Listen More, Talk Less: How Smart Leaders Lead their Teams During Uncertain Times

“Trust takes a long time to earn and a second to lose.” This profound statement by Jon Santee, VP of IT at Hayes Locums, a healthcare staffing firm and physician recruitment agency, took a moment for me to digest during a recent interview. With all the change, disruption, and uncertainty over the past year, trust takes center stage, especially as the return-to-work discussion continues to be heavily debated and remains an area of concern for employees and employers alike.

Jon has heavily invested in earning the trust of his employees. He believes that trust is something you must earn every single day. He believes one way to earn that trust is by showing employees who you are and how you lead. Additionally, you must be consistently honest and open---especially during these uncertain times.

When people say don’t pick a job, pick a boss, Jon provides a compelling case why this is true. Under his leadership at Hayes Locums, he boasts a 100% retention rate. Let me repeat that---100% retention rate! Jon admits that clearly there’s been some luck involved and the stars have aligned in his favor. But in this leadership article series, How Great Leaders Lead their Organizations during Uncertain Times, he shares his secret sauce for sustaining his 100% retention rate. He also shares insights on his “listen more, talk less” leadership style, how he uses self-awareness to connect deeper with his team, as well as other juicy leadership nuggets for leading teams during these uncertain times. You will realize (just like I did) that the foundation of his success is built on trust, transparency, and openness that allows his employees to flourish, thrive, and advance their career.

What’s your biggest factor to success as a leader?

Mentors and Anti Mentors:

Mentors-You need to have people advising you who have been there and done that. You need people in your corner who have been down the road you are trying to walk down. They have the life experiences and they can advise you.  You need someone who will support you and guide you to the answer---not someone who gives you the answer. You need someone who can teach you to find the answers so you can go down that path.

Anti-mentors—These are the leaders we say to ourselves, “I am not gonna be that person.” If you watch them carefully, observe their actions and behavior, and pay attention to what they are doing, you find a great list of things you should NOT do in your career. In many instances, their experiences provide great learning opportunities about what NOT to do. Additionally, their examples should discourage you from making those same mistakes. 

Admittedly, assessing these poor leadership qualities is difficult to do when you are actively working with a direct supervisor or senior leader. It may require you to take a step back from the work environment to reflect and realize that their behavior is wrong. 

I urge people who may feel conflicted when dealing with an anti-mentor’s poor leadership behavior to take it in, and don’t let them pull you down. Instead, let it be part of your education as a great way to flip that negative experience into proper perspective.  

What are the obstacles and challenges you are dealing with right now?

Like many others, we are still in very much state of uncertainty due to the pandemic. Are we in the office or out of the office? Kids are in school one moment, then out of school the next.  The ability to manage that uncertainty is a significant challenge for everyone we know and many of us are still facing that head on. People are not allowed to get into a set routine these days. The constant uncertainty working from home breaks people’s routine.  There’s also an engagement issue. There is a real challenge to maintain that connection with your colleagues and staff.   

How are you able to connect with your team and keep them engaged?

You cannot forget that your employees are people too. They suffer from the same fears, frustrations, and anxiety.  Let them vent their frustrations. Let them tell you what’s on their mind. After that, communicate, communicate, and communicate more. When working with remote teams, communication channels may break down.  You must be diligent as a leader, check in with your team, be transparent about the situation, and keep the communication channels open.  People are concerned and worried about many things. Every piece of news will be amplified so you must be dialed in and in tune as a leader.

What’s the best advice you have received?

Listen.  If I want to be an effective leader, I must listen more than I speak. That means listening to my team’s personal and professional challenges. This not only helps me understand and empathize with what my team is going through, but it also enables my team to feel comfortable bringing news to the table. Once you take the time to listen, you must be very thoughtful in your responses and how you respond.

100% Retention-How are you able to do that?

I value giving people opportunities to advance their career. If you have good and talented people, they are going to want to advance their skillsets. At some point they will advance enough that you won’t be able to keep them and they will need to leave for other career opportunities. It’s not a negative thing, it’s a great situation to be in. If I helped someone grow in their career and I can’t give them the next step it’s on me to help them get to where they need to go and find the next step. Selfishly, you always want to keep the best people on your team and in your company and keep their talents and knowledge base in-house. But you must let people develop their skills and you can’t keep them in silos. Be open and honest of what you are interested in and see where they want to be within the environment. At the same time, be very flexible with them as a human being--put all those pieces together and you become a leader people want to work for. If you are mindful of the culture you want to build as you are bringing in those people, you get a team that enjoys working together whether in office or remote. They look forward to that interaction as a team. Once you build that culture, it will retain employees, cultivate talent, and improve retention. You must take it a step further and treat them the way they want to be treated. The end results breed trust and loyalty.

I am a big proponent of providing training opportunities to my staff. I provide online training resources, books, and arrange for staff to meet with leadership. I am work with my staff, take emerging leaders under my wing and help them develop their leadership skills.

What does your next level of success look like? 

Currently I enjoy the opportunity to build and lead teams. At my core, I am a techie, but I have a huge drive and desire to be an educator. I’ve done training classes and taught community college and I hope to expand on that by taking on an adjunct role in professional education.

One piece of advice to lead teams during uncertain times?

Listen to your teams. You have leaders, individual contributors, staff, etc.: take time to listen up and down. No matter if you are a C -level or line manager. Listen and make sure their voice is heard. Do that and act on what they told you. You will have people who are more comfortable and ultimately, a more productive team. It all starts with listening. Developing listening skills takes just as much effort because it requires you to focus on what the person is saying.

Jon’s authentic leadership style is highly effective and proves that it is possible to create an environment built on trust, transparency, and openness in today’s environment of uncertainty and disruption. To be an effective leader, you must listen more and talk less. It’s ok to be vulnerable, to be open, and honest without holding your guard up all the time. By investing in his people through training and leadership opportunities, his employees are valued, respected and developed into leaders.  These leadership qualities are not easy to find in the workplace, just ask the many employees who have left their job because they lacked those leadership qualities. But Jon continues to prove that it’s easy to lead when you lead from the heart and you practice the Golden Rule—Important qualities our workplaces desperately need from a leader today.

Eric Williamson is a keynote speaker, consultant and author of the book How to Work with Jerks. Order your copy today on Amazon or contact him for a signed copy. He works at the intersection between conflict resolution, emotional intelligence, and leadership development. He specializes in the arena of removing workplace friction so that IT leaders can thrive through uncertainty and achieve their long and short-term goals.

For more information about thriving through uncertainty, engaging your teams during turbulent times, or a strategic working session to achieve your long and short-term goals, visit https://calendly.com/ericl-williamson/15min.