Warren Buffett Is Often Asked What the Ideal Workplace Is. His Answer Is the Best Career Tip You’ll Hear Today
Four takeaways:
Schwantes opens the piece with a quote from the great Warren Buffett:
“People ask me where they should go to work, and I always tell them to go to work for whom they admire the most. It’s crazy to take little in-between jobs just because they look good on your resume. That’s like saving sex for old age. Do what you love and work for whom you admire the most, and you’ve given yourself the best chance in life you can.”
So how does a leader earn the admiration of those he supervises? Schwantes, a career coach and author, argues that this is achievable by focusing on being “human-centered.” These are qualities of a human-centered leader:
- Human-centered leaders are relationship-focused: Gallup research surveys show that an employee’s direct relationship with their supervisor is the single most important relationship they have in their organization. A positive relationship is empowering, but a negative relationship can demoralize and demotivate. A supervisor can keep an employee passionate & motivated by learning about them– their interests, strengths, concerns, and goals.
- Human-centered leaders allow for risks to be taken: Famously, Google’s “Project Aristotle” surveyed the company to find out what made a team effective. What they found was that a team works best with it shares a “psychological safety” – a shared belief that the team is a safe place for risk taking, offering ideas, and admitting mistakes.
- Human-centered leaders show uncommon humility: great leaders turn away from selfish interests. Humble leaders achieve greatness without arrogance, showing those they supervise that they work towards a mission, rather than in service of their ego.
- Human-centered leaders make the people they serve better: Schwantes argues that a great leader asks “what am I doing every day to improve the life of an employee?” Leaders who build trust and loyalty with their teams, clear away barriers so people can succeed, and help employees find meaning in their work will naturally earn a reputation as genuinely human-centered.
Returning to Buffett’s advice, a worker’s search for a great workplace situation is less about picking the right company and more about picking the right person to work for. And for leaders, becoming someone workers want to work for hinges on adopting human-centered leadership.
By Marcel Schwantes for Inc.
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