Leading change at VicSuper with The Emotional Culture Deck

by Gonzalo Cardozo – VicSuper Organisational Development Manager

Recently I ran several focus groups with over 60 leaders and team members from across the business, and I used The ECD as the central piece for generating conversations around how we want our people feeling through change.

I was really taken back at how honest and authentic people we’re prepared to be in these conversations and the level of connection that was immediately created amongst our employees as they openly shared what was going on for them.

The feedback that we received was that up until this point, they hadn’t really been provided with a platform to do this in a safe way and that it was great to have an opportunity to hear other team members share about how they were experiencing change, what they valued, their hopes and their concerns.

We had people tell us they would go home and try the exercise with their families; employees share that it was the best session they had ever participated in during their time here, leaders requesting to use the deck with their teams; and some big a-ha moments created for leaders that have shifted their relationships with their employees and how they can create a more positive employee experience through change – the ECD played a huge role in all of this!

There was so much richness and valuable data that came out of these focus groups for us but one of the biggest takeaways (and pleasant surprises) was just how aligned our leaders were with how our people want to be feeling at work and what great leadership looks like to make this happen (we synthesised the data and the top 5 emotions for leaders and employees were very similar).

We are currently in the process of designing an org-wide leadership development program and the practical outputs that we’ve obtained from leveraging the ECD have ensured that we are starting from the right place and have a clear view of what success looks like for leadership at VicSuper.

Thank you for creating such a hugely valuable tool and resources to help put emotion back on the table in the workplace. It continues to deliver value and has created a ripple effect across our organisation.