A recent conversation with an executive about Sylvia, a talented, hi-potential woman helped us decide.
“She’s a great employee and strong contributor who wants to do more but there are currently no openings. She feels blocked and stymied. I don’t think that I can help her” was his response.
Does this sound familiar?
Do you have an employee with the same problem?
Could this be describing you in your current position?
If this sounds familiar than what could you do about it? There are only a few choices:
Do nothing, hoping that things will work out eventually but running the risk that they will leave or start to tune out.
Help them proactively reach out and find their own opportunities.
“Find their own opportunities? Isn’t that HR’s responsibilities?” Yes but not always and there may be other potential opportunities just below the surface of “published openings.”
He then asked “Isn’t this somewhat disruptive to the normal way of doings things.”Absolutely was my answer. But then I asked “how disruptive would it be if your best, most talented employees left?” Pretty disruptive we both agreed.
In reality you may not have a choice, especially as the employment picture brightens. If your key talent is too important to lose and you can’t generate enough opportunities on your own, then you need to find other ways to keep talented employees engaged.
But unless you’re a Facebook type of hyper-growth organization, most companies even in the best of times can’t always generate enough growth to provide “published opportunities” for their best people.
So if you are prepared to let your best people leave, then do nothing and face the prospects of significant disruptions. Or if you prefer them to stay, read on to learn more about what happened to Sylvia.
Sylvia was a very talented and up and coming leader in this company. After talking with her boss, I started working with her. Coincidently the timing was just right as she was starting to get some traction on her external job search.
We sat down and discussed her situation. She had been in this role for some time and there were no advancement opportunities. Her boss wasn’t going anywhere and she was not involved in other meetings or on projects where she felt she could contribute. Her frustration level was increasing. She felt much less engaged in her work.
I decided to help shift her focus from waiting for others to find her new opportunities to proactively finding them herself. We decided to try an internal networking strategy. I gave her the goal of starting to position herself as an advocate for others. To reach out and look for ways to help leaders solve their problems.
This was a slow and incremental process that shifted Sylvia’s focus onto ways to help others become more successful. Identifying potential trends, challenges that a leader might face and then pushing out occasional emails with suggestions, articles, ideas or resources that could help them.
Nothing happened immediately, but over a period of time, she began to get some responses. A thank you message was soon followed by a request for more information. Then a personal phone call and face-to-face meeting a few weeks later. Leaders became more interested in what she had to say. She was invited to other meetings where her contributions were both valued and anticipated.
This new appreciation of her talents led to an expansion of her role with an eventual promotion. Her boss was pleased because the scope and stature of his department increased and he was recognized as a great developer of people.
This was never about taking someone’s job; a zero sum game. Instead the goal was to expand the number of opportunities for talented employees to help your organization. It’s creating the intersection between someone’s capabilities and a leader’s needs, plans and challenges. It’s simply facilitating a more proactive interaction between talented employees and talented leaders.
This is just an example of one person. Imagine the impact if you shifted more of your key talented but potentially frustrated people into highly engaged proactive employees who were helping leaders in ways that were never imagined.
The improvements could be substantial not just in retention and engagement but with innovation and business growth.
The real disruption is the change required in how you view your people; shifting from a focus on people as commodities to value-added talent that should be retained and developed.
So if this is a problem for you, your organization or one of your most talented, but stymied employees, what can you do?
You should first try to help them yourself by leveraging your own network. But if you hit a dead-end, start to help them position themselves to find opportunities INSIDE of your organization.
So how does this work?
It starts with a focus on Stephen Covey and his expression – Seek to understand before being understood.
You must first get to know and understand:
How others think, feel and act
What problems and challenges they are facing
How you can help them be more successful
When to execute a slow but steady engagement plan.
And it’s not with everyone but a select few that can provide you with the best opportunities for success
Not an easy task, but a lot easier than you think.
You just have to know how to do it.
Interested in hearing more? Give us a call or send me a message. As always, we offer a 100% no risk, no obligation conversation with you to help understand your problem and strategy.
Why take the risk of potentially losing some talented employees with potential disruptions to your business.
Better to experience a minor disruption now versus a major disruption later.
Leave a Reply