If you want your team members to feel welcome, you have done something right.

The other week, I ran a 121 session with a leader exploring the texture of his organization. When asking about how he would like his team members to feel at work, he said: Welcome.

Welcome. As the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary has it, ‘welcome’ is an adjective used to describe people who are accepted or wanted somewhere. We may have come to use ‘welcome’ quite often without really paying much attention to what it may mean to people being employed by a company. Think of employees as being your guests like the leader has done. Emphasizing the importance of accepting employees for who they are, what they believe in or how they behave. Making them feel wanted and needed at work. What a great word that leader chose, what a great proof of clarity, and respect!

Running 121 sessions with leaders and team members will lead to quite a few self-revelations about their wishes, needs and hopes, and increase their awareness of behaviors and rituals put into practice. During the sessions and after reflecting on the statements given or the words picked, we capture actions and next steps. Anything that is important to themselves as much as to their peers and colleagues, team members and employees.

How would you put ‘welcome” into actionable items? Into behaviors or rituals? Into the onboarding process as much as into performance reviews and feedback loops? How would behaviors in your organization look like that will NOT make you or your employees feel welcome? And what would the results be?

I would like to invite you to reach out to me to discuss the texture of your organization and your place of work, and how it could materialize for you. Because you are welcome, too.

[Photo by Tim Mossholder on Pexels]