A recent conversation with a leader who had just lost one of their superstar employees after five years of great contributions, made me stop and ponder this question:
How well do you really know your employees and their overarching goals?
In this case, leadership had always been pleased with their superstar’s performance. They had been in an internal operations role that required them to be extremely detailed in deciphering trends in company data, as well as process improvements that helped the team work, and make decisions faster — and close more deals. The company was shocked by the superstar’s announcement to leave, and tried to dangle a carrot of significantly more money and benefits to no avail.
When I asked why those additional benefits didn’t work, the leader replied “she said that she had always wanted to branch out from operational issues to focus more on management of people. We had no idea of that interest and couldn’t find a solution…”
Still curious, I probed a bit more to learn about what conversations leadership had with this superstar to better understand her future goals. That answer was a common refrain that I hear from many companies about their employees:
What ate at me about this simple conversation was the missed opportunity. Five years is a long time to not know what your employee’s future career plans are. In terms of time commitment, what if there was a 30-minute career interest/planning conversation even once per quarter? That’s only 2 hours in the course of a year! This is something that could easily be part of an employee review conversation.
What you should be asking all of your employees
Instead of just lamenting about lost opportunities, I thought it would be better to come up with a few probing questions that leaders can use to drive these simple career and goal identifications with all employees — and most certainly with superstar employees.
The test I have for you as a reader is to think about your employees. Be really honest about whether or not you know the answers to the following questions related to them — not just what you think the answers are — but whether you have actually had a conversation that surfaced some of these answers.
When you think about your future career development and growth, where do you want to be in three years?
What facets of your current position are helping you with that future career growth?
What other development areas do you want to explore to help you with career growth outside of your current position?
What inspires you the most about what you are doing today in your position — as well as what are your biggest inspiration killers (and why)?
Now for the moment of truth: Do you know the answers to these questions for all of your employees? For some of your employees? For any of your employees?
Think back to the original story. Had leadership known the answers to the questions above, they would have had clues long before their superstar left as to that person’s interests in people management. If those clues were known even in year three or four, that would have been plenty of time to think creatively about how to invest in people management opportunities so that their superstar could continue to grow internally and offer value. Better yet — that same employee might have realized that people management isn’t all that it is cracked up to be, and decided that they wanted to grow their leadership in a non-supervisory/manager role.
Next Steps
Once you have the answers to these initial questions, you can use that information as perfect fodder for quarterly check-ins to see how your employees’ needs and wants are changing and how their current position is fitting with their future goals (or not).
An employee absolutely can be generally happy in their position but still want more for their future. My challenge to you is to take these four simple questions above (or your own take on them) and use the next month to schedule meetings with your employees to learn the answers.
Especially for your superstars…because time may be ticking!!
We’re Here to Help
As a leader, you have an incredible impact on how your employees can continue to evolve and develop while they are part of your team. While it’s great to inspire retention and get the work done, it’s important to remember even lack-luster performers will eventually go, the star performers will leave much faster. If you need help building and understanding your employees’ goals and growth paths, let’s connect.