"Why should anyone be led by you?"
A Harvard Business Review (HBR) recent issue (January-February 2023) was titled, "What Most Companies Get Wrong About Managing Talent." A feature article in the issue by Mark Mortensen and Amy C. Edmondson called, "Rethink Your Employee Value Proposition: Offer Your People More Than Just Flexibility"( Rethink Your Employee Value Proposition (hbr.org)), discussed an employee value proposition composed of four interrelated factors.
These four factors (material offerings, opportunities to develop and grow, connections and community, and meaning and purpose) can be plotted on two dimensions: short-term versus long-term, and individual versus the collective, as shown below:
INDIVIDUAL
LONG TERM
SHORT TERM
COLLECTIVE
The authors point out that there is not one best answer to engage and retain an individual employee or the employee group as a whole. They note that a systematic and holistic approach is required. They also outline three steps that leaders can move this approach forward:
Assess what your company has and what your employees need
Change the conversation
Continually update
This article outlines a thoughtful systemic view of how organizations can create engaged and connected employees, and what leaders can do to assist with this. The framework and concepts can and should be enriched, however, by putting leadership at the center of this framework:
INDIVIDUAL
LEADERSHIP
LONG TERM
SHORT TERM
COLLECTIVE
There are several reasons for highlighting the importance of this inclusion:
The article notes the three steps leaders can take to enhance a company's systemic approach. It does not highlight all of the research noting that it is leadership, and each individual leader, who has the greatest impact on the engagement and connection of employees.
As such, leadership and each individual leader, are responsible for holding themselves to a higher standard. They are responsible for understanding and delivering what employees need from them – For example, there is a wealth of engagement research that reveals things that leaders need to do to strengthen engagement (e.g., be clear about expectations). The framework provided by Mortensen and Edmondson also reveals that leaders need to help create for employees.
Leaders also make the connections in the Mortensen and Edmondson framework clearer (or not) for employees between short-term and long-term and between the individual and the collective.
Leaders also have the responsibility for modeling growth and development, connection and community, and meaning and purpose themselves. Employees will learn from this. Leaders will gain credibility, awareness, and fulfillment from it.
Even in the material offerings, leaders should be aware of any distinctions that exist between leadership/leader offerings and employee offerings. Things like physical office space, flexibility, and schedules can say a great deal about a leader's values and can have an impact on employee engagement.
Leaders need to make sure that they are engaged. Who can expect employees to be engaged if leaders are not?
In summary, leaders can realize tremendous value from the framework presented by Mortensen and Edmondson. To extend this value so much further, they need to place themselves dead-center of creating an engaged and connected employee base. If they don't, they will lose the talent war.
With the mid-term elections quickly approaching on November 8, 2022, I am reminded of a post I first published on LinkedIn in December 2015 titled “Leadership Assessments for Presidential Candidates.” I feel even more strongly now then I did then that the American people are missing a huge opportunity that would allow them to make the best decisions about whom they should elect to key political positions, including, and most importantly, the President of the United States. The opportunity is to use leadership assessments as a means for providing very important information about any political candidate and improve the public’s ability to predict who will be most successful in the roles for which they are running.
In thirty years of working in the Talent arena, I have learned a very important lesson about succeeding with and through talent. You need to have vision and business strategies. If they have a particular vision for their organization, they need to ensure that everything they do aligns with that vision. Strategic objectives should move the company closer to its vision. Structure and organizational processes should propel the vision rather than impede it. People should be selected, developed, and rewarded based upon the "fit" with that vision. It goes back decades ago to McKinsey's tried and true 7-S model.
For decades now, I have conducted 360 feedback and coaching discussions with leaders at all levels, representing numerous companies, industries, and regions of the world. For the majority of these feedback/coaching discussions, I have worked with The PROFILOR® 360 assessment. I have also trained many HR teams in conducting feedback/coaching sessions, both in one-on-one and group format, using The PROFILOR®. In conducting these HR workshops, I have discovered that many teams have the same questions and concerns about conducting one-on-one feedback sessions. In this article, I will share more about the way a conversation should happen to facilitate the most productive and impactful feedback/coaching session. Future articles will provide additional information on conducting high-impact feedback/coaching sessions.
This job aid is designed specifically to help leaders and employees have strong and productive development discussions. It is meant to provide advice and guidance once the employee has completed The PROFILOR® feedback process, for three phases related to development discussions: preparing for the discussion, having the meeting, and following-up after the meeting. The following sections are organized according to these phases.
When multi-rater or 360-degree assessments are implemented in an organization, often the company will evaluate and compare a number of 360 assessments and assessment partners. The following is a list of criteria to consider when comparing and contrasting options for 360 assessments and assessment partners:
This Leader’s Guide is designed specifically to help leaders and employees have strong and productive development discussions, across time and on single occasions. Having these kinds of discussions help to ensure that the leader knows what is important to the employee’s engagement and feeling valued by the organization. They also help to ensure leaders and employees have the information they need to explore various career directions and opportunities for employees.
When multi-rater or 360-degree assessments are implemented in an organization, often the company will evaluate and compare a number of 360 assessments and assessment partners. The following is a list of criteria to consider when comparing and contrasting options for 360 assessments and assessment partners: