Are you one of these company leaders looking to improve success? I bet you are, or you would not call yourself a leader… Unfortunately, there is a good chance that many initiatives targeting so-called success, are aimed too closely at strategies to promote accomplishments in the next quarter or ways to get more from the next project. Indeed, most companies do so. While short-term goals can be beneficial, this focus can often distract from strategies that can do more to increase the long-term value of the company. Be truly honest to yourself: are you working on short term goals – ie yearly at best, or are you really looking beyond? Here are some ideas to think about… and 5 practices true leaders should not overlook.
In many companies, employee development is one factor that gets overlooked in the race to achieve these short-term objectives and key results. Managers are often busy, and they don’t feel like they have the time to work on employee development initiatives. But this is the wrong way to think about the subject. Your employees are a resource, and by working on their development, you can increase value.
Mentoring
Modern employees – millennials and even older people – want more than just a boss; they want someone that they can learn from, and they want to benefit from the experience of company leaders. Someone they can be inspired from, or in other words, the employee they want to become in a few years. Yet, paradoxically, in the modern workplace, managers are often under immense pressure to meet targets, which causes many of them to forgo the role of mentor. Are you inspiring your people? Are you the one they want to look alike sooner than later? Or are you “just” helping your employees to meet their short term goals?…
For managers that are new to a leadership role, finding ways to share knowledge and insights can be difficult. However, it can be as simple as being more open about communication. According to a recent survey from Survata, 70% of employees say they want better communication from their company leadership. By asking the right questions and taking the time to communicate with workers, leaders can find ways to act as better mentors.
Think about it, and start being a mentor rather than just a boss.
Training Programs
Some positions may require training for a new employee to be competent in their position. While this seems like an obvious application for training programs, you could also offer other resources to help your employees develop while they are on the job.
Beyond just providing employees with the training they need for the job, you could offer them e-learning resources, seminars, and books that can help them to grow and develop as professionals. You could even curate content from the internet or have employees build up their own knowledge base to share information about best practices.
Now, think twice: are you enrolling your employees to training programs because you and they have to, or are you helping them to better do the job they will have to do in a year or two? Are your training programs tuned to what you will need from your employees tomorrow rather than yesterday?…
Around 90% of the jobs that will exist in 30 years do no exist today. If you do not want to re-hire a full manpower every 5 year, rather think about building training programs allowing your people to grow and evolve in their era.
Work on Soft Skills
Managers tend to focus on the hard skills when they hire new people. While you obviously want to hire a person that has the right training and experience, soft skills play an important role in building a healthy workplace. We often hear that we hire people for what they can do, and that we nurture them for who they are… Think about these guys around you that are not necessarily the top performers on the job, but that everybody likes. What do these people have to be liked by the whole world in spite of not being the top professionals? There must be some soft skills involved…
True that some people do have these skills naturally, but in any case, a leader wants to ensure all employees have the opportunity to learn them, or at minima, to be aware of them and work on improving by themselves. As such, if an organization wants to cultivate these soft skills, they can bring in an expert to teach things like conflict resolution, decision-making, teamwork, critical thinking, and communication. The value of these skills might be hard to quantify, but they will serve to increase productivity and promote better workplace relationships.
Cross-Departmental Work
A business can be like an ecosystem. The actions of one group can have an impact on all others within the system. In a perfect world, all of the different departments work together in harmony and there is a balance, but things do not always end up this way. If truly working together is not always practical – indeed, the job has to get done at the end of the day ! – what I saw working really well is at least, some opportunities for some teams to demonstrate what they do. It can be with lunch & learn meetings, for example, or someone from a different team to come and observe their colleagues once in a while – anything that helps people figure out what their neighbor’s challenges are about. Such interactions help everybody figure out that they could be the ones facing those challenges, and as such, break the silos between departments.
In some situations, different departments can end up at odds with one another or may lack concern for the impact they have on others. A good way to avoid this type of conflict is to encourage cross-departmental work and training.
When people understand the impact that they have on other departments and know the people that work on other teams, they are more likely to take steps that help to avoid having a negative impact. Think about it in personal terms, outside of the office: have you ever been in a situation when you blamed someone for a given behavior? For example, not leaving enough space behind the door to let people in the queue coming in… and then you realize, when it is your turn to let people in, that there is a garbage bin just behind the door preventing you from letting people coming in, and so you act in a similar way… and suddenly, you understand the others behaviors… As a leader, how often are you allowing your employees to understand one each other as if they were living similar situations?
Personal Development
It can be easy to only see your employees as professional beings. But just like you, they are real people with lives that extend beyond the workplace.
As an employer, you should support and encourage personal development. Individual growth can act as a force to promote further professional development.
Organizations can promote intellectual development by providing educational resources. You could promote physical health by offering financial support for gym memberships. You could also provide emotional support by showing an interest in your employees as individuals. Ask them questions about how they are feeling and for any feedback they may have about the job. Recognize people for who they are, not just for what they do. These recognitions go a long, long way for your employees to feel they ae considered as human beings.
Think about it as a leader, both for the employees you are leading, and for the boss you would like to have: employee development programs don’t just benefit the employee; they also benefit the organization. They help employees to grow and add value to the company. Along with that, employee development programs can attract more talent to your organization and improve your company’s ability to retain top employees. Applying these 5 practices will lead you further than you may think.
The Process Excellence String of Ariadne 