I'm often asked what my ideal client looks like. The answer is really simple; It's not about company size or sector. It's about the leadership. If the people running the company want to invest in their people and develop their skills, then they are my ideal client.
I posted this statement on LinkedIn last week and a friend commented that the topic merits a deeper discussion, so I promised to do so in this weeks blog.
Einstein once said that intellectual growth should start at birth and only end at death. This quote is one of my mantras and has been part of my email signature block for over a decade. As humans, our knowledge is one of the key differentiators in what sets us apart from others. As the depth of a trees roots are closely correlated to the height of the tree, so our accumulated knowledge impacts our success in life.
Organisations at their core are about people. Whatever the company, it cannot run without people. For the time being at least, we are still required! Maintaining a stable team of quality people is critical to any company. The impact of resignations increases with seniority; from a few months of lost momentum and revenue for a change in junior team members to 12-24 months of impasse and a financial impact of many times salary at the C-Suite level.
One of the tools we have at our disposal to increase staff loyalty and thereby improve staff retention is the process of investing in their personal development. Such investment can take many forms, from skills trainings to community projects that foster team spirit and give back to others. The problem is that many employers place such initiatives in the cost column because there is no directly measurable financial return, which results in them being rejected.
This can be a costly error. Research shows that for millennials, participation in community projects or charitable initiatives increases job longevity by up to 14 months. Extrapolate the data and that’s many people who would resign deciding to stay hence no recruiter fees, onboarding costs, business continuity losses etc.
Good people will always attract the attention of your competitors. If you are retaining your staff based on salary alone, it’s only a matter of time before someone offers more. Showing that you care about your people by investing in their personal development will create more loyalty than a salary increase. I once read a wonderful quote where a team leader asks his CEO “What if we invest money in training that person and they leave?” to which the CEO replied “What if we don’t and they stay?”
I think this captures the mindset we need to have not only as leaders, but as individuals. We are stuck with ourself whether we like it or not. We can’t “resign” from ourself. Why would you choose therefore, to go through life with the minimum knowledge required to get from A to B, never realising destinations C to Z were an option? There are of course many responses to this; laziness, ignorance, lack of self belief, lack of ambition. I could go on.
One of the biggest factors in our destiny as an individual is the company we keep. If we surround ourselves with mediocre people that never push our boundaries, we become very comfortable being the big fish in the small pond and never migrate to the larger pond. I’m not saying that is bad, it’s just a fact.
When this is ‘bad’ however, is when we see it in leaders. Such leaders need to be the centre of attention and never want to be challenged. They surround themselves with “Yes” people who feed their egos. These are not my target clients. I find such people emotionally draining; life is quite simply too short to spend it with people who are too self-focused.
I believe that leaders should strive to surround themselves with people who are better in their chosen discipline than they are themselves. This does not make a leader redundant; on the contrary, the ability to create the conditions for a high performance team to operate and succeed is a role that only a true leader, unshackled from their own ego and need to be the focus of attention, can fulfil. As well as sidelining ones ego, this requires that we open ourself to learning. Such leaders don’t only prescribe learning to their team members, but participate in the process themselves. Being in the presence of such people is inspiring and motivating, and to revert to my opening statement; these are my ideal clients.
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