Know, Invest, Keep: Three Challenges Facing Leaders

At Leadership Vision, we want to shine a light on the goodness of humans, the potential of teams, and what it would mean if organizations were thriving and casting light into the world. In this episode, we discuss three urgent challenges that leaders need to focus on. These challenges are to know your people, invest in your people, and keep your people.

Three Challenges Facing Leaders

The executive leader of today is facing a crisis. If they don’t change to focus on how they’re going to know, invest in, and keep their people, their people are going to leave.

We’ve happened to have no less than a dozen conversations in the last 10 days with senior-level leaders, whether it’s negotiating contracts or following up with conversations, and they’re all saying the same thing. In this new post-pandemic landscape, employees are no longer putting up with the lack of attention to personal health and boundaries. Instead, they’re just leaving. It’s incredible how much people are aware of the post covid dynamic. The impact that it’s having on people and leaders, is either a great ability to adapt or an inability to adapt because they don’t recognize the landscape.

Know your people, invest in your people, and keep your people. Those three phrases make so much sense to us and instantly validate the work that we’re doing in organizations.

Employees Have More Power Now Than Ever

Many people have experienced a different way of doing work during the pandemic than they’ve ever done before. For example, people who can get their job done virtually. We have a workforce that has experienced a different way of doing their work which has then led to a different way of being. A different way of spending their five work days. We had a chance to experiment with the positive and the negative of what living our own life in our own places actually meant.

People are paying attention and employees have a greater dexterity of being able to name some of the things that they want or need for their own growth. This also demonstrates the power shift from the employee having more power than some of the leaders, which sometimes is scary.

Employees have more power now than ever and it has been a consistent theme in the conversations that we’re having with leaders. Executive leaders would do well to ask themselves, what does that look like within my organization? How is it that those requests are being known? Or how is it that tension or that fear being expressed?

Know, Invest, Keep

We’re hearing that employees are saying, invest in me. Invest in my time so that I know why it’s important for me not to only show up but tie that into the bigger vision of why we’re coming back to in-person work. Make me experience investment so that I know that you care for me so I can stay.

In order to keep your people, you have to invest in them. To invest in them, you must know them as individuals, know them as people, and know what motivates them, excites them, and inspires them. To keep the attention of our people and to adapt to the expectations that are now here, we have to communicate that we’re trying, that we’re not turning out a blind eye or a deaf ear to the need. We have to create a narrative that we’re adapting and changing and that we’re focused on this.

What Does Investment Like?

When we think about investing in people, it’s understanding what motivates them and what they need. Why they even decided to work at someplace, in particular, we also see that generationally, the younger generations need a ‘why’ or a purpose.

When we say investment, it’s from a place of knowing and getting to know your people. How will you help them grow their talent? How will you help them stretch their capacities? How will working with other people teach them some life skills? Or skills that will prepare them for higher levels of leadership?

In the last two years, our community, our connection, and our sense that we’re a big unit have all dissipated. The landscape has changed and the ways of investment that we did before won’t fit into the current needs that are there. It’s going to take a new approach to investment because people have different needs now than they’ve ever had before, and they’re bringing them to work.

Investment in Yourself

Understand that as a leader, you have the power and responsibility with that power to figure out what your employees need. Take some time to figure out your values post-pandemic. Ultimately we want a more engaged, thoughtful workforce across all industries. Everyone should be doing work that they enjoy and find value in, and feel fairly compensated.

Consider the following questions:

• How do you want to be invested in as an individual?
• How are you knowing yourself?
• How are you making sense of the way that you’re adapting, and navigating your life?
• How do you want others to know you?

Be ready to be surprised by what you see and by what you learn. We encourage leaders to partner together in ways that maybe they haven’t before. To really find ways to listen and find ways to live in the tension of polarities and not pick sides and not let fear lead to anger.

Connect with Us!

If anything in this episode stirred you to action or made you think about how you want to activate or engage in your own organization, please reach out. We would love to talk with you about your team and find out if there’s a way that we could help you achieve whatever your goals are going into the new year. Connect with us at connect@leadershipvisionconsulting.com, or visit us on social media. We’d love to hear from you!