As leaders, your most pressing challenge is staying ahead of the curve. When it comes to your talent management strategy, the key to gaining the strategic advantage is your people. No matter how high tech the world continues to be, the success of your business, no matter what industry you work in, is dependent upon retaining the best talent.
Name any segment of the market right now that isn’t feeling he impact of a talent shortage. How did this happen? Well, there are many reasons that can explain the panic mode that businesses are experiencing. The retirement of millions of baby boomers and the availability of millennials to replace them, it counts for much of the struggle. Although, interestingly, organizations have known for some time that they will need to have a strategy in place to attract new talent.
Unfortunately, many haven’t fully anticipated the global competition for talent. In addition leaders at many levels are unaware of the impact of their own reputation. Personally as well as the reputation of their own employer brand on a new hire’s decision to stay.
In this series we’re gonna look at the key elements that you need to have in place to attract and retain the best people.
We need to be asking ourselves, if we’re leading ourselves, are we being the best possible example that we can be?
We manufacture a lot of our fear. All of us should look at leadership as being a mindset. It’s about being the leader of your own life and we have all have to choice to be able to do that.
You know there’s an old adage, people don’t leave companies, they leave managers. And this has total applicably for so many of you who are grappling right now with the talent shortage. Gallop research has found that 50 percent of employees leave because they’re frustrated with their boss. Now why are they frustrated? They’re frustrated for a myriad of reasons. Lack of direction, they can’t see the opportunity path, they feel excluded from the decision making process, or a lack of communication or maybe it could be because they feel that their boss is arrogant or narcissistic or even worse, they’re an egomaniac who takes all the credit when they do a good job.
Now what does this do? It creates a total lack of trust and it makes us feel insecure and start to question what we are doing in this position. So think about how many times you have left a position because of poor leadership. Or maybe the opposite is true. You’ve stayed because of an inspiring, caring leader who validates your work and makes it a priority to build a relationship with you. Every one of us wants that and we also want to feel like we’re doing purposeful, meaningful work and we want to see that connection between what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.
So ask yourself, as a leader, are you demonstrating this? You see, leading by example is the one aspect of your talent management strategy that you can control. Jim Clifton, the CEO of Gallop, references the fact that one 10 percent of people have the god-given talent to lead. That is an amazing statistic. You see, for years Gallop has surveyed more than two million people in more than 30 countries on the topic of leadership and while there’s a great deal of emphasis on employee engagement, Gallop research also shows that more than 30 percent of leaders are disengaged. Now that is alarming. So consider the link between a disengaged leader and a disengaged employee.
What this means, and is a reminder for all of us, is that leaders profoundly influence the atmosphere and the direction of an individual’s career path. How can we be inspired to stay when our leaders are disengaged? There is a direct correlation between talent retention and a leader’s motivation. How they are engaged at work is gonna impact your team.
In summary, let’s remember that leaders profoundly impact an employee’s decision to stay or go. Also that leaders who are engaged themselves can engage others. Positive energy is infectious and the key is to remember that you want to be the leader that they stay for.
This post is a transcript of the content of a new video series on YouTube. Check it out here!
Michelle Ray (Twitter) is one of the best international leadership keynote speakers in Vancouver. She helps you discover your potential through presentations, coaching and consulting. With over 20 years of experience Michelle has worked with hundreds of companies around the world. She is taking bookings for speaking engagements and can be contacted at MichelleRay.com
