This week I would like to include David Mesa’s ideas and opinions about creating a workplace culture of acceptance in my article. David Mesa, Chief Development Officer of PJ’s Coffee, an experienced leader with over 25 years at the management level has created robust company culture through building trust, acceptance and understanding with his team members. His tips on how others can do the same below:
- Lead with Optimism– It is important to set the tone from the top. Ensure employee relations, whether it be a meeting or a one-off email, are done in a positive tone that shows you believe in the outputs and capabilities of your team members. This leads to employee empowerment and employee retention in the long term. One way to do so is to start each morning by sending your team members a positive and encouraging email, this will set them off on a high note for the rest of the day.
- Encourage Mistakes– While detrimental mistakes should be avoided, trying new things that don’t turn out can be a great opportunity for growth. Mesa, takes a very hands-off approach by delegating and then encouraging autonomy. When employees come with questions, he will encourage them to try to find their own answer first. He encourages other leaders to do the same. While mistakes often occur, the learning associated with them can spark innovation.
- Allow Dissenting Ideas– Mesa encourages his team members to buck tradition and take a leap of faith on new ideas knowing that stagnancy and resting on laurels is often what leads to an organization’s downfall. To make sure creativity is always top of mind, put together structured brainstorms these should be both planned and at the drop of a hat to keep employees fresh and enthralled.
- Make Collaboration an Everyday Experience– Collaboration allows team members to open up in a way that may not always be possible when honing in on projects. This helps to create natural trust and workplace culture. To help build this collaboration into everyday create small teams that work interdependently on projects.
Ceren Cubukcu is a top 5 bestselling author of Make Your American Dream A Reality: How to Find a Job as an International Student in the United States. She recently founded her consulting business to help more international students find jobs in the US in addition to her self-service digital event ticketing platform, Etkinlik Fabrikam (My Event Factory), to offer her webinars.
