You might think that hiring the best talent is hard. Keeping the best talent is harder.
For many years I personally have built my own high performing teams and coached leaders to build their own and it takes more than knowing the “leadership styles” to do that.
A lot of business owners and leaders I talk to have issues with talent retention. It’s one of the things that cost a business the most, given how much money, time and energy is spent on acquiring, training, managing and compensating.
💡A leader is as good as the team he/she leads. 💡
Recently, I was listening to Jeff Hoffman (founder of Priceline, Black Sky Entertainment & ColorJar, just to name a few) and he said something that was so profound, something I’ve been doing for years that made my teams the best.
On the day Priceline was sold, Jeff realised that not one person in the company had ever quit. Since this sounded crazy, Jeff asked some of his employees why they never leave, which is unheard of!
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🤫So…what’s the secret? 🤫✨
99.9% of companies hire employees, after reviewing the resume, having an interview, explaining the values of the company, job description, etc and if the person can do the job, we give them money.
So that we can use that person, for his/her skills, to work and work and work so we can to get our goals, KPIs, our dreams, the beach house, the boat, (you name it). It’s always about the us, the employer.
Now I can hear some of you going “Well….isn’t that a great deal?? Besides, we also provide a great working space, ‘flexible working arrangements’ and pilates classes (or something along those lines).”
Nope! Because if it was, you wouldn’t have so much churn & have issues with great people leaving you.
✨Care about their dreams and they’ll care about yours. ✨✨
Let’s be honest, no employee cares about the KPIs, performance reviews, yearly goals, think tanks, and especially not your dreams.
It sounds selfish, but that’s the truth. What they DO care about are their dreams and goals in life and feeling fulfilled. It’s human nature.
💡And money is only a small part of it.
Some of the highest performing companies I’ve seen offer no bonuses, extra benefits or great working spaces.
But what they do offer is the leadership team putting a little more thought and effort into understanding what makes their employees get out of bed and come to work.
What makes them tick, what dreams they have and when they get them, they are forever in debt to you.
✨✨This is the gold for any manager.
And anyone who refuses to understand this is going to have a hard time keeping great talent.
💬💬‘Hire the best talent, build a team with them, get out of their way to do their job and treat them with compassion and respect’ – Jeff Hoffman
Create a culture where every manager cares about their team and know the individuals at a human level and you will start seeing miracles.
💡 Get to know them as human beings who have a life beyond work and they’ll show they care, beyond what you pay them.
For those of you who think ‘I wish things were simpler and I wish my people would just listen to me when I command just because I say so!’…
Well….tough luck!
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This is no longer the industrial age where you can measure performance based on the number of items they produced. This is the age where a leader with the best high performing, creative talent wins the race.
The difference between you and your competitor is that they have and they know how to keep the talent that will take them into the next century, while you complain and make excuses as to why the way things were done in the last century shouldn’t change.
So by all means, if you want to stay a dinosourus and become extinct, keep doing what you’ve been doing till now and don’t expect any miracles to happen.
🎖️🎖️You people are your competitive edge.
It’s no longer about employees who work the longest hours (hard work vs unproductive work), how fast they work, how many hours their bum is on the seat or who’s ready to nod their head when you want them to.
🏆🏆 But it’s about the stars who would get you the competitive edge you need to have, to thrive in this changing landscape of business.
🔊 To listen to the fascinating story about Jeff and how he leads and the amazing things he’s accomplished, I highly encourage going and having a listen to this keynote.
Photo Credit :https://www.flickr.com/photos/79526104@N07/7309674860
