Lead.

Becoming a manager is a big deal. Managers are leaders of people, and form a deciding factor in how their people:

enjoy their jobs,
role model the company culture,
innovate and explore new ideas,
grow and learn,
feel safe, included, heard, and
deliver reliably on the goals of the company.

Taking time to learn what makes a brilliant leader is really worthwhile. In my experience, one of the traits of compelling and exceptional leaders is their ability to hear, see and support the people that work for them.

Let’s do a little activity.

Ask yourself, “Do I know what each person in my team…”

skills are and how they got them?
gets out of bed for (their passions/motivations) and why?,
really don’t like and why?, and
wants for their future and why?

Now pause for a moment. Consider this truth:

If you have not asked each person these questions yourself, you cannot know the answer.

It does not matter how many people you’ve helped, how long you’ve worked, what an outstanding influencer you are – none of that matters here. Team members have experiences and aspirations you WILL NOT and CANNOT understand via a glance, a conversation at a team meeting, a once off one on one chat, or reading the folder you were given by their previous manager.

You must genuinely care enough about your people to discover who they are, through a deliberate, thoughtful and consistent approach.

I recall reading Being Human, by Mark LeBusque. Inside the pages of this engaging and experience driven leadership guidebook, LeBusque delivers challenges to the reader. Amongst many challenges, LeBusque asks us to really hear our people, right from the first meeting, and be ready to enable their needs. I remember with delight this particular titbit…

“Shut up and listen – give the floor to your team members
to learn more about them… it’s not about you…
even though you are the manager, always remember that
your success will be directly impacted by those whom you manage”.

LeBusque argues that by doing this, you will not only establish psychological safety, you will have set the foundation for outstanding team engagement and performance.

Whilst I absolutely ADORE “Shut up and listen”, another term that is well know is a skill known as “Listening to Learn”. Some rare gurus are born with it, but for the rest of us, it’s a learnt skill.

Can having a quality development conversation really increase engagement and decrease attrition?

Yes. Using this method, I have taken teams from engagement scores from 42% up to 93% within less than 1 year. I have enabled countless mentees to stretch into knew skills, realise their self-worth, pursue their personal hobbies and attain long sought for promotions. I’ve also successfully trained managers to use this approach, where they have achieved similar uplifts in employee engagement and retention (refer to C3 testimonials).

So if Listening to Learn is so important to the foundations of high performing teams, how do you add it to your skill set?

This is where My C3 Careers can help. Through highly immersive and engaging coaching workshops, I work with managers to provide strategies and tools to deliver consistent and quality development conversations. At the end, managers will be able to:

Confidently conduct high quality development conversations, including understanding how to establish ‘safe zones’ for their team to talk through challenges and development needs.
Use some great tools and tricks to unlock strengths, motivations and aspirations of team members, such as the My C3 Careers MyPage.

Ready to get started?

It feels wonderful to be a leader that enables their people to be truly excited about their work, their future and themselves. If you’d like to find out more about how My C3 Careers can help you, please refer to my services page, or get in touch.