One of the most important and often neglected aspects of management is helping team members advance and shape the future of their careers. Being a manager is an opportunity to mentor, to fuel personal and professional growth, to make a difference … it’s not all about YOU!
When management overlooks this important measure, they pay a very high price: the loss of talented team members and productivity. The only way to remedy this is to reimagine talent and culture within your workplace by helping your people advance their careers –and themselves.
This doesn’t mean instant gratification. It means having a real talent and culture playbook for your company.
So, why does advancing your people matter?
- People care when you show a genuine interest in their future …
Huge emphasis here on the word genuine. As a manager, you should take a real and genuine personal interest, not an HR-driven mandated procedural interest, in your team members’ futures.
- Loyalty builds productivity …
Taking an honest interest in your team members’ wants and needs helps build loyalty and loyal team members are much more engaged, productive and are eager to help your business succeed. Your people ARE your business!
- Talented people naturally want to advance …
Capable and ambitious team members want mentoring and training. They want to learn new skills and they want to become more valuable and versatile to a company or business. If your company isn’t providing this, enterprising team members will seek it out through other opportunities.
Stop with the excuses
Stop focusing on just the here and now. Many businesses are trying to do more with less and naturally tend to focus on only essential day-to-day operations and are less interested in the activities that will benefit them in the long run.
If there is no time for it, make time
This is truly one of the lamest excuses any manager can make for not making the effort to reimagine the talent and culture their business currently has. There is always time for the things that we prioritize. If you believe that team member development planning is valuable, you WILL make it a priority and you WILL carve out time to achieve it.
Don’t forget … culture matters
Do your team members genuinely work together? Do they respect each other? These are huge game-changing answers when it comes to your company’s culture. If you aren’t experiencing this type of culture in your office, make moves and try to plan a team building meeting or something to get everyone together and working toward one goal.
Think about how much money your business could save if you experienced fewer turnovers and more advancement of your current team members. It literally takes you prioritizing your team members’ futures and making an effort to help in planning their development. When you focus on each team members’ success individually, you then make your team collectively stronger and you make your culture more tight-knit and enjoyable.
This is what sustainable means in a long-term business or venture.
