Have you future-proofed your people strategy?
What will be required to create a work culture in which your most talented and ambitious employees will want to spend their careers? A client recently engaged me to help them answer that question. As part of that effort, I interviewed nine staff members who met the “talented and ambitious” criteria to understand what was on their minds. I also asked a Gen Z resource at the New York Times (my daughter) for her perspective. Several themes emerged that foretell how leaders must adapt and rethink expectations. If your business requires quality employees with unique or specialized skills then pay attention to how your staff might answer these questions: Does leadership and management care? Care is the assessment that another person has your interest in mind when making decisions or acting. It is one of the most fundamental ways to build lasting trust. When employees think leaders elevate their interests over staff, they may comply with decisions but are less likely to extend trust more broadly. Do I look at my boss and my boss’s boss and aspire to do their job? When employees see engagement and support (vs. overwork and burnout) that makes a difference. You can have a highly competitive benefits package (vacation, sick pay, etc.) but if none of those can get tapped into as your stature in the company increases, then that’s a red flag. If I’m exceeding expectations in my role and going above and beyond the call of duty, will I get promoted faster? This describes a high velocity employee. Traditional thinking is that there is a pace to rise through the ranks. If a high-velocity employee doesn’t find their work challenging, they will go elsewhere. Will individualism, idealism, and opinions be treated with respect? In my work with age-diverse teams and organizations, this is often when experience and a generational lens create tension. If you are convicted by this, time to rethink. How much flexibility do I have? We all have a core human need for variety and your most talented and ambitious staff don’t want to get boxed into a certain role or career trajectory. They are happy working with the same team, but they want exposure to diverse projects to grow and understand their options. GenZ, the youngest generation gaining traction in the workforce, has a FOMO view of the future. Their expectations of flexibility will likely push our current norms. Time to rethink? Are opportunities fuel connection plentiful and foster a sense of belonging? In-person relationship building is never out of fashion. But remember you have a large group of employees who embrace technology as a form of connection. Robust cross-office communication, real-time knowledge sharing, resource-laden intranets, and fun virtual events all matter as well as practices that make building a strong internal network easy. Is development integrated into everything? Millennials and Gen Z are looking for training, experiences, mentors, and advisors who can help them make sense of it in a meaningful and productive way. A challenge for leaders and managers is that most of us weren’t socialized or educated on how to unlock another person’s potential. We figured it out as we went along, and although that principle has merits, our world is evolving so rapidly that rethinking is necessary. Leaders, even those who are currently meeting your success metrics, start to future-proof your business or organization and rethink your people formula. We can help.
A New Guy on the Field
We are excited to announce that Coach Victor Santa Cruz is joining Iron Coaching. Coach has partnered with us throughout his head coaching career and has been at the forefront of using emotional intelligence principles to build high performing and cohesive teams. We look forward to tapping into his boundless energy and ideas about how to improve how we coach and operate our small boutique firm. His first contribution is naming our new Blog – “Practice Notes”. Get to Know Coach Santa Cruz Victor aims to help his clients master the people skills that cultivate winning. He is fanatical about developing the champion within the individual as they strive to lead a group of diverse individuals to success. Throughout his professional life, Victor has excelled in opportunities that demanded vision, culture creation, belonging, and blue-collar grit. This background provides the lens he takes to client engagements. Building champions while pursuing championships Victor’s philosophy is that the business of college football is no different from a dynamic nonprofit or growing corporation. It’s all about the fundamentals, win/loss record, recruiting, data fluency, critical decision making, and executing initiatives that align with strategic goals. He understands the tremendous pressure organizational leaders face and maybe even more since his big moments came exclusively on Saturday nights with fans watching. Most college football coaches define success by the numbers. That’s equally as important to Victor, as his track record attests. What set him apart from his peers was his ability to transfer the best business practices for attracting, developing, and retaining diverse talent. He took to heart lessons he learned while receiving a Master’s in Organizational Leadership – the most crucial is the need for individualizing coaching and instruction to the learner and recognizing the need to help his players, coaches, and staff be more emotionally intelligent. In his free time Victor enjoys surfing, fishing, and hanging out with his wife Jamie and their three kids; Deuce, Izabella, and Levi. Follow Coach on Twitter @vscwintoday
It’s OK to be uncomfortable.
It’s hard to overcome the human desire to remain comfortable, even when something isn’t working for us anymore. – We keep in the safe lane versus taking a calculated risk. – We stay at jobs that aren’t fulfilling. – We avoid difficult conversations in pursuit of harmony. Since growth is my thing, I wrote a piece for Mortgage Women Magazine on strategies to overcome the resistance to new technologies and tools. Embracing change ultimately will differentiate the “modern mortgage professional” (kudos to Dave Savage for his wisdom) from, dare I say, the relic. I can relate to that. My version of this was the belief that my multi-modal in-person and phone coaching sessions suited me just fine. Zoom was “so impersonal.” Truth be told, I was comfortable and resisting change. Covid, for me and many others, created the pain that made adopting new technology and ways of engaging with clients a necessity. It wasn’t comfortable at first. I didn’t like staring at my face, and I had to work harder to discern the nuances that I easily detect in person. Now that we are two years into distance “businessing” and hybrid work is here to stay, I’m grateful for that Covid push. Though I mourn that I won’t be sharing space with clients as frequently, I’ve adapted and am open to exploring other digital platforms that broaden my potential to help others. I continue to learn that discomfort is a signal and encourage you to do the same. If you pay attention, be curious, and are open about your feelings and the basis of your fear, you activate the part of your brain that takes on challenges. The first step (either willingly or out of necessity) creates momentum. And before you know it, you’ve changed.