What Clorox Can Teach You About Leading a Non-Profit

What Clorox Can Teach You About Leading a Non-Profit

What does Clorox have to do with your leadership style? Maybe not a lot yet. But when you consider that the CEO of this company was rated in the top 100 by Glassdoor, you might want to take a closer look at what they’re doing to win their employee’s hearts.

The Backstory of the Clorox Company

Benno Dorer oversees the Clorox Company, which sells Kingsford Charcoal, Brita water filters, and Hidden Valley salad dressing, among the many other cleaning products it’s well-known for. Although none of these products are quite as eye-catching and attractive as brands, such as Tesla and Apple, have, it’s hard to argue with the success of the company.

Dorer is at the center of it all. His method for success? “I try to empower people to do what they do best and stay out of their way. We always look at ourselves as a people company. Therefore, ideas need to come from the lunch room, not the board room,” Dorer says. In other words, he leads by empowering and engaging his employees.

How can you do the same? Here are a few tips.

Love Your People

If people are at the center of everything you do, it makes sense that you’re going to love them as the heart and soul of your business. There are several ways to do this without getting too mushy.

For example, show your employees you appreciate them by contributing to their long-term personal success. Or, give your volunteers more control over how and where they work instead of confining them to the surveillance inherently found in the four walls of your office building. The more ways you can find working and volunteering with your non-profit to be a rewarding experience, the better your team will respond to your requests.

Practice Humility

In other words, get your ego out of each message you send. You don’t need to fluff your feathers for your employees to take you seriously. You instead need to talk to each person who is on your team as if they’re someone who is capable of achieving greatness in their field, because they are.

Trust your hiring practices and trust the volunteers who have stepped up to help. Then, speak to them and lead from a place of humility rather than narcissism.

Engage Your Volunteers

In the beginning, people are jazzed about the opportunity to participate in what you’re doing. They want to be a part of your cause. But as time goes on, you need to keep them engaged if you’re going to lead successfully.

There are many ways to keep volunteers engaged. But there are equally many ways (if not more ways) to lose the interest of volunteers over time. Focus on staying organized while still catering to the needs of your team – volunteer or paid – and the rest will fall into place.

Leading Like Clorox

Do you lead from a people-centric standpoint? If so, you’re leading more like the Clorox Company, which based on surveys from current and past employees, is a very good thing.

Author Profile Jon Forknell is the Vice President and General Manager of Atlas Business Solutions, Inc., a software marketing company specializing in employee scheduling software, including ScheduleBase employee scheduling software, and other business software solutions. In the past, Jon has been recognized by the U.S. Small Business Administration as a SBA Young Entrepreneur of the Year. Atlas Business Solutions was named as one of Software Magazine’s Top 500 Software Companies in 2004 through 2007 and again in 2010, 2013 and 2014.