How are you interacting with your employees today? Are you taking the time to make an authentic connection? Are you taking the time in a variety of formats to have a true understanding of:
Who they are?
What they struggle with?
What do they aspire to become?
If you’re not, I would recommend you start taking purposeful time to make this happen. Like all of us leaders, we have a calendar full of meetings about strategy, governance, policies, etc. We do this at the expense of meeting with our people. Our job as a leader is to create other leaders. Not as immediate successors of us, rather, the empowerment of taking initiative.
We do not want recruiters to have more interactions with our people than we do. With social media, recruiters have continual access to recruit our people. People leave when they feel they do not have the opportunity to grow or disconnect from their boss. In today’s talent wars we need to continually re-recruit our people by investing time with them.
Make authentic connections
Too often we don’t use the one-on-ones to take the time to get to know the person. Instead, we talk about project status or deliverables. We have tools for that. Use the one on one time in a meaningful way.
So let me leave you with this
Schedule and honor one on one times. Use different formats, places, and times to keep it fresh.
Ask them questions about what they’re struggling with to develop their problem-solving skills. Don’t solve their problems. Good leaders give answers. Great leaders ask the right questions.
Get to know where they want to go. Their career path might not be vertical, it might be horizontal. Give them work that prepares them for their next move. The more your seen as someone that enables people to take their next step the more people you have lined up to join.
Every keystroke is precious so I will end here. My vlog is below.
Lead how you would like to be led.
Dave