CEOs: We Have a Post-Pandemic Performance & Culture Problem
By Gretchen Fox Palmer, CEO of MTO Agency and Creator of EQ @Work
As a leader, your primary responsibility is to ensure a productive workplace culture. However, many CEOs are unaware that what they consider a productive environment may actually be toxic. Drawing from my experience as a Fortune 500 entertainment executive and agency founder, I’ve seen firsthand how toxic workplaces are often mistaken for high-performing ones. Just recently, I heard of a corporate board that openly acknowledged their CEO’s toxic behavior but dismissed it as long as profitability remained high. If you share this mindset, you might be a “Disconnected Leader”.
But if you’re an executive or people manager who values genuine leadership and understands that a positive, emotionally healthy culture directly correlates with employee happiness, retention, and productivity, this guide is for you. Emotional well-being and thriving employees aren’t just buzzwords—they are the bedrock of a successful organization. This series builds upon the work of a long list of thought leaders, researchers, scientists, academics, teachers and coaches who have inspired me over the last 30 years of my career, providing insights and strategies to address the complexities of the modern, post-pandemic workplace.
Social-emotional intelligence (SEL) skills, long overlooked in historical traditional education and training, are the missing link to navigating today’s volatile socio-political climate and the always-on work culture. The good news is that these skills are easy-to-learn and can be taught in nine hours or less. Companies that invest in a little bit of social-emotional learning or EQ @Work as we call it, are becoming the new standard for the definition of a healthy, high-performance culture.
To understand more about why social-emotional skills are the missing link, and how we got here, I recommend reading this next: The 5 Factors Causing the Post-Pandemic Slump (Hint: It’s Not Your Fault!)
For those of you who already understand the problem and want to get straight to the solution:
