Growing Your Business by Growing Your People

A Cautionary Tale

CFO: What happens if we invest in developing our people and they leave us?

CEO: What happens if we don’t and they stay?

You probably heard this one before, and will continue to hear it because few places bother to install training programs, even internal ones.

One complaint about workers today is that they constantly move around.

Maybe we need to offer more to anchor them down while helping them rise up.

Some of the best training programs I’ve experienced were created in-house. What? great way to share your strengths and foster a learning culture of continual collaboration and support.

To make growth both an internal and external goal.

The Currency of Enthusiasm

Worker enthusiasm has "flatlined," per CNBC. It cites Gallup research showing that a third of employees are engaged in their work, 50% are not engaged and 16% are actively disengaged. About $1.9 trillion in productivity is lost annually due to employees who are either not engaged or actively disengaged, Gallup estimates. If your team isn't growing in curiosity and skill set, they're growing tired and bored.

Create Stickiness

Management doesn't believe in training people because they just leave anyway. Maybe if you gave them a vision and invested in their careers, they'd stick around longer. They wouldn't see their stay as transactional as most agencies do.

3 Simple Rules to Grow a Great Team:

1)???Support Your Performers

2)???Deal with the Rest

3)???If You’re Not Dealing with the Rest,

You’re Not Supporting Your Performers

Seems simple. Yet, many executives allow underachievers, personal pets and those who’ve failed to future-proof themselves drag down their all-stars by taking their focus off the work and placing it squarely on distracting underachievers and politics.

Sure, you can go ahead and tell your performers to mind their own business, but in the end, itis their business. Their hours & energy covering for others, their trust that’s been eroded, and their pride to play for a winner that’s been allowed to turn into festering frustration and embarrassment.

What do you think? Have you seen this anywhere you’ve worked?

Breaking Down Generational Silos: Mentoring & Reverse-Mentoring

Ageism. Sexism. And every other kind of -ism off the top of my head are divisive and stunt growth. In a time where we need more collaboration, breaking down generational silos is important. Realizing that generational diversity has a lot to offer is the start of an important collaboration of experience and fresh perspectives. You may want to go back to my podcast where I talk about not only mentoring but reverse-mentoring. People assisting others older than themselves with things like the latest technology and pop culture. Everyone on your team should be sharing what they know best.

The Key to Being a Good Mentor is to Help People Become More of Who They Already Are- Not to Make Them More Like You. – Suzie Orman

No matter how good you are, holding yourself up as the measure for others is sheer arrogance.

Trying to form your own mini-me is beyond me.

As a mentor, your goal is not to create clones, it’s to inspire and guide the next generation.

The next level.

Help those you mentor to find their strengths.

To create themselves and their legacies.

And in the process, learn something new, too.

Criticism vs Feedback

Feedback. Most people aren’t good at receiving it. Most people aren’t good at giving it, either. That’s a major reason why collaboration breaks down. While used interchangeably here, feedback starts from a positive place. Criticism is more negative. More nitpicky. Want to give better feedback? Something that goes beyond fault finding? Be specific. Be direct and honest. Ask questions. Stay focused on the goal. Find the problems, not the solutions. And get to know each other to avoid any misunderstandings.

Make People Part of the Change. If They Don’t Create It, They’ll Feel Threatened By It. And if They Feel Threatened, They’ll Fight Back.

– Joe Brown, IDEO Portfolio Director

Change in a creative workplace is not going to happen by you coming down with two tablets and 10 commandments everyone must obey. Sorry, you don’t have that kind of authority. You’re not there to boss, you’re there to serve. And the more power you give away, the more power comes back to you. Not that you will make everyone happy. But at least with growing pains, there is no growth.

Would Your Leadership Team Survive a Vote of Confidence?

From time-to-time, you’ll see some country hold a vote of confidence to gauge opinion ?????????on their leadership. But unless you’re a shareholder, that doesn’t happen in business.

The rank-and-file rarely get the opportunity to be heard by those top dogs that they never see and wouldn’t recognize on the street, even if they knew their names. The ones who never seem to leave headquarters, except when they’re out buying another business or going to Cannes or some other boondoggle.

Perhaps the rank-and-file should be allowed to conduct their own vote. A kind of vote of confidence. Not those surveys that no one answers honestly, because they know they’ll be ignored and fear retribution. Nope, something that those in the corner offices touching the heights of the skyline will actually read, and when necessary, act upon. Not the petty grievances, but the base dysfunction they seemingly ignore. Why are they never interested in taking the temperature of the team at-large towards senior leadership.

Find Your Tribe and Unite It

A while ago, there was an agency up north that was trying to create a new business plan. What they realized was that they tended to do well with brands that they liked and used themselves.

As a group, the agency tended to be outdoorsy. They liked nature. Exploring.

And action. Once they realized this, they focused on brands that they understood firsthand.

They became the outdoor lifestyle agency. They also became the agency of Harley Davidson. Coleman camping. And a slew of other brands that collectively made them experts in this area. It got to the point that if you were an outdoors-oriented brand looking for an agency, you automatically called them. Afterall, whether or not they had met yet, they were in their tribe and could be trusted to bring the insights and passion that only insiders within the outdoors-lifestyle tribe could detect. P.S., If you’re a larger agency, split your accounts into separate tribes.

Hire People and Not Resumes

Resumes are just a list of what you probably don't want to do, again. They don't tell the whole story. HR, if you spent more time hiring you'd spend less time firing. Get to know people not a piece of paper. The paper ceiling is too flimsy not to cave in soon.

Everybody Has a Strength to Share. - Bill Sore, Share Our Strength

?Are you a bookworm? Volunteer to help kids learn how to read.

Have a nice voice? Sing to the elderly. Athletic? Train Special Olympians.

Are you a foodie? Make food for the homeless. Think about your talents.

There’s something you do well that will make life better for someone else.

When You Stand for Nothing, No One Will Stand With You

In this wishy-washy world, few have the courage to take a stand. And why should they? Those who share their beliefs instantly become targets. We need to change that. Right now. Because when you stand for nothing, no one will stand with you. Plant your flag. Give your people something to believe in. A reason to stay and build with you.

The First Rule of Rules

Less is more. To give your team the autonomy they crave, look to eliminate rules, not add to them. Run lean and mean. Declutter bureaucracy and trust your people to use their best judgement. They won’t perform perfectly, but they will have the room to grow personally and professionally. Growing your business by growing that of your clients.

Follow the Platinum Rule

The Golden Rule tells you to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. But not everyone is like you. They don’t like everything that you do. They don’t want you to do unto them what you would have them do unto you.

You may like continuous feedback. Someone else may prefer a bit more space. You may want a promotion. Someone else may want more vacation. You have to get used to one another. Get to know each other. Walk in their shoes so you can understand where they stand and where they want to go. That’s what empathy?is all about. And as a rule, that’s when you get the most out of everybody and grow together.

Want to Grow More?

Follow me- Jim "Wegs" Wegerbauer- daily on LinkedIn. Or catch the Navigating the Fustercluck podcast on Spotify and most other major platforms. And if you would, share this newsletter! Thanks! And here's to the future!