25 Mar #321 – Integrity Idea 099: Take a Walk
Integrity Ideas are specific actions a leader can consider during the Re-Align step of Integriosity®–actions that will begin to Re-Align the organization with Biblical beliefs, principles and priorities. You can find more Integrity Ideas at Integrous | Integrity Ideas (integriosity.com)
INTEGRITY IDEA: Take a Walk
Our last two posts focused on communications by faithful leaders that prioritize relationships, community, human dignity and flourishing—saying “Good Morning” and “I’m Sorry.” “Take a Walk” is an equally free way to facilitate informal communication.
“Take a Walk” is about a faithful leader taking the time to walk around the workplace—whether it’s a store, office, or factory—to listen, learn, encourage, and teach.
Integrity Ideas are practical actions toward implementing a bigger WHY for the organization. Some are helpful ideas to consider as a faithful leader prayerfully discerns the best stewardship of the organization. Others may be important steps in the RENEW/RE-ALIGN/RE-IMAGINE/RESTORE process.
“Take a Walk” is in the “if it fits” category. Listening, learning, encouraging, and teaching are necessary, but they can be done without walking.
MBWA
“Take a Walk” is a management technique often called “MBWA”, or “management by walking around.” It’s not new, and we certainly didn’t dream it up. Thomas Peters and Robert Waterman are often credited with popularizing the term in their book In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies. In it they cite The HP Way: How Bill Hewlett and I Built Our Company by David Packard, and Packard writes about MBWA:
The term, a good one, was coined many years ago by one of our managers, though the technique itself goes back to my days at General Electric.
As a secular management tool, MBWA is often cited as useful for Profit as Purpose goals such as increasing productivity, solving problems, and improving employee engagement. Packard describes its purpose as something closer to what a faithful leader should pursue with “Take a Walk”.
[A] technique . . . for helping managers and supervisors know their people and understand the work their people are doing, while at the same time making themselves more visible and accessible to their people.
Packard’s description is not surprising, given that he also wrote “Profit is not the proper end and aim of management–it is what makes all of the proper ends and aims possible.”
Heart of “Take a Walk”
In many organizations, leaders manage from inside executive suites and from behind screens and reports. “Take a Walk” is a step away from business as usual and toward being present with people.
For a faithful leader, “Take a Walk” may lead to those Profit as Purpose goals, but it must not be about those goals. It must come from a heart of Humanizing People, Beautifying the World, and Glorifying God—by caring for employees, eliminating information and wisdom silos, pursuing excellence, and reinforcing the importance of relationships, community, human dignity, and flourishing. It must be about people more than processes, products, problems, or profit.
We have written about these goals and their importance in various posts. For example:
• Caring for employees: #159 (Caring for People: Heart, Hype, or Hustle) and #241 (Integrity Idea 060: Prioritize Employees).
• Eliminating information and wisdom silos: #198 (Integrity Idea 035: Tear Down Those Walls)
The importance to the pursuit of faithful integrity of excellence and culture that prioritizes relationships, community, human dignity, and flourishing is at the heart of many of our past posts.
Failing to implement “Take a Walk” or implementing it without the right heart point to what Mike Stallard identified in his book Connection Culture: The Competitive Advantage of Shared Identity, Empathy, and Understanding at Work as two common types of unhealthy organizational cultures:
• Cultures of Control: in which “people with power, influence, and status rule over others. This culture creates an environment where people fear to make mistakes and take risks. It is stifling— killing innovation because people are afraid to speak up. Employees may feel left out, micromanaged, unsafe, hyper-criticized, or helpless.”
• Cultures of Indifference: in which “people are so busy chasing money, power, and status that they fail to invest the time necessary to develop healthy, supportive relationships. As a result, leaders don’t see value in the relational nature of work, and many people struggle with loneliness. Employees may feel like a cog in a machine, unimportant, uncertain, or invisible.”
A resistance to implementing “Take a Walk” might be a sign of a Culture of Indifference. Implementing “Take a Walk” with a heart of fixing problems and increasing productivity in a way that micromanages employees and makes them feel like they are under surveillance reeks of a Culture of Control.
“Take a Walk”, done well and with the right heart, should help build what Stallard refers to as a Culture of Connection in which people share a vision, feel valued, and have a voice.
Purposes of “Take a Walk”
In the pursuit of faithful integrity through business a better way toward Biblical flourishing, the purposes of “Take a Walk” can be summarized as Listen, Learn, Encourage, and Teach.
Listen. More than anything else, “Take a Walk” is about listening. It is recognizing the Imago Dei in others and living the commandment to love others as God has loved you. When people are heard, they feel valued and they feel they have a voice. A faithful leader who listens well will learn about a fellow human. If done with the right WHY—the right heart—it is humanizing for both the leader and the employee.
We have written about the importance of listening to employees in several posts, and these are a good place to start:
#149–Integrity Idea 017: Listen to a Life
Learn. “Take a Walk” also provides an opportunity for a leader to learn from employees. It recognizes that every person in an organization has unique experiences and perspectives that can contribute to the organization more effectively pursuing its Re-Imagined Purpose.
A leader without access to the wisdom, knowledge, and experience of other people in the organization cannot make the best decisions for the organization, which means they cannot provide the best stewardship of the organization and its people. The following two posts address the ability to learn from employees:
Encourage. “Take a Walk” provides an opportunity to encourage employees by recognizing and praising their accomplishments and helping them overcome obstacles. It recognizes the power of words to lift people past circumstances, over fears and doubts, and out of discouragement, to help them recognize, accept, and utilize the gifts they have been given, and to help them live into God’s vision for them.
Teach. “Take a Walk” is not all about the soft side of relationships and caring. People are also Humanized when leaders help them build task excellence in the way that they use their gifts and talents to serve others. “Take a Walk” offers an opportunity to observe and offer constructive suggestions.
Because work is a way to use our God-given skills to serve others in a way that glorifies God, task excellence is important. God’s work is excellent, and people live more in alignment with Imago Dei when their work reflects that excellence. We talk about this in more depth in post #316–Servant Leadership: Heart, Hype, or Hustle.
CONTINUUM: People
The Integriosity model organizes “heart change” along six Covert-Overt Continuums. There is nothing inherently magic about these categories, but we believe they are helpful in thinking about practical execution of a Re-Imagined Purpose, Re-Imagined Values, and a Re-Imagined Culture. The Continuums are Prayer, Proclamation, Policies, Practices, Products, People.
Each Continuum represents an area in which leaders can begin to think about, plan, and institute Re-Alignment changes to the heart of the organization.
“Take a Walk” is on the People Continuum. It is not about organizational practices or formal policies. It is about a faithful leader caring about listening, learning, encouraging, and teaching.
COVERT-OVERT RATING: Highly Covert
The Integriosity model breaks the Covert-Overt Continuums into six gradations—from Highly Covert to Highly Overt—that we believe are helpful in beginning to pray and think about what is most appropriate for an organization at a particular moment in time.
Most Integrity Ideas have one place on the scale. Some can vary depending on how they are implemented. We identify “Take a Walk” as Highly Covert (An action that would be taken by a secular company) because it reflects a time-honored management technique used by secular business leaders.
“Take a Walk” can be moved toward the Overt end of the Continuum by, for example, explaining its Biblical foundations or tying it to a business a better way culture aligned with Biblical beliefs, principles and priorities.
STAKEHOLDERS SERVED: Employees
When we categorize faith-based actions, we also consider the stakeholders principally impacted by the action: Employees, Customers/Clients, Owners, Suppliers/Vendors, Community and Kingdom.
“Take a Walk” principally serves employees. Of course, flourishing employees have a positive impact on all other stakeholders.
It needs to be frequent, friendly, unfocused, and unscheduled—but far from pointless. (David Packard)
IMPLEMENTATION
“Take a Walk” can be more difficult and impactful than saying “I’m Sorry.” A bad apology (or no apology) principally impacts the relationship between two people. “Take a Walk” done badly can impact all employees with whom the leader comes into contact (and even more if word spreads).
As with “Ace Apologies”, for a faithful leader committed to implementing “Take a Walk”, a good place to start is rereading our posts on developing Biblical EQ and Humility as well as all those mentioned above.
If “Take a Walk” is to be rolled out as a suggested practice for all managers, a faithful leader should prayerfully consider whether those managers have the Biblical EQ to carry it out with the right heart and with the necessary humility. David Packard observed:
For one thing, not every manager finds it easy and natural to do. And if it’s done reluctantly or infrequently, it just won’t work. It needs to be frequent, friendly, unfocused, and unscheduled—but far from pointless. And since its principal aim is to seek out people’s thoughts and opinions, it requires good listening.
There are numerous resources on how to carry out MBWA that are helpful when considering implementing “Take a Walk”. A MasterClass article offers seven tips:
• Be inquisitive. Ask questions that show you care about the person and their work development.
• Implement relevant changes. People will be encouraged to see their suggestions implemented.
• Practice active listening. Listen more than you speak, and take notes.
• Praise employees when appropriate. Encouragement is powerful.
• Put people at ease. People should look forward to interactions—not fear them.
• Reach out to all departments. Focusing on certain work groups can leave others feeling neglected or the focused-on groups feeling targeted.
• Walk around in moderation. Too little can feel like a Culture of Indifference, and too much can feel like a Culture of Control.
Most importantly, “Take a Walk” must come from a heart for people and not be about processes, products, problems, or profit. It must come from a desire for Biblical flourishing.
PERSONAL NOTE (from PM): I have been thinking back to my days as an associate in a big law firm. Did I like it when a partner walked into my office? When I was a partner, did associates like it when I wandered into their offices? I can’t say I had a lot of EQ back then, and I certainly didn’t have Biblical EQ. It was very much an “us-them” culture between partners and associates. “Take a Hike” was probably more common than “Take a Walk”. That said, most partners had an open door policy, which feels like a corollary to “Take a Walk”—but without the same intentionality of presence.
ESSENCE: Integrity Ideas are specific practical actions a faithful leader can consider in leading faithfully through business a better way.
INTEGRITY IDEA: Take a Walk
Our last two posts focused on communications by faithful leaders that prioritize relationships, community, human dignity, and flourishing—saying “Good Morning” and “I’m Sorry.” “Take a Walk” is an equally free way to facilitate informal communication. It is about a faithful leader taking the time to walk around the workplace—whether it’s a store, office, or factory—to listen, learn, encourage, and teach. “Take a Walk” is a management technique often called “MBWA”, or “management by walking around.” As a secular management tool, MBWA is usually cited as useful for Profit as Purpose goals such as increasing productivity, solving problems, and improving employee engagement. For a faithful leader, “Take a Walk” may lead to those benefits, but it must not be about those benefits. It must come from a heart of Humanizing People, Beautifying the World, and Glorifying God—by caring for employees, eliminating information and wisdom silos, pursuing excellence, and reinforcing the importance of relationships, community, human dignity, and flourishing. It must be about people more than processes, products, problems, or profit.
COVERT-OVERT CONTINUUM (six Continuums for action): People
COVERT-OVERT RATING (several levels from Highly Covert to Highly Overt): Highly Covert
STAKEHOLDERS SERVED: Employees
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Photo credit: Original image by Centre for Ageing Better: https://www.pexels.com/photo/employees-having-a-conversation-while-walking-together-13804488/ (photo cropped)
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