You Made My Day

I had something pretty cool happen recently. Someone told me that I "just made their day." Here's the coolest part...

...it was a stranger
...it involved public recognition
...and it leveraged his company's rewards program for the public to use

Wow! Right?

Practicing and Preaching
I've spent many years proclaiming the power of recognition. We all know it's an important tool for building relationships, trust, loyalty, and engagement. Sometimes I'm better at practicing it than preaching it, but I never lose sight of how impactful it can be.

The Story
Some of you may know that my professional life involves a heavy amount of travel; and with that, comes a familiarity with the staff of Southwest, the carrier I use. Well, one of the gate agents in Tampa is not only incredibly positive, but he is consistently positive every single day. 

Let's face it....gate agents don't get much glory. They don't sing you the safety instructions or bring you cans of water. They are stuck announcing flight delays or gate changes. 

Absolutely no glory whatsoever.

Well, Southwest has a rewards program whereby they send reward coupons to customers like me (think drink coupons, but targeted at recognizing their team members.) The coupons are personalized to me as a frequent customer, and allows me to recognize their team.

How good is that?

Which leads to his comment as I was walking by him to board the plane.

How About You
Are you doing more preaching than practicing when it comes to recognition in your organization? It's funny how it actually works out. His response made my day too.

I'd love to hear from you.

No Excuses.

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Your Career Site Is A Retention Tool

A job list.

That is literally what your "career" site is. A simple, boring, ineffective list of current open positions.

Oh, wait. You might have a picture of a smiling beautiful person who doesn't work at your company on your "site" too. Nice touch. I'm sure that will bring in the qualified applicants!

Content (hint, your employees sharing their stories)
Their is a reason that you hear employer branding and content so frequently relative to recruitment. It's how you represent yourself in 2017 to prospective employees. What is often not said however, is that employer branding can move the needle on retention as well.

Think about it. A robust employer brand / recruitment marketing strategy uses current employees constantly to spread the good news about the employer. Highlighting your own employees (instead of those 'models') on your career site is a very public form of recognition.

Sure, the certificates you hand out thanking people for being awesome are a sure-fire strategy; but maybe interviewing them for a blog post or video that could reach the entire universe is a bit more impactful? 

Are you with me?

Retain First, Recruit Second
Have any of you ever said this phrase..."our employees are our most important asset." Of course you have... WE ALL HAVE!

Except, how many of us highlight our employees on our digital properties to make sure we keep the best ones, and attract the ones we need like they do and they do?

Anyone?

When you put your people on your careers page, loaded with stories, engaging photographs and videos, you send a powerful message that your employees literally are your most important asset.

How About You
Are you ready to start retaining your people, and show potential applicants that you are the most progressive employer in your industry? What are you waiting for? I'm ready to help you!

I'd love to hear from you.

No Excuses.

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Expectations and Engaged Employees

The concept of employee engagement is used so frequently in the world of work, I often see my leadership colleagues in a variety of industries roll their eyes when it comes up in conversation.

Yet, they publicly espouse the value and priority of having an engaged workforce...that it will make a huge difference in the performance of their companies...and that without it they will fall behind their competition.

Wait, what? 

I think I've stumbled onto one of the disconnects between leaders and engaged employees.

Expectations.

The Leader Lens
In my experience, I see many leaders wishing they could somehow "see" or "feel" the engagement of the employees. I'm not entirely sure what this means though.

- Should there be big smiles all day every day?
- Should there be verbal expressions of gratitude?
- Should there be public displays of a$$ kissing?

Regardless the expectation, the notion that a tangible behavior validates a degree of workforce engagement seems to be more important than whether or not they actually are engaged in the first place.

The Employee Lens
Here's my candid take on the employee side of the engagement issue. 

Create a positive energy in the workplace, prioritize their needs, be supportive and inclusive, share as much as you can as quickly as possible, pay competitively, recognize good performers and remove poor ones, be accessible to the team, be clear on expectations and performance, don't trick yourself into believing your job title makes you smarter than the team, laugh at yourself, be honest, be fair, be human.

Oh, and I don't think they necessarily want to jump up and down in joyful praise...they just want to do a good job.

How About You
Try strapping the employee lens on when you walk out of your office this afternoon. How does your world look now? Any different?

I'd love to hear from you.

No Excuses.

Hiring Leaders: Your Network Should Be Better

I'm not surprised anymore. I used to be...a lot...but those days are long gone. It is clear that the challenge of building and leveraging networks to find talent is the sole responsibility of HR.

Hiring leaders are simply incapable of building a network on their own. They are too scared, too full of excuses, and candidly, enjoy having someone to target when their hiring struggles persist.

Meet Director #1
This person has been a loyal and hard-working part of the organization's leadership team for years. She works hard, tries to support her employees as much as possible, and attends a conference or two each year. She's bright, and keeps her team informed of the latest equipment, clinical practices, and news about the hospital.

Problem: she has been so focused internally that she is useless when it comes time to recruit talent, spread good news about organizational breakthroughs, or to simply tell the story about what it means to be a part of the organization.

Meet Director #2
This person has also been a loyal and hard-working member of the leadership team for a long time. However, in addition to putting a tremendous amount of energy into her staff, she also has worked hard to develop her leader brand. 

When it comes time to fill vacancies, she has already differentiated herself pushing out thought leadership, stories about the hospital, and adding some personal touches as well. She has a network she can tap into, and she does.

How About You
Who are the leaders you work with that have such tight organizational blinders on that they're hurting themselves? 

Help them see the big picture. Help them understand that the investment they make in their internal and external brand, will make a huge difference.

I'd love to hear from you.

No Excuses.

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Retention Is A Leadership Problem

I've heard the excuses for years...literally. Leaders complaining about everything under the sun that is negatively impacting their departments. It is rarely their inaction or overinflated ego that is to blame; but instead, is an unfair productivity standard, a poor candidate pool, budget pressure, unreasonable physicians, and on and on...

Listen
I've also had the pleasure to work with some gifted leaders who chose to not let the excuses get in the way of their connection to their teams. They accepted the fact that leadership is hard, and took a path focused on relationships and trust, instead of blame and excuses.

Some leaders are uncomfortable in groups. (excuse)
Some leaders don't have an outgoing personality. (excuse)
Some leaders have great ideas but struggle delivering the message. (excuse)

The most effective leaders don't hide behind these issues, instead they make themselves vulnerable.

That's right. Vulnerable leaders. I know, it's a counterintuitive approach as compared to the massive ego trip many leaders embrace in an almost drunken stupor. 

Be
Instead of the stupor, I recommend focusing on these five behaviors:
- be present
- be visible
- be compassionate
- be humble
- be real

These aren't nearly as hard as you think. 

You are your biggest barrier at this point.

How About You
Who are the leaders in your organization that can name every problem across the company yet refuse to see their role in those problems? Maybe today is the day you pull them aside and have a good old fashioned blunt force trauma type conversation with them.

Let me know how it goes.

I'd love to hear from you.

No Excuses.

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The Future of Talent is Leader Brand

I've been a strong advocate that leaders need to be brand ambassadors for their organizations. I don't mean simply saying nice things about their companies when asked; I'm talking about a proactive approach to spread the word about the great things their organizations do on a regular basis.

After all, a strong brand attracts talented people. Talent is the name of the game in the world of business today. No talent, no product, no customers, no revenue. Capiche?

Except I've discovered a major flaw in my approach to brand.

Organizational Brand Is Not Enough
One of the core strategies of talent acquisition is to position the organization's brand in such a way that it attracts quality applicants. From there a talent pipeline is developed and the best candidates are brought on board. The organization brand is the key attraction point that brings the talent into the company. 

When we are filling positions, enhancing the corporate culture, and making progress we wrap ourselves in the corporate brand.

However, when turnover occurs, or morale dips, or there is too much "noise" in the workplace, the accountability shifts away from the spotless corporate brand and falls fully on the individual leader responsible for that area.

Wait a minute. What just happened?

Leader Brand Is Better Than Corporate Brand
Much has been written, though few have fully embraced, the concept of developing their personal brand. Honestly, I do not understand why any serious leader today is not focused like a laser on their personal brand. Here's why...

"Employees want to work for good leaders much more than they want to work for good organizations." 

Today's talent (read here really good people) know that good leaders...by default...already work for good organizations, which makes the obsession with corporate brand as a stand-alone strategy a waste of time.

It is only when a strong personal (leader) brand is paired with a strong corporate brand that real talent attraction and retention can be realized.

How About You
Have you put any energy into developing your personal brand; or, are you so experienced and smart and good that you don't need one? I hate to break this to you, but if you haven't invested the time to develop your brand you are invisible...regardless of what your resume says. 

Maybe we should talk?

I'd love to hear from you.

No Excuses.



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Hunting Talent

Needed:  Experienced professionals interested in joining a world-class organization doing cutting-edge work.

Requirements:  Give up your  job, tenure, retirement accrual, vacation seniority, relationships with colleagues and overall standing in your current organization to start all over again.

Now that sounds like a great opportunity doesn’t it? But that's exactly what we're asking people to do in the reality of today’s world of hunting talent. Give up everything they’ve worked so hard to achieve in their organization and begin again with us.  That can be a tough sell.

Retaining Is Easier Than Hunting

One of the things I find interesting about Talent Acquisition is that so often leaders overestimate their own skill set and the environments they’ve created.  After all, the data  clearly indicates employees are much more inclined to leave ineffective leaders than they are to leave ineffective organizations. 

 

So if we’re facing a large number of vacancies shouldn’t we first take an objective view of our own leadership style (myself included) and its impact on our departments?  Let’s face it, if we can keep our employees, we don’t need to pay the overtime, push the remaining staff to cover open shifts, and wear ourselves out trying desperately to find high demand talent in a low supply world.

Hunt Your Team

Plenty has been written about paying attention to your employees whether it’s rounding, holding staff meetings or involving them in decision-making.  Lots and lots has been written.  Why do you think that is?  Because leaders still don’t do it.  That’s why. 

Plenty has also been written about evaluating your own performance as a leader so you can make a positive impact on the team.  Lots and lots has been written.  Why do you think that is?  Because leaders have so many blind spots to their own challenges that they use easy excuses to justify their poorly performing areas. 

Ever heard this one – “we’ve had a lot of turnover, but it’s been good turnover.”  When you have so much “good turnover” that you are now facing a major staffing crisis, it’s time to take a look in the mirror.

Hunt Yourself

Stepping up and taking responsibility for creating a difficult environment is not a weakness; in fact, it is one of the most courageous things a leader can do. If you’re worried that admitting you’re not perfect will hurt you consider this: you already have many eyes on you due to the situation you’re in.  Take action now to correct it versus leaning so hard on that “good turnover crutch.”  That tired approach just doesn’t work any more.

How About You

Have you fallen into the leadership excuse trap of blaming others for your current set of challenges?  Why?  No one is out to get you, actually there is a lot of support that can be rolled out….you just need to take that first step.

I’d love to hear from you.

No Excuses.


pics courtesy of sureshkumar and findyourcalm