Any tough period in an industry creates numerous challenges for leaders. While we know business will soon pick up again, getting from here to there can be a brutal endurance test.
In times like these, we always hear “retaining talent” is a huge priority. How exactly does one go about this, especially when financial incentives may be harder to provide?
For starters, I would advocate we swap out the mental model from talent retention for something more active and human centered. Rather than holding onto a workforce, what if we focused on pouring into people?
The best leaders I have been around make doing three actions relentlessly a habit, especially when times are toughest—they connect, they communicate, and they provide a clear sense of purpose.
Connect
When did you last check in with each person you directly lead to see how they are actually doing—not as it relates to hitting the quarterly target you set or completing a critical project, but in their lives? Do you know your staffs’ spouses’ and children’s names, what each employee hopes to achieve at home or in their communities, the hopes, and even dreams, they have for their families?
At Lippert, we encourage every single team member to complete what we call a Leadership Action Plan (L.A.P.)—a simple card with three personal goals on the front side and three professional goals on the other. The front side is the personal side and asks us to name three areas in our lives we would like to intentionally develop.
These areas could be anything from family to finances to fitness to faith—everything is fair game. For each, we commit to one action item and make sure the goal is specific, measurable, actionable, relevant and time-bound—S.M.A.R.T., as the common acronym goes.
The “work” side is divided into self, team and business, encouraging a three-tiered approach to the impact each employee can have. Keeping our core values and leadership qualities at the center of these efforts helps focus our vision of making business a force for good in the world.
Here is what we have found: When we, as leaders, take time to check in briefly with our team members on goals they listed on their L.A.P. card and whether their goals are being realized, meaningful relationships develop more readily. If a leader starts by sharing their own personal and professional growth plan, that is even better. The practice demonstrates vulnerability and fosters human connection. At the most basic level, the conversation occurring sends the right signal: How you are doing matters to me.
However, the practice goes beyond benevolence. These conversations can surface important issues which otherwise might not arise until it is too late.
In fact, in doing an L.A.P. check-in two weeks ago, I discovered a team member’s frustration about his professional trajectory. I have to admit, I had a total blind spot about his frustration. If I had waited for an annual performance review to roll around, he might already have quit by that point.
Instead, we addressed his concern and are working together to ensure we have an open plan going forward and will keep in touch about what we both can do to make his goal a reality.
Does launching an L.A.P. initiative throughout your organization seem daunting or unrealistic right now? Then start small. As French philosopher Simone Weil observed about 100 years ago, the most important question we can ask another person is a very, very simple one: What are you going through?
My advice, though, is: Make sure you really carve out space to listen to the answer.
It is not rocket science. Show your people you care about them, support them in setting and achieving meaningful goals, and they will stick around. After all, the sad reality is that working for someone who shows care and support is just not that common, and working for someone who does feels great.
Communicate
One of my leadership role models is a man named Harry Kraemer, who led the global healthcare company Baxter International and now teaches leadership at the Kellogg School at Northwestern. When I taught business undergrads at the University of Notre Dame, I used the book Kraemer wrote called “From Values to Action: The Four Principles of Values-Based Leadership” as the primary textbook for the class.
Harry is humble, sharp and lives his life with intention. He is an endless font of pithy sayings and gives the following advice for leaders during any uncertain time: “Tell people what you know, what you don’t know and when you’ll get back to them to discuss what you didn’t know before.”
The simple, straightforward framing stuck with me because
it feels less like strategy than candor. As leaders, we sometimes believe as if we should have all the answers—which is an impossible standard. Without a complete picture to paint, we sometimes wall ourselves off from our people rather than engaging with them openly.
One thing about human beings we know is, in communication’s absence, we often will fill in our own version of the facts, which is usually inaccurate, unproductive or worse than the actual truth. Rumors develop their own lives and gain momentum as they go. Nothing counteracts the phenomenon like the good old-fashioned truth, right from the horse’s mouth.
When we are stretched thin, we naturally skimp on communication because it takes time and attention, just like anything worth doing. Still, I have never met a leader who said they wished they communicated less with their people.
For that matter, I also have never encountered a team member who enjoyed feeling like they were kept in the dark.
When you tell your people what you know, what you don’t know and when they can expect to hear more, you once again increase the “connective tissue” among your team.
Provide a Clear Sense of Purpose
Connecting and communicating are doable in any company. This third action, though, can be a heavier lift, depending on your organization’s mission, vision and values. I will start with what the gold standard looks like.
As the story goes, JFK was touring NASA headquarters in the early 1960s. Walking down a corridor, he encountered a janitor carrying a mop.
“I’m Jack Kennedy,” the president said, stopping to shake hands. Then he asked, “What do you do for NASA?”
Without hesitation, the man replied, “I’m helping put a man on the moon.”
Comparing almost anything with the galvanizing, unifying effect the space effort had at that time in our nation’s history is difficult, but JFK left no doubt. Watching or reading his remarks from Sept. 12, 1962, at Rice University on the topic is worth your time. Among the many inspirational connections JFK made, perhaps the most famous line is, “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”
The idea is certainly a notion with wide application in our current climate.
While we cannot all be the gifted orator Kennedy was, we can all commit to two intentions in the spirit of his example.
First, we can do our very best
to ensure every single employee knows exactly how their job advances the overall mission. We do our people a disservice when we assume they know we value their role without clearly stating so.
A simple hack for this: On every job description, make sure the mission statement appears; then, under the title of the specific role, actually write a heading saying, “How this job supports the mission of (our company)” and spell out how that job directly contributes.
Doing so provides clarity, a sense of purpose, and always can be referred to when analyzing performance and the value a given position adds.
The second, higher-order task is for your executive team and board. The task is to ask, if you have not already done so, whether the company’s ultimate business goal is to make a profit or if, in addition to profiting, the company has an even loftier purpose to pursue.
If the answer is yes, then explore the link between the revenue- generating activity and the higher purpose. The more direct you can make connection, the better.
For us at Lippert, our mission is making lives better through developing meaningful relationships with co-workers, customers and the community. We base everything we do on that.
Whatever your greater good, align it as clearly as you can with what your people do each day, and you won’t just “retain talent”—you and your people will change the world.
Adam Kronk heads up Lippert’s efforts around culture and leadership development. From running a boarding school with an overt focus on character formation; to founding a center for ethical leadership in the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame; to working to empower rural Cambodians; to serving homeless men, women and children at a residential facility in Indiana—Kronk’s career journey has centered on helping human beings become the best versions of themselves.
