Secrets to Keeping Your Best People
– By Greg Helfrich of The Enterprise Coach
The key to unlocking the Calgary labour market
• Good people are hard to find.
• Your best way of attracting people is by using the people you have
to refer them to you.
• Good people attract good people.
• One of your good people is generally as productive as two or three
of your less productive people.
Therefore, keeping your good people and having them attract the good people they know is a viable solution to labour problems. The balance of this article is about what you can do to keep your good people.
One assumption you can make as an owner or manager is that you will receive little or no honest feedback without creating the right conditions.
Your good people want accountability
Good people crave accountability and want to see an organization where
people are recognized for what they do. I have talked to good employees
who have moved on to other companies and many say that the lack of accountability
drove them crazy – they were tired of covering for poor performers.
Remember, good people who get things done right crave accountability.
If you have lost some good people in your organization, a lack of accountability
may be the reason the good ones have left.
Your good people need to work on the business
I believe working “on” the business, not just “in”
the business, should be part of everyone’s responsibility - from top
to bottom.
The effects of an organization that dedicates an average of 5-10% of time
to improving the effectiveness of the organization can be phenomenal. These
efforts improve morale, commitment and the bottom line. The people who are
doing the work always have ideas about improving their work. They simply
need a forum to surface their ideas and a system to make the changes and
get them to stick.
Working “on” the business – improving the effectiveness
of the business - has to be part of everyone’s responsibilities, not
just management.
Your people want management that is proactive
Management should not be ad hoc and reactive. People in any organization
resent lurches and leaps to deal with the problem of the moment - they get
confused over their priorities. I know many people who resent having to
spend extra time doing their regular work after a preventable crisis of
the day subsides.
Build a system in your business where issues are identified, surfaced and
dealt with before they are a crisis and you avoid ad hoc crisis management.
Good people want candour
All organizations need open, honest discussion and debate. If your people
are afraid of you or each other, they can’t be effective and neither
will any business improvement efforts. Any attempts to move your business
beyond today hinge on open and honest communication at all levels and among
different levels.
One assumption you can make as an owner or manager is that you will receive
little or no honest feedback without creating the right conditions.
The command and control nature of almost every organization for the last
1000 years has led to submissive people. The closer to the bottom that people
are, the more submissive they are.
How do you create candour in your organization? The short answer is that
candour starts at the top with the acknowledgment that collectively the
organization is smarter than it is as individuals but that we cannot unleash
that collective intellegence unless open and honest discussion and debate
are the norm.
Good people will follow good leaders
So what does good leadership mean in the day to day swirl that’s your business? Most definitions of leadership are too vague to help people understand. For example, great thinkers have defined leadership as the “ability to translate vision into reality” or “bring out the potential in your people.” I don’t use these explanations when talking to a front line supervisor about their leadership skills. They do not make leadership easily understood. For my purposes, I use a quick simple definition that gets the point across.
“Leadership is modelling the behaviour you expect from your people”
So what does good leadership look like in real life?
Trustworthiness
If you desire trustworthy employees, you must demonstrate trustworthiness
– plain and simple. Too many owner/managers talk about the lack of
honest employees at the same time they are clearly bending the rules for
their own personal gain. Abuse of company expense accounts and hiding personal
expenses in the company are two of the most common untrustworthy behaviours
that I have seen.
Integrity
Integrity is simply doing as you said you would do or walking the talk!
If you declare the building a non-smoking area and then smoke in your office,
this demonstrates a lack of integrity. Your people interpret everything
you do. If they can’t trust you to follow your own policies, why should
they? Integrity is as simple as living up to promises. This means following
company policies, procedures and keeping commitments.
Loyalty to those not present
Gossip and tearing down of others behind their backs is one of the most
cancerous behaviours owners/managers can participate in or allow to happen.
Loyalty to those not present means that you set the example 24/7 when it
comes to how you discuss issues with everyone. It also means that when you
encounter Monday morning quarterbacking, gossip and tearing down of others,
you need to stop it then and there. At the same time, you need to explain
the need for everyone’s loyalty to those not present.
A bias for improvement
Good leaders demonstrate a burning desire for improvement. They do not accept
that the way things are is the way they are going to be forever. While they
do not recklessly mess with things that are working well, they realize that
if they don’t constantly try to improve their businesses, there will
be long term consequences.
A sense of direction
Not all great leaders are visionaries who can stand in front of a group
and lead them off to battle. As a matter of fact, quite the opposite is
true every day; many people will follow quiet, unassuming people through
thick and thin.
People need to feel that you are leading them to a better future. Good leaders
can talk about the future and how it can look because they have envisioned
a better future and can articulate that better future to others in terms
people can understand.
An underlying purpose
Great leaders have a reason they do what they do and it’s not about
money! The sense of discovery, pride of a job well done, a desire to change
the world or the drive to bring out the best in others is evident among
great leaders. People detect the sense of purpose that flows from these
people and want to work with them.
If your people perceive that the only purpose for their employment is to
make you richer, don’t expect much good.
The ability to synthesize complexity
Good leaders have the ability to take a complex issue and boil it down to
its essence so others can understand it. Examples are the ability to get
to the root cause of a problem or translating the meaning of world events
to the effects on the business in terms people can understand.
The ability to communicate effectively
Good leaders have the ability to communicate effectively. I am not talking
about the ability to deliver an inspirational speech to an audience. I am
saying a leader needs to be able to clearly express what they want it in
a manner others understand. Communication can be verbal, written, pictorial
or as simple as a hand signal. Whatever the medium, you need to be able
to communicate so others can understand. This skill goes hand in hand with
the ability to synthesize complexity and sometimes it means knowing when
not to talk or offer an opinion. Leaders need to be able to communicate;
they also must understand the effects of how they communicate – leaders
generally speak last when a group is debating or deciding and speak first
when they see unacceptable behaviour.
To summarize: The quick fixes that people are using today are not working.
It is time to get to the root of the issues that cause good people to leave
and make your organization a workplace that attracts the best talent.
