Leading with Confidence: Top Ten Tips Managers Need to Drive Success

Managers are key to engagement and retention - as the adage says, people don’t leave their job, they leave their manager. So what can managers do to attract and retain their best talent now? This is a summary of an ebook published by Wiley - email me if you want a copy!

1. Develop yourself. If you understand who you are, what your strengths are, and how to lead yourself (self-management), then you set yourself up to lead effectively.

2. Set an example people can’t resist following. The global workforce has changed, which means a paycheck every 2 weeks isn’t enough to get the best effort out of increasingly detached employees. People want to know their work matters - they want a vision that compels them to give their effort to achieve a seemingly insurmountable goal.

3. Understand that communication is key. If you want to engage the people you lead, then make yourself available to them. Even in the age of social distancing and remote work, find ways to connect with your employees one-on-one on a more emotional level in a group setting. It’s during stressful times that people need the support of their managers the most.

4. Help the team see the big picture. It’s easy to get lost in the work we do as individuals and forget what we’re accomplishing in the larger world. To reconnect your team with the purpose behind their actions, take time to explain how their assignments and projects fit into the company’s larger goals, reputation, success, and bottom line.

5. Encourage feedback. Research shows that inspiring, charismatic leaders regularly gather ideas, opinions, and suggestions from the individuals they work with. Make it a point to seek input from people who hold back in group meetings, and after you hear feedback, reiterate one of their points and thank them for their contribution.

6. Don’t underestimate the power of recognition. Giving out regular recognition provides an effective way to motivate employees. Make it direct, specific, sincere, and simple. Accompany recognition with a benefit or reward, personalize it, and make recognizing achievement everyone’s responsibility.

7. Act with decisiveness. Employees will gain more respect for you if you confidently and consistently assert your influence and then stand by your decisions as long as they remain within reason.

8. Create an environment of constant learning and development. Learning incentivizes people to stay with an organization. If they are learning and sharpening skills that can help them earn more, get their dream job or get promoted; they’re going to want to make the most of that opportunity which means staying with your organization.

9. Provide the professional guidance that your team wants. Be the manager who’s also the leader and mentor people want to be around so they find more incentive to work harder for you and stay with your company.

10. Exercise patience with yourself. Developing strong managerial skills takes time - seek guidance from colleagues, your own manager, and your professional network when you need it. In the same way you give your employees the benefit of the doubt with the mistakes they make, do the same for yourself. And remember, you’ve got this.

The PXT Select assessment helps you as a manger by gathering accurate, objective, and reliable data so you can confidently hire, manager, develop and retain productive employees and effective leaders. Contact me for a demo!

How Having a Talent Management Strategy Helps Employer/Employee Breakups

Employer/Employee Breakups are the Worst

“I’m so sorry, but it’s just not working out.”

Those breakup words are nothing anyone wants to hear in their dating lives. But, in a professional setting, they can be equally—and in some cases more—concerning and frustrating. Each time an organization drops this phrase in a discussion with one of its employees or has one of their team members break things off with them, it leads to a loss in productivity, time, and, most of all, money. That hurts. No matter how you spin it, employer/employee breakups are the worst.

No one wants to receive this news. And, no one wants to deliver it either. But the fact is, without an effective talent management strategy, organizations will likely continue to deliver this news to employees who fail to meet expectations. Or, worse yet, they’ll have to hear it themselves from talented but disengaged employees who decide to leave after feeling unnurtured and unsupported in their roles.

The good news? It doesn’t have to be this way. With a talent management strategy in place, office breakups (and their repercussions) don’t have to happen nearly as often as they might otherwise.

Developing and implementing a robust talent management strategy—that’s the key to avoiding them.
So, What Do We Mean by “Talent Management Strategy?”

Simply put, businesses with a talent management strategy make strategically planning and envisioning talent needs a top priority rather than shunting those needs off as a secondary (and reactionary) thought. Talent management means preventing turnover and addressing lack of engagement. It means acting to achieve consistency in executional excellence. It requires managing speed and flexibility rather than letting the pace of work pull the rug out from underneath you. For organizations looking to drive results, putting in the effort to hire and engage the right people makes all the difference.
Here’s Where to Start—Answer the “What” Piece of the Puzzle

It’s no secret—companies that embrace strategies to hire and retain talent find themselves better suited to drive results and deliver on expectations. Creating those strategies begin by taking the first step—designing the right organizational structure.

Start by asking questions like:

1. What are the goals the organization is trying to achieve?

2. What roles need to be created or filled based on those goals?

3. What traits does the perfect employee need in order to fulfill the role?

4. What tools does the organization have for identifying top performers?

5. What cognitive and behavioral traits do we need to find in candidates here?

When mapping out how to build and design an optimal workforce that can get the job done, organizational leaders need to consider these questions first.

While HR departments, like Recruiting, Organizational Development, and Training support these aspects of hiring and developing an organization’s workforce, the “people strategy” component of the equation requires leaders to map out.

Diving into the “Who” Component of the Equation

Once leaders design their organization’s structure and map out what roles are needed, they need to figure out the “who” piece by asking questions like:

1. Who is the right person for the job based on the specific job requirements?

2. Who can do this job while finding it interesting and engaging?

3. Who will enjoy growing and challenging themselves in this position?

4. Who might have the skills or potential to succeed even if they don’t have the obvious experience in their background?

5. Who could move within this organization and provide a good fit in future roles that arise?

6. Who are the right team players for highly visible projects?

7. Who is ready for their next career move, promotion, or stretch assignment on a new team?

8. Who needs training or additional resources to do their job well?

9. Who needs supplementary support in order to stay engaged?

Getting the “who” component down from day one sets a company up for short-term success. Long-term success, however, requires long-term thinking and planning.

Even after organizations hire the right individual for a role they know is a good fit, the work doesn’t end. In fact, it only begins. Nurturing and developing an employee—even a seasoned veteran—plays a critical role in empowering them to perform their job successfully throughout their entire time within your organization.
Over time, talent needs change. And, your company needs a way figure out how to move their talent to meet these shifting needs. New teams, new special projects, opportunities for promotions, or lateral moves all require the ongoing attention of your organization. Optimizing your talent management strategy to account for change and considering how candidates or existing employees match to new opportunities helps your organization adapt to shifts in circumstances, business strategies, and talent needs.

Here’s the Bottom-line

Without a proactive talent management strategy, tools to measure and decide which candidate best fits a role, and methods for keeping employees engaged, business leaders and companies tend to make talent decisions on an as-needed basis. Doing so is natural, but it can create gaps within a workplace and increase room for error, not to mention cost an organization time and money. Lack of planning upfront increases stress, extra workloads, and internal conflict as existing employees buckle under the weight of an enlarged workload assumed from vacant positions.

How PXT Select™ Offers a Proven Talent Management Solution

Serious challenges, like talent acquisition and retention, require equally serious solutions. That’s why we developed PXT Select™. With over 20+ years of research behind it, PXT Select starts from the very beginning by helping you identify the “who” and “what” aspects of the puzzle.

After helping to create a model of the perfect candidate, the PXT Select assessment utilizes psychometric data to help organizations understand how individual candidates or existing employees think and work. From there, a company can place individuals into positions they’re more likely to engage with, succeed in, and stick around for.

To us, that’s a much better alternative than repeating those uncomfortable workplace breakups over and over. They’re possible to avoid. It just takes a little planning and the right information to get there.

I am a PXT Select Authorized Partner and can help you put this in place so you win the competition for talent.