The Secret to Keeping Your Best People Around
Let me be brutally honest with you, if your team’s success hinges on you being involved in every single detail and decision, it’s simply not a team effort. You’re not working with and through your team; you’re simply using individuals on your team to do tasks that you don’t want to do. This doesn’t require trust, it doesn’t require creativity on the part of others, it doesn’t require a team.
As a leader, it’s crucial that you realize that effectively equipping and empowering others is critical to the success of your team (and your organization). Effective leadership depends on the success of your team.
A true team is creative, diverse in perspectives, interdependent, innovative, and high achieving.
Creating this kind of effective team requires us as leaders to embrace equipping and empowering others. In order to do so well, we have to learn to lead by values rather than rules and regulations and more rules. You can always tell when leaders don’t lead by values. As soon as a new situation comes up, they simply add another rule to the rule book under the guise of “protecting people and the organization.” The only real value-in-use is “don’t break the rules.”
Here’s the reality: micromanaging others kills creativity, innovation, motivation and trust. When you lead through values, there’s no need for micromanaging.
Effectively equip and empower
Equipping and empowering others requires that as the leader, you make sure to provide everything that the individuals on your team need in order to succeed at their job. This means making sure they have all the resources, skills, training, and support they need to do their job effectively.
Here’s the honest truth: when you don’t do this, you’re essentially saying to your team members, “I know I say I want you to succeed and that I value you as a team member, but honestly, your job isn’t really that important and you, well, you’re dispensable.”
I cannot tell you how many times I hear from people that they don’t have what they need in order to do their jobs well. And shortly after I hear this from them, they start looking for a new job. People want to be successful at their work!
When deciding how to equip and empower your team members, there are several ways you can intentionally support them.
Development Plans
A crucial element for developing others is to create individualized development plans for them. Just like you have your own, helping others create one for themselves is one of the best things you can do to effectively equip and empower your team. Ideally, this plan will include the necessary assessment, challenge and support (ACS) for each one to reach their fullest potential.[2]
If you don’t have the capacity to create a development plan for each person on your team, outsource it if you need to. The development of others is CRITICAL for retention. Research shows that the lack of development opportunities is the #2 reason people look for a new job![4]
Stretching Assignments
In order for people to increase their capacities, stretching assignments can be the best way to encourage this. Stretching, or challenging, assignments help people develop skills and capacities they haven’t needed before. [5,7] It will be challenging for them for sure, but with the right amount of encouragement and support along the way, they’ll continue to maximize their potential under your leadership. So, use their development plans and determine the best kind of stretching assignments to equip and empower them for continued growth and success.
Celebration Time
And lastly, it’s so important to celebrate people’s efforts and achievements regularly. While you may take the approach “why should I celebrate them when they are doing their job,” you cannot underestimate the power of celebration and appreciation. Even if people are doing a good job, and they know it, when they know their leader sees them and sees their efforts and appreciates them, this goes a long way in motivating them, supporting them, and retaining them for the long haul.[3]
Just think about it for a minute: how long would you give someone 40 hours or more of your time each week without being appreciated by them? If we’re honest, most of us would not stay for long. So, find ways to regularly celebrate and appreciate your team in ways that are meaningful to them.
People don’t take a new position with the desire to start looking for another new one in a matter of months. So, if you’re ready to keep your best people, equipping and empowering them to succeed every time will go a long way in doing so!
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1. Heffernan, M. (2012 June). Dare to disagree. TED Talks. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/margaret_heffernan_dare_to_disagree
2. King, S. N. & Santana, L. C. (2010). Feedback-Intensive Programs. In E. Van Velsor, C. D. McCauley, & M. N. Ruderman (Eds.) Handbook for leadership development (3rd ed.). San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons (pp. 97-123).
3. Kouzes, J.M. & Posner, B.Z. (2012). The Leadership challenge: How to make extraordinary things happen in organizations, 5th ed. San Francisco: The Leadership Challenge.
4. Losey, M. R. (2005). Anticipating change: Will there be a labor shortage? In M. Losey, S. Meisinger, & D. Ulrich (Eds.), The Future of human resource management: 64 thought leaders explore the critical HR issues of today and tomorrow (pp. 23-37). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
5. Pollitt, D. (2005). Leadership succession planning "affects commercial success". Human Resource Management International Digest, 13(1), 36-38. Retrieved from http://0-search.proquest.com.library.regent.edu/docview/214907455?accountid=13479.
