When was the last time you interviewed your team?

Conducting Leadership Interviews is a top priority in the great resignation

In February of 2022, more than 2.2 million white collar, knowledge workers voluntarily quit their job.?With each, experience, expertise and institution knowledge walked right out of the door of their previous employer.?Furthermore, a recent Society for Human Resource Managers (SHRM) study found that 40% of knowledge workers are actively looking for a new job.

Stop and consider that for a moment, 40% of your team is considering leaving you, right now??What would you do if they left??How hard would it make it to deliver on your performance objectives??How much time, effort and energy would it take to backfill those open positions??How much distraction would it be trying to bring these new hires up-to-speed?

What if you didn’t have to deal with this nightmare scenario??What if there was something you could do right now, starting today, to not only hold on to your people, but to also better engage and inspire them?

The good new is, there is something you can do.?A proven strategy that increases retention, raises engagement, inspires loyalty and better connects you to your people.?It’s called a Leadership Interview and, as a manager, it is one of your highest payoff activities.

Leadership Interviews allow you to get back in touch with your people (something that has largely been lost in our pandemic-driven virtual work environment) coming to understand their perspective, motivations and aspirations.?They allow you to show your appreciation, concern and caring for the well-being of your people.?Candidly, they are also your best strategy for holding on to people who are at risk, on the margin and considering leaving.

As such, whether you do Leadership Interviews out of compassion and/or to preemptively prevent the costs and destructive impact of losing quality members of your team - they are a win/win strategy either way.

How do you conduct a winning Leadership Interview

There are five simple, yet critical components of a strong Leadership Interview:

1. Getting the setting right
2. Acknowledging the effort and strides
3. Sharing what you see
4. Defining what they want to see
5. Crafting the plan

First, consider your setting.?People are more relaxed, open and comfortable when they are outside of their normal working environment.?So, find a neutral ground, a restaurant, park or coffee shop.?One manager who had a widely dispersed virtual team, would go on a “virtual walk” using Facetime to just get people out of their home and into a different environment.

Next, open the conversation by acknowledging the challenges of the last couple of years, the stress, level of change and pressures that your employee has faced.?Thank them for all that they have done and point out specific positive contributions they have made.?“Thank you” are two of the most powerful words in the English language.

From here, take a couple of minutes and share what you see in this person.?What do you admire??What do you see as their greatest strengths??How have you seen them leverage these strengths??What are you most proud of them for??How have they contributed to the team and helped their team members??Sharing your perspective inspires and get’s your employee looking upwards at who they have become and the difference they have made, this strengthens their bond with both you and their team members.

In the next portion of your Leadership Interview, you want to get them talking about their perspective and what they see for their future with the organization.?Ask questions like:

• What is your favorite part of your role?
• Where do you feel you are able to make the greatest impact or difference?
• What would you like to learn more about or become better at doing?
• What would you like to spend more time on??Less time on?
• What aspect of your role are you most proud of?
• What do you see as your next steps or next role in the organization?
• How can you, as their manager, best help them?
• What would they like you, as their manager, to do more of, less of?

These questions will help you get in better tune with your people, aligning with their wants and needs and understanding how you can be a stronger and more effective manager and leader for them.

The final step in your Leadership Interview should be to create a mutual plan with your employee.?In this plan, you will want to outline specific next steps, changes to be made and the path both you and your employee will follow moving forward.?Once you’ve mutually agreed, follow up in an email (putting things in writing increases both the commitment level and the likelihood for follow through).

While Leadership Interviews are not time consuming, difficult or challenging to conduct, they all-to-frequently get overlooked or pushed to the back burner by the pace of business.?The urgent oftentimes supplants the important.?To no small extent, the 2.2 million people voting with their feet and resigning every month are showing us the importance of this critical activity.?Studies consistently show, people aren’t loyal to organizations, they are loyal to leaders.?Your Leadership Interviews are the breeding ground for this loyalty.

When was the last time you interviewed your team?

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David Naylor is Executive Vice President of Global Learning and Development at 2logical, one of the top 20 global leadership development companies. At 2logical, we help organizations fix their people problems by shifting employee mindsets and developing higher levels of motivational intelligence (the driver of growth mindsets).

Forward?thinking, industry leaders in more than 95 countries and in more than 40% of the Fortune 500 leverage 2logical's expertise to develop their Leadership and Sales talent.

2logical,?the motivational intelligence company - ranked as the #1 Leadership Development Company in the World