How Do You Attract, Build, and Retain Great Teams?

How Do You Attract and Keep Great Teams?

Last week we talked about how to make HR a critical element in your growth strategies. Today, I’ll share several ideas that can help you compete for the best people in your markets. Many growing industries are struggling to get the right people on their teams. It is critical for most leaders to do more with less.

This requires you to think of new ways of attracting, engaging, and empowering people on your teams across your organization. Many CEO studies show human capital management as critical to their organization’s continued success. I continue to see good organizations lose great people.

I was recently given a copy of The Alliance: Managing Talent in a Networked World. It was a great read and one I strongly recommend. I was surprised how well it matched with many of the philosophies I’ve been responsible for developing and implementing in many of the world’s most successful organizations. I believe it brings a unique understanding of how great leaders look at challenges and opportunities. I have interviewed and worked with over 17,000 senior level executives across the globe in my consulting career. Several of my clients have gone from INC 500 companies to multi-billion dollar market leaders with sales exceeding several billion dollars.   Many of the ideas in this book matched with conversations I’ve had with my clients through the years about building teams.

The authors share three concepts which I think can help you take your organization to the next level. They give many great real world examples and I think it should be on every leader’s reading list.  What makes this book stand out is how practical and implementable the solutions are that they suggest.

The book starts with a bang.  I’ve have spent over twenty five years building high performing teams for my own organizations and clients. I saw several of my organizations in the case studies of how to improve. Let’s see if you do, as well. It starts with a story that tells about a great performer that got recruited into a new company.  This performer was excited and ready to go.  Then over the course of the first several hours, they go from the pinnacle of being on a great team with a great organization to the Death Valley of the average onboarding process. What’s scary is I have seen this scenario play out too many times to count with many high performing individuals joining new organization in key roles.

In today’s networked world, employees have many more choices than they have in the past. In the past, you might have had to worry about losing a key engineer or sales professional to another competitor in your industry. Today, you have global competition.  Talented employees are being hired by people with an emphasis on hiring smart, emotionally intelligent people that work well on teams. Good organizations are always looking for talented people to be on their teams. Many of these millennials may have decided to go into their own business or startup, deciding they would rather choose their own destinies than put themselves in a situation where they are not in control.  You must have great teams if you hope to attract great talent!

Many of your managers are using outdated team models for these new hyper-connected employees. In a recent survey, over 60% of employees surveyed said they would forgo a raise if they could get a new manager. This is why such a large number of your employees are unengaged in their current roles.  How do these facts impact your teams’ success? This and the fact many managers seek to delegate less and control more.  In past generations, employee loyalty was important to many corporate employers. Today, it seems like an idea that doesn’t fit the new model of career. Employees expect to make many career changes in their lives and put an increased premium on money invested in them on training and development.  At the same time, employees want to take on increased responsibility in their careers.

I recently saw a study of HR professionals who said they no longer felt it was important to have high potential programs for their best employees.  They don’t want to make other employees feel neglected because they are not high performers.  This is the recipe for failure. Many successful organizations are capitalizing on this mediocrity trend by creating better training and development programs for high performers. I have found you can’t build a great organization with average performers. HR must learn how to create new types of developmental opportunities if they hope to create value within their organizations.

Now this leads to an interesting question. Can you empower and engage your employees for better results? How will you manage, develop, and engage your teams?  Can these shifts in employment strategies help you structure a win-win relationship for you and your team members? Our relationships with employees is evolving, are you ready for the new Employee Alliance?  We’ll be here for you every step of the way.  See you next week.