel seen and heard. That's a skill that can be built and it can be built by enabling the person to connect with themselves.
The more they are in touch with their own feelings, they can be much more sensitive to what's going on around them. So it's a skill that can be built by enhancing the emotional sensitivity of the leader.
[:Some of the things that you're saying aren't natural from a cultural competency perspective for certain cultures. How did you get over [00:06:00] that hurdle and build a unified sense of Empathy, caring across your leadership tier that helped build that leadership pipeline.
[:I work on myself as a leader of this organization. I care about how my team feel working with me and I care about how I feel working here. I want to, I don't want to feel judged. I don't want to feel that fear that I'm making a mistake. I want to feel, I want to feel that I can be vulnerable in this organization and not be yeah, I don't want to be afraid to be vulnerable.
So first I model the behavior myself with my team and I hire people that are also on that path of being more conscious and empathic leader. Now obviously it depends on like leaders also have to develop. The ability to be flexible in terms of what persona they decide to use in what context.
it's less about empathy and [:[00:07:11] Dr. Jim: There's a lot of good stuff in what you just said. I want to expand a little bit and get your thoughts on something. When you're talking about all of this stuff from an executive perspective, other executives get that. One of the major gaps that exists within organizations is when you think about strategy at the C suite in the boardroom and you connect it to the line level employee and the day to day work.
Oftentimes a lot of line level employees. We'll have no idea about how this work connects to the broader strategy. What is my role due to impact the company? You spent a lot of time talking about connecting with yourself, understanding yourself, developing yourself, connecting with empathy, all of that sort of thing.
helping connect the dots to [:[00:08:03] Tony Jamous: Absolutely. And it's actually the role of the leadership to create that connection and that's that relationship.
So let me give you examples of how we create that oyster. First we we spend a lot of effort in designing our objective and key result process that connects the individual result to the team result to the company results. So we create this connection so people can understand every action they take has an impact on our overall company results, also what you do through Leadership communication.
I call it storytelling. It's about connecting the company strategy. Where is the day to day work of people and explaining to them? And repeating the strategy to the team and make sure that they everybody understand it.
[:[00:09:04] Tony Jamous: The key pitfall I found that people miss is their attachment to their title or to their role or what they need to do.
Because as you become a leader in the organization, especially on a C level leader, you're going to wear multiple hats and you're going to need to have ego flexibility, to stay flexible. So for instance, if like last time I ended up in a meeting and there was a decision that didn't need to be made and I thought that this was not the CEO's job to make that decision, but in a microsecond I was able to realize that actually my team wants me to make that decision.
They need me to make that decision, so I decided to make that decision without reacting, without that ego flexibility gives me a superpower to to be this leader that goes with the flow, and be able to stay open and curious to what's happening in the organization.
[:Sometimes that means you're going to let the team take the ball and run. Other times it means that you have to take the ball and run. So really great stuff.
[:[00:10:12] Dr. Jim: Tony. If people want to continue this conversation, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?
[:[00:10:17] Dr. Jim: Thanks for hanging out with us, Tony. It was a really fast paced and important conversation that I think is going to help a lot of the listeners.
Out there who are looking at building high performance teams. When I reflect on the things that we talked about and we covered a lot of ground, I think one of the things that is really important to highlight is the value of being deeply connected to your mission and then communicating how that mission shows up in the day to day work.
tifying people who are ready [:And that's what I took away from this conversation that we had. So I appreciate you sharing that with us For those of you who have checked out the conversation. If you liked it, leave us a review. If you haven't already done so join the HR impact community. You can find that at www. engagerocket. co slash HR impact and tune in next time where we'll have another great leader joining us and sharing with us the game changing insights that helped them build a high performing team,
