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There’s no two ways about it:
The leadership at your company has a HUGE impact on your retention rate.
The old saying is true – people don’t quit jobs, they quit bosses.
Every company focuses on making sure they have great senior leadership.
But unfortunately, a lot of companies drop the ball when it comes to equipping and training leaders across the ENTIRE organization.
This has a huge impact because most employees never interact with senior leadership. Their employee experience is influenced greatly by their experience with mid-level leaders, who rarely receive any leadership training or support.
And yet we wonder why turnover is such a problem!
Here are three ways a different leadership style can dramatically improve retention.
Employees Stay with Leaders That Truly Care About Them
Every leader will say they care about their team. But how can you care about your team if you don’t really know them?
Most leaders don’t know much at all about their teams personal lives, hopes, dreams, passions, etc.
In other words, they don’t know them like they would a friend.
You don’t have to learn all about their love life or anything crazy like that – but you should know if they’re married, if they have kids, what their hobbies are, what excites them, what makes them happy, and so forth.
Ideally, you should also find some common ground to bond over.
If you’re never asking someone questions about their personal life and how things are going, how their kids or partner or hobbies are going, do you really care about them?
As an employee, it’s a lot harder to leave a team when you have a strong relationship with the leader and know they really care about you as a person.
Employees Stay with Leaders That Help Them Grow
Everyone wants to grow and learn new skills. But you can’t help your teams do that unless you understand HOW they want to grow and what goals they want to achieve.
Most leaders never take the time to learn these things…let alone help their teams reach those goals!
Once you know what goals your team wants to achieve, you can coach them, encourage them to pursue learning opportunities, buy them books to read for new skills, point them toward training courses, and so forth.
You can even allocate a few hours every week for them to practice a new skill that would be valuable for your team.
When people are growing, that also means they’re doing work they are proud of. People don’t like to leave jobs if they are exceptionally proud of the work they’re delivering!
Employees Stay with Leaders That Give Them Room to Make Mistakes
Nobody wants to make mistakes. But if you’re NEVER making any mistakes, you’re probably not growing.
It means you’re not getting out of your comfort zone or trying new things.
Many employees never get the chance to grow, try new things, or go outside their comfort zone because their leader reprimands them if they make mistakes.
If you want to retain your best people, you need to give them room to make mistakes so they can grow.
Embrace mistakes as part of the learning and growth process – and understand that if you view each mistake as a learning opportunity, it makes you stronger in the long run.
Mistakes only become a real problem when you’re not learning from them, or when the same mistake is being made again and again.
Leading For Retention
For years now, companies have been pulling their hair out trying to crack the code of retention. They spend millions on consultants to tell them how to encourage talented people to stick around.
Sure, some people will always leave for a higher paycheck or change of pace.
But if large numbers of people churn and burn through your business, you have to ask yourself – what’s the lowest common denominator? What’s the common factor among all the resignations? It’s your culture and your leadership!
If you can strengthen your leadership at every level, your retention rate will skyrocket. It’s as simple (and as hard) as that!
To fast-track your leaders’ development, schedule a no-obligation call to learn more HERE.