I don't know if you've heard but apparently nobody wants to work anymore it's those lazy Millennials or those entitled gen zes that are the problem although as a millennial I do appreciate those genz for coming onto the scene and taking the heat off of us millennials maybe it's the quiet quitting that's the problem there seems to be a little bit of a blame game happening in the workforce today I've been working in the leadership development space coaching and training leaders for the last decade and before that I was in Human Resources roles and I've noticed
that there is a little bit of blame happening when performance is low when people aren't delivering results and leaders are often blaming outside factors blaming other people and often they're blaming the very people that they lead and leaders don't always reflect on the tone they set for their team I've had leaders burst into my office and say things like that's it Dwight's out of here he's got to go he's not motivated he doesn't care and when I say well what happened when you brought these concerns to Dwight's attention they say well we haven't talked to
Dwight about it people keep trying to hack leadership they want to find a process a flowchart something to make it easier and make it more efficient but great leaders focused on building strong working relationships and working relationships even really strong ones aren't meant to be efficient they're meant to be authentic now leadership it's not easy and leaders are often Stuck in the Middle they're stuck between all of the organizational expectations expectations of the sea suite and expectations of employees and employees have higher expectations of their leaders than they ever have before leadership is one of
those things that's kind of simple in theory difficult in practice we know most of the things that we should be doing on a day-to-day basis as a leader in theory but it's really hard to do those things consistently and part of the reason it's so difficult is that leadership is kind of this constant everyday ongoing practice That Never Ends no one ever hits a point as a leader where they go wow I'm just a leader now I just lead I don't even have to try leadership just manifests off my body there's also a little bit
of a disconnect in terms of what leadership is I've had some leaders share with me that they really like being a leader they like leading a team they just don't really like the HR side of things and when I say well what do you mean by the HR side of things they say well you know I don't like dealing with performance concerns or low morale you know like all the people stuff and I'm always like that's not HR that's what being a leader is about and caring about people is a part of your job leaders
don't get to Outsource caring to somebody else in the organization I have had a few leaders come by my office with an employee in toe and they'll say something like hey this person's going through kind of a tough time do you think you could like care about them for me maybe they didn't use those exact words but that's kind of what they met people don't stay engaged because of the relationship they have with HR nobody's ever like wow my boss is a total jerk that HR lady down the hall wow she's such a delight I'm
I'm going to stick it out here for her how engaged do you think most people are on day one of a new job pretty engaged right yeah most people show up on day one I think wanting to have an impact contribute meet expectations very few people show up on day one just trying to do the bare minimum and so the question is what happens between day 1 and day 90 or between day 1 and day 365 that starts to cause people to lose engagement at the end of the day leaders set the tone for their
team Gallup research shows that 70% of how people feel about their workplace is directly related to the relationship they have with their leaders a number of years ago now Jim Collins shared kind of a tough message with leaders he said we usually get the employees we deserve now we've all been in a situation where we hired somebody and despite our best efforts our coaching our support report it wasn't going to work out it just wasn't a fit that happens from time to time but I think when we see a pattern when we see a high
level of turnover on a team when we see people start out highly engaged and then that engagement starts to plummet it often goes back to the leader I shared this idea as a part of a talk I did a few years ago and a supervisor that was in the talk put up his hand right away and he said wait wait wait Jade nobody deserves what I have to deal with on my team nobody should have to deal with this so I asked him a few questions and it turns out he was in a tough spot
he led a team of delivery truck drivers and his company was paying a few dollars less an hour than most of the competitors in the area and the work they were asking of their drivers was more physically demanding than competitors as well so it's going to be hard to hold on to good people right and as a result this guy has had a lot of turnover on his team kind of a revolving door the interesting thing is there's another supervisor sitting right next to him works for the same company also leads a team of drivers
dealing with the exact same challenges the exact same constraints and this second supervisor has a team that stayed with him pretty long term what's the difference well the second Supervisor has gotten a little bit more flexible about the way that he leads his team he's let his drivers have a little bit more say in their route maybe they can do an errand here and there during the day maybe when they really need to they can start or end their day a little bit closer to home he's decided that he can forgo a little little bit
of day-to-day efficiency to overall be more efficient with a seasoned and committed team he's been flexible he's been responsive and people focused and it's made a big difference now it's not all on individual leaders organizations also play a pretty important role in setting leaders up for success and in some ways I feel like we're setting leaders up to fail we're asking leaders to lead their team often to ambitious goals when they're understaffed when their own well-being isn't being cared for and often when we're asking leaders to still maintain a full individual contributor role while also
leading a team of people I've even seen organizations that have incentivized leaders more on the individual contributor tasks and duties they do than they do on the role as a leader no wonder leadership is coming last I'd like to share with you two things that leaders can focus on to be more intentional in their role and I'd like to share one thing that organizations can do to support them let's start with leaders first first leaders need to become relationship managers they need to shed their identities as task managers and doers and focus more and more
on building relationships with the people in their team many of the task management workflow things that leaders are responsible for will be automated over the coming years the one thing we can't automate relationships this means that leaders need to become experts in learning to balance the performance and the well-being of their team they can't ask so much of performance that they sacrifice people's well-being at work they also can't only focus on well-being and how people feel about being at work all the time without getting a certain base level of performance when I think about wellbeing
I often think of it on the Sunday scaries scale are folks familiar with the Sunday scaries anybody here ever experienced the Sunday scaries yeah so that's that anxious or nervous feeling that people start to get on Sunday afternoon or Sunday evening about the fact that they have to go back to that awful place on Monday morning maybe it's a place where they don't know what's expected of them don't know how to succeed in their role maybe they'll run into a toxic cooworker or worse a toxic leader the young people that are entering the workforce today
expect organizations to prioritize their well-being they want to work places that are flexible and they want to work places that let them their work around their life instead of planning their life around their work when we think about the future of work organizations will be measured based on their level of well-being and corporate results and performance that come at the expense of people's well-being won't be seen as a win number two leaders need to make time to lead I put time in my calendar for every other major deliverable and objective that I have on my
my plate I set time aside to work on various projects I set time aside to work on building an important talk that I'm going to be delivering but how many of us set time aside on a regular basis to think about how we're leading to think about the Team Dynamics to think about how we're building engagement how we're driving results how many of us set time aside intentionally not just once a year at performance assessment time to think about our people but all year round because here's the thing people leadership is something you do off
the side of your desk just when you have time when there's a fire when there's an emergency if you are a leader of people this is your job so I actually encourage leaders when I'm training them to start putting time aside in their calendars 30 minutes once a week as a recurring meeting time that is just for them where they can take a minute and think how am I leading what's working with the team right now what's not working am I showing up for my team in the way that I need to who on the
team is doing great and how am I going to recognize that who on the team is struggling what's my next move there what tough conversation have I been putting off you know how we tell entrepreneurs not just to work in the business but take time to work on the business I think we need to tell leaders to not just work in the team but take time to intentionally work on the team now how can organizations support leaders well I think organizations need to give leaders time to lead and they need to make taking that time
an expectation of the role leader well-being has been decreasing over the last few years in many Industries with many leaders experiencing their own levels of burnout and I know that I find myself coaching far too many leaders who feel they don't really have the time the resources or the direction to have an impact in their role as a leader and leaders are kind of the glue holding the culture of your organization together they're the ones that are driving performance but they're also the ones that are making individual employees feel seen heard and valued day in
and day out let's give them time and resources to do that I believe that when the sea Suite puts leaders first leaders can put their people first and set them up for success and then the people on your team can focus on the work that they have in front of them they can focus on getting stuff done and hopefully having some fun while they do it I don't believe that nobody wants to work anymore I do believe that people want to work differently and I do believe that it's easier to blame others and outside factors
when performance is low bottom line is you can't fix or change other people you can only fix or change yourself as a leader it always starts with you how you interact with the team how you build relationships how you set up expectations and how would it feel to have a team that is highly engaged that is high performing that's aligned that's enjoying the work that they're doing if you want to reach your people goals and your team goals you have to work at it if you want to motivate your team if you want to engage
your team it starts with you so I encourage you look in the mirror you might just find with a little bit of reflection your team doesn't actually suck you do w
