Hiring managers are struggling to fill positions with talented individuals. In many cases, they are given a list of qualifications to look for and are tasked with filling those positions quickly. While many positions are filled, there are a high percentage of jobs that could be quickly and easily filled by looking internally.
A
recent study revealed that 25% of employees would like to be promoted at their current place of employment. However, 24% of employees indicate that they would be open to a position elsewhere as a result of being overlooked for a promotion.
What is causing this disconnect? Why are corporate leaders looking outside of their company instead of hiring from within?
Perhaps one of the primary reasons employers look outside their organization is a
lack of knowledge of their employees’ talents.
Retention of talented employees is more cost effective and practical. It is also an effective way to generate a culture of growth within your organization. How can your organization capitalize on the skills to which you already have access?
Overcoming a Perceived Skills Gap
One of the biggest hurdles to internal hiring is a perceived skills gap. Instead of looking at employees’ current skill or job requirements, corporate leaders should be looking at what talents they have. To be effective, this approach must be a consistent process of talent identification and development.
Some companies purposefully develop cross-training programs, allowing employees to learn and develop skills in areas outside their department. Giving additional training to employees is another way of ensuring that you always have a steady stream of skilled workers ready to be mobilized.
Invest in Employees to Build Loyalty
People recognize when employers genuinely care about their well-being and success. When employees feel valued and appreciated, they are more likely to be loyal to the organization. In many cases, this then frees the employee to take risks and fully engage with the organization.
They may be open to taking calculated risks, willing to share ideas and may demonstrate skills outside their job title. By taking a genuine interest in the development of employees, your company will benefit by gaining a committed employee.
Increase Skill Development
Invest in a quality employee development program to hone employees’ skills. The investment will not only bring new, often necessary skills to your workforce, it will give your employees an opportunity to show previously unnoticed skills.
When put into training situations or team building components, overlooked leaders often rise to the challenge. Strategic planners excel when given the chance, even if their current position doesn’t require the skill. Many leaders feel as though investing in training is a losing proposition, fearful they will waste the money on employees who will take their newly developed skills elsewhere. A culture of growth is attractive to employees – both new and existing.
Your workforce may be harboring hidden skills that can be beneficial to your organization. Discovering and using these skills can not only help your company, it can help to develop employees into future leaders. What skills are you looking for that your employees may already possess?
Michele Bailey is president and CEO of
Blazing Agency and
My Big Idea™. These two lines of business work congruently to support her clients’ success.
Have you noticed key individuals within your organization who show signs of leadership? These emerging leaders can be an asset to your company with proper development. Want to encourage your emerging leaders to grow? Here are some simple ways to start.
Communicate Your Plan
Once you have identified an individual as an emerging leader in your organization, don’t keep it secret! Let the individual know that you have an interest in developing their growth and share your leadership plan with them.
Form a Group
Group coaching is one way to allow leaders to support each other and share their experiences. When participants take a role in leading discussions, they are practicing their leadership skills as well as learning from each other. A leadership development group is an excellent way to encourage emerging leaders.
Showcase Your Emerging Leaders
As young (could mean both young in age or young in leadership experience) leaders develop, allow them to be in the forefront of your organization. Give them opportunities to practice leading in a controlled environment. Let them lead the monthly staff meeting, present at a town-hall, or collaborate with other departments. Find ways that they can step into a leadership role and gain experience.
Give Them a Problem to Solve
Use action-based learning to give emerging leaders the chance to solve real-world business problems. Do you need to improve employee engagement? Are you working on improving client intake processes? Whatever current issues your business is facing, give your emerging leader the opportunity to help solve them.
Use Failure as a Growth Opportunity
Failure is inevitable. Give your emerging leader the freedom to take calculated risks. When things don’t work out the way they’re intended, use the chance to provide coaching on how to succeed in the future.
Discuss how the failed execution of the plan could have been altered to ensure success, and what steps could be taken the next time. Resist the urge to “solve” the problem for them. Allow them to wrestle through the process and come up with their own solution. Then coach as necessary to help them make informed decisions.
Become a Mentor
Mentoring is when experienced leaders share their knowledge with others. Establish a mentoring program (either formal or informal – whatever will fit best in your company) to help develop the emerging leaders in your organization.
Tailor the program to meet the needs of your organization. Pair new leaders with high performing leaders at the same level for encouragement, or match mentors from different levels with new leaders to provide additional training.
Highlight Tangible Results
Allow emerging leaders to see how their efforts impact the company. Establish milestones and goals, and then show them how reaching their goals can help the growth of the organization. Leaders need to know that every individual has a role to play in reaching corporate goals. By giving them real-time results tied to their goals and milestones, you can help them both appreciate the efforts of individuals and realize the importance of their own actions.
The misconception that emerging leaders are inherently equipped for success is detrimental to the emerging leader’s development and can cripple an organization’s growth. An effective leadership training program will provide systematic coaching and development. In addition, a successful program will encourage emerging leaders to continue their personal growth. How can you encourage an emerging leader in your company?
Michele Bailey is president and CEO of
Blazing Agency and
My Big Idea™. These two lines of business work congruently to support her clients’ success.
It is not unusual in today’s workplace environment to have employees who change jobs every 2 – 4 years. This can be disheartening for human resource directors, managers and corporate leaders who invest time and money into on-boarding and training employees only to have them leave just as they get settled.
For the long-term success of a company, it is imperative to foster employee loyalty. Without ‘demanding’ company loyalty in an authoritarian approach, how can you increase employee loyalty? Is it possible?
Build Confidence in Leadership
A survey of employees revealed that one of the most important components in employee loyalty is confidence in the company’s leadership. Employees want to know that their leaders and managers are trying to be the best they can be and are doing the best for the company.
Offer Competitive Compensation
Pay is not the most important aspect of employment, but it is essential. Offering fair compensation to employees can help to eliminate them seeking more money elsewhere. Do you routinely reward employees for excellent work? Have you evaluated your compensation packet to ensure that you are in line with local and/or national norms? Are there incentives and perks that encourage employees to work hard for your company and still have enough energy and time left for their lives outside of work?
Be Fanatical about Company Culture
Want to ensure that your employees are loyal to your company? Make sure your organization is a place people want to work. The personalities, attitudes and interpersonal relationships that occur in the office can be a key part of employee loyalty. Model positive culture behaviour by showing a positive attitude. Address situations immediately that may negatively impact the culture of the office.
Provide Tools and Technology
Employee frustration is detrimental to loyalty. A common frustration for employees is not having the right tools to do their job or having outdated technology that hinders their job performance. Employees who are asked to meet their goals with equipment that doesn’t work, is outdated or unwieldly is a recipe for disaster. Make sure that you
provide your teams with the tools they need to do the jobs they’re assigned. Offer training to ensure they know how to perform the necessary tasks. Routinely ask if employees feel they have everything they need to be successful.
Establish Mutual Respect
It has been said that to get respect, you have to give respect. This is particularly true for employees. If you want their respect as a leader, and ultimately their loyalty, you must show them respect. It is as simple as using common courtesy and treating them as a valued part of the reason the company will reach its goals. Value their opinions and feelings and be genuine. Employees want to know they are at a place where they are valued. Showing them the respect they deserve is the right way to start.
Want to improve employee loyalty? Loyalty starts at the top and filters down to the employees. Show your employees that you’re loyal to the company, and to their growth and development and they’ll return that loyalty. What is one action step you can take to increase employee loyalty in your organization?
Michele Bailey is president and CEO of
Blazing Agency and
My Big Idea™. These two lines of business work congruently to support her clients’ success.
Do you have emerging leaders under your management? Are you developing a leadership pipeline for your organization?
The development of leaders is important for your organization, as well as for the future success of the leaders. One key to developing leaders is making sure that you have the right people in the right place.
However, it takes more than simply moving potential leaders into a leadership position to help them be successful. A calculated approach to the growth and development of emerging leaders is essential. Another key to developing leaders is to lead by example.
How do you become the leader that emerging leaders want to follow?
Develop a Leadership Plan
Identify the skills and strengths that your emerging leaders need. Then develop a systematic approach to helping them attain those skills. This can include conferences, training opportunities and more. Communicate your plan to the emerging leader. Allow them to buy in to the idea and the development plan.
Maintain Focus
Many leaders allow emerging leaders to have unlimited flexibility and freedom. However, this method is not effective for most upcoming leaders. Emerging leaders rarely have the experience or skills necessary to be given free range. Allow emerging leaders to develop leadership practice gradually will give them time to hone their skills in a controlled environment. Determine what the focus of your training will be, and then give your employee consistent opportunities to practice those skills.
Establish High Expectations
Encourage emerging leaders to reach for top performance. Teach them to be accountable for reaching their goals. Help them to learn to set realistic goals for themselves and set incremental milestones to help them reach their goal. In the beginning, this may require your assistance as they learn to set (and reach) milestones. Gradually allow them to take ownership of the process.
Find Their Strengths
Be open about your own strengths and weaknesses. Look for ways to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the emerging leaders.
Encourage them to develop their strengths and find ways to compensate for their weaknesses. Rather than allowing them to “stretch” beyond their comfort zone, help them develop their skills while they are under your leadership. This will help them build confidence in their abilities and allow them to know their limitations in the future.
Communicate Regularly
Emerging leaders want to be mentored. Establish a relationship with the emerging leaders in your organization that cultivates communication. Schedule regular meetings to assess their progress and make corrections as necessary. These can be both formal and informal meetings but should take place often enough that it becomes habitual.
Share Inspiration
An important skill in leadership is both
personal and professional growth. Encourage emerging leaders to seek growth opportunities – both in and out of the office. Share your own growth stories and ways that you seek additional development.
Becoming a leader that others want to follow requires you to exhibit the skills you want to see in others. Are you looking for outgoing, collaborative leaders? Show them what it looks like in practice. Want emerging leaders to take initiative? Demonstrate how that looks, and then offer them opportunities to try it out. How are you going to encourage emerging leaders in your organization?
Michele Bailey is president and CEO of
Blazing Agency and
My Big Idea™. These two lines of business work congruently to support her clients’ success.
For years, it was the classic sitcom plot: an individual went to work, where they became their “work-self” and then reverted to their “true-self” after hours.
Much like Clark Kent and Superman, employees were encouraged to keep their personal lives out of the office. This created a strange sense of dichotomy, putting the employee in the position of having two distinct personas, but never fully engaging in either.
Within the last few years, however, employers have realized that embracing employees as more than simply “worker bees” is essential to corporate success. To accomplish this, employers are encouraging their employees to bring their whole selves to work.
What Does “Whole Self” Mean?
Bringing your whole self to work is a philosophy switch that may seem foreign to some. Rather than being afraid to share details of your life ’outside the office’, whole-self employees value their experiences and influences and understand their impact on their work. Put simply, bringing your whole self to work means you don’t have to separate the personal from the professional. This can lead to greater engagement and increased productivity.
How Can You Encourage Whole Self?
Build Trust
Employers who want to maximize employee engagement must do more than simply start a corporate program. The mindset of everyone in the organization must change. Instead of having “employees” who do work, view your organization as having “people” who do the work.
A Best Companies survey includes the statement, “Management cares about me as a person, not just an employee”. Companies that scored high in the survey were all rated highly in this area. This underscores the sentiment that employees want to be valued for their whole selves, not just what they do.
Once companies begin to change their mindset about employees, they will start to build trust with them. Employees will see that they are valued for who they are and be more engaged in their work.
Get to Know Your Employees
When you understand that employees are your greatest resource, you want to find out how they can best meet your corporate needs. Discovering the hidden strengths and talents your employees posses can help you connect their skills with professional development. This will encourage greater interaction between the employee’s whole self and their job and allow them to leverage their strengths. Further, when employees connect in a deeper way to their job, they can see how their contributions contribute to the organization.
Allow Your Employees to Grow
Part of encouraging employees to bring their whole selves to work is creating a culture where everyone is able to grow. Setting a
standard of high expectations can challenge your employees to do their best. It is essential to have healthy expectations – unrealistic ideas of perfection can hinder growth and cause your employees to shut down. When you allow your employees to thrive and grow in their positions, they feel supported and cared about.
Encourage your employees to bring their whole selves to work with your own example. Allow them to see you as a person, not just their boss, and they will respond in kind. As a result, the company will benefit, and you will have a team of people who love what they do.
Michele Bailey is president and CEO of
Blazing Agency and
My Big Idea™. These two lines of business work congruently to support her clients’ success.
As you look around your workplace, you may notice an alarming trend: the millennials appear to be taking over.
With the swelling number of young-ish workers (the oldest millennials are in their mid-30s), and the departure of the oldest workers, who is filling the void in leadership?
Often overlooked, (the story of their generation, some will say) Generation Xers have been quietly assuming the mantle of leadership within their organizations and show no signs of slowing down. A
2018 report revealed that nearly 51% of leadership roles globally have been taken by Gen Xers.
The rest are still held by boomers, and a small number of roles have been taken by millennials. Recently, however, millennials have been moving into key leadership positions and are taking over management positions that puts them in charge of Gen Xers.
What does this mean for the workforce? Are there differences between the leadership styles of Gen X and millennials?
There are distinct differences between the two generations, but they aren’t necessarily a bad thing. In reality, both generations can learn from the other, strengthening their management style and benefiting their organization.
Technology Use
While millennials are thought to be more tech savvy than their predecessors, don’t underestimate the connectivity of Gen X. While
56% of millennials report that they are digitally savvy, 54% of Gen X says they are as well.
A Nielsen study discovered that Gen X used social media 40 minutes longer each week than millennials and are just as likely to bring their tech skills to work. When it comes to using collaborative tools, social media and other tech aspects of their job, millennials may adopt new processes first, but Gen Xers don’t shy away from integrating them into their daily routine.
Management Style
Collaboration. Mentorship. Decision making. When it comes to leadership, these are some of the specific traits that most employers look for. When asked, each generation had remarkable similarities in the things they look for in a leader.
Fifteen percent said building relationships, twenty percent said building a team and fifteen percent said communication were the
top three skills necessary. With both millennials and Gen Xers valuing the same things in leadership, perhaps they are more alike than different.
How Can Different Generations Learn From Each Other?
Gen Xers (generally speaking) seem to have expertise in systems thinking and can help millennials understand the value of seeing organizational connectivity.
Millennials (generally speaking) seem to thrive on collaboration and can help Gen Xers see the value in trying new, innovative ideas.
Mentorship is important to both generations – the Gen Xers have wisdom they can share with the rising millennials, and millennials would benefit from a mentorship program focused on leadership.
Considered the middle child of generations, Gen X has been sandwiched between two of the largest generations in history. As a result, they are in a position of great influence and can play a pivotal role in the shaping of organizational leadership for the next several decades.
Finding ways for both generations to work together can be tricky but is essential for the future of corporate success. How can you embrace the shifting of leadership in your organization?
Michele Bailey is president and CEO of
Blazing Agency and
My Big Idea™. These two lines of business work congruently to support her clients’ success.
