We have all had plenty of time to think and reflect through this pandemic, and people are leaving their organizations at record levels. Some of the most basic reasons why people are leaving their job is because they simply do not like or enjoy it.
And often times that is because we feel:
- unappreciated
- unseen
- like we don’t belong
- treated unfairly
- misalignment between work and our personal values and priorities
A lot of organizations have realized, and research backs this with real data, that successful high performing teams have high levels of trust and a joint vision to work towards.
I just read this HBR article by Karen Brown “To retain employees, you should focus on inclusion – not just diversity”. Her point is that if you manage to create “an environment where people can be who they are, that values their unique talents and perspectives”, this is what will make them want to stay.
The truly hard part is to actually create that environment. She makes great points about how you can go about understanding where your organization is at through surveys, smart segmentation of surveys and independent focus groups. However, this will only get you to understand what the current status is. The important work is to actually create a more inclusive environment that shifts your metrics – and then ultimately also positively impacts your employee retention rates.
I think she’s right that an important piece of this is the relationship foundations that each manager builds in their 1:1 interactions with their direct reports, their team and the people around them. And if we get to the topic of relationships we very quickly get to the same dimensions that show up as characteristics in high performing teams. High levels of trust, ways to allow for and constructively deal with mistakes (or in a team context a culture allowing for failure) and that elusive magical psychological safety. Again, we know that this is what high performing teams HAVE. The question is, how to create that.
And this is where we get to behaviors that truly embrace equality, where we need excellent communication skills, where we constantly invest in positive relationship building and trust building, where we dare to show up vulnerable, where we have a vocabulary for emotions and a high level of emotional agility, where teams openly discuss unconscious bias topics (and dare to get it wrong and learn along the way), where humans (including leaders!) show up in conversation vulnerable and curious, where we assume good intent and where we constantly and generously share, co-create, talk and also have fun together. As a leader you role-model this in your own day to day behavior. Ultimately the most important thing to work on for every leader is their reflection, their intentions about and their actual habits around the topics of trust, vulnerability, shame and defensiveness. This is e.g. about knowing your stress reaction patterns (fight, flight, freeze, fawn), your own ability to emotionally regulate and your relentless and continuous focus on creating systems that reinforce trust and positive relationships.
This will then build the foundation that allows your team to set ambitious goals, learn together, fail safely and ultimately succeed. All of the “hard skills” around goal setting, strategy, discovery work, product work, finance, sales, marketing, compliance, etc… are obviously also needed. But they will only get you to mediocre results if you face high levels of turnover and low levels of trust in your teams. If you want that strategic advantage in the marketplace, you better focus on empowering your leaders to create inclusive teams. That means you must find the leaders who actually care, who are continuously invested in their own personal growth, who are capable to share power and co-create and who show in their interactions and behaviors, that they truly value and build trusting relationships.
Inclusive Leaders 