April Sabral is an executive leadership coach, author of "The Positive Effect" and founder of retailu.ca. | April Sabral Leadership
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The war on talent is real, and even after offices have reopened, many companies are still struggling with filling roles.
Studies show that unemployment is at an all-time low; why then are so many businesses struggling with staffing to the point stores are closed and services suspended? And what can you do about this? You could add better benefits, flexible hours, work-from-home options and more, but even with all of these strategies, if you don't get this one simple thing right, every strategy you implement will yield little to no change in your retention.
The top retention strategy you should implement is leadership coaching and training. Why? Because people leave people, not companies.
After leading thousands of people during my time as a senior leader in the retail space and reading an exuberant number of exit interviews, these top two themes almost always emerge:
• Number one, employees leave their job because of the person they work for, meaning liking (or not liking) their boss.
• Number two, they lack career growth.
Pay and benefits are typically number three—but almost never in the top two.
Why then do so many companies forget about this as a strategy for retention? Because when internal surveys are sent out for feedback, generally the feedback is always focused on "we want more pay." Have you ever wondered why this is? Why is leadership or lack of growth hardly ever in the internal surveys of how to improve the work experience of every employee? Because most people will not willingly tell the current leadership team that they would like them to enhance their leadership skills due to fear of being reprimanded or judged or, even worse, fired. But once an employee makes the decision to leave the company because of these top two reasons, it is much easier for them to be honest as their fears associated with their current work environment have now dissolved.
This may seem like an oxymoron and can be frustrating to leaders making decisions about what to work on to increase retention.
However, knowing this, shouldn't part of your weekly meeting include topics on leadership development? And shouldn't you be asking what you can do as a team to ensure your leaders lead to the best of their ability?
If people leave, people are one of the top factors in reducing turnover; what then should you be focused on across your leadership team to improve their skills? I think beyond everything else, focusing on developing their positive leadership skills is a priority.
Positive leadership is not just warm and fuzzy; it is much more than that. It breaks down into three pillars that I write about in my book:
1. Accept—how to be supportive
2. Create—how to be responsible
3. Teach—how to mentor and coach
Step 1 is probably one of the most important. Employees who feel supported are much more productive, will do more and will stay longer.
Let's look at what accepting means: It is the behavior a leader shows to encourage safety; it requires a leader to be supportive. Here are five steps to developing a supportive culture:
1. Face reality; stop hiding. This requires leaders to listen to things they may not want to hear. However, without genuinely listening, the right actions can not be implemented. Then take those actions to improve the issue being shared. If you bury your head in the sand, your team will get frustrated and leave.
2. Nix judgment. This requires you to look in the mirror and question what assumptions you may be making based on past experiences or biases. Judging others is rampant. It sounds like this: "I don't like the way she talked over me in the meeting" or "I don't think her personality is a good fit." These statements do not incorporate factual performance; they focus on personal opinions.
3. Positively approach setbacks. Your team responds to your response. If you react with negative emotions in challenging situations, you will find it extremely difficult to hold onto your team; nobody wants to work for a leader who does not demonstrate composure under stress.
4. Check your biases. This should go without saying; however, while we know we have unconscious biases, do we know what they are? What are you doing to uncover them? Are you paying attention to where they could lead you? How are you calling out other leaders when you see bias? How are you demonstrating allyship?
5. Stay present and manage the moment. This may be one of the hardest points, as we are all making decisions based on the past and future. When you learn to stay present and manage the moment and can communicate in this way, your team will feel safe and encouraged to learn, grow and make mistakes; nobody likes history being dragged up repeatedly.
Coaching teaches leaders how to be responsible for their thoughts and actions in order to create more of what they want; this requires leaders to be fully self-aware.
Teaching may seem obvious; however, learning to train, direct and coach is a skill required by leaders. Coaching training ensures they are approaching leading as a teacher. This is not natural for all leaders. This is one of the top development opportunities I see when working with leaders; they are not sure how to train; telling is not teaching.
If you want to up-level your training skills, add this simple statement: "Show me." This sounds like this: "Show me how you would train a new employee on X" or "Show me how you would overcome a challenging employee conversation." Then coach as needed. When you add "Show me," you will be surprised at how many times you may see opportunities to coach your team—and they will feel supported by you.
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