9. Why is employee involvement crucial in shaping company direction?

Leadership Starts with Selling the Vision

I’ve always believed that leadership is about more than issuing instructions. It’s about getting people to want to do the work—because they believe in the mission as much as you do. For a chief executive, that means spending an enormous amount of time selling: selling the core concept, selling the plans, selling the values, and selling the changes needed to keep moving forward.

Recruiting the Right People

Of course, you can’t engage employees who aren’t suited to the challenge. Recruiting is perhaps the single biggest test for any CEO. No one gets it right 100 percent of the time, but the closer you get, the stronger the company becomes.

Ideally look for people who could grow with the business: proactive, accountable, commercially minded, and resilient. But there is something more—what I call a growth mindset. You need managers and staff who believe their skills are not fixed, who are willing to keep learning, adapting, and stretching themselves to meet new challenges.

Creating Engagement Every Day

Once people join, it is not enough to hand them a job description. They have to be constantly engaged in behaviours that reinforce the brand, whether they were based in New Zealand or overseas. Encourage staff to interact directly with customers, because nothing drives home the importance of brand presentation like seeing the customer’s reaction firsthand.

It is important to create internal systems to ensure your products and marketing materials look consistent, worldwide. Every touchpoint matters. Employees have to understand that they are not just doing tasks—they are building trust in the brand with every decision and interaction.

Building Capabilities Through Leadership

Good leadership isn’t about one charismatic figure at the top. It’s about creating leadership across the organization, so that every manager and team lead reinforce the same vision. This means aligning everyone around the ultimate aim: building global trust and confidence in your brand. This is a major challenge when building a global business from New Zealand.

Your next read in the series 10. Why is it important to build a positive company culture?

Building Global Businesses

A fuller explanation on this subject is outlined in my book “Going Global” www.goglobal.co.nz