I was the in-house recruiter for a private company. I remember there was one highly-skilled technician I worked very hard to find. The company was excited and relieved when he accepted our offer because there was so much work to do. But after only 3 months he came into my office to say he was leaving. 

The reason he gave was that he didn’t care for his boss. If that was the first time I had heard negative things about this supervisor, I would have at least considered the possibility that this departing technician might be the difficult one. But I had heard this before. When he left my office, I literally laid my head in my hands in frustration.

Give your employees A reason to choose you

Employees have the power to choose whether they will work for you or not. If companies want greater employee retention, they must give them good reasons to stay. How employees go about choosing plays out something like this.   

Your employees are always evaluating everything about working for your company. Even before their first day, they are evaluating your reputation, your website, the application and interview process, and more. Once they start working for you, they evaluate the onboarding process, the training, their fellow workers, their supervisor, everything! For as long as they work for you, the evaluation never really stops.  

And there is a question that inevitably follows the evaluation, do I want to work here? Do I want to continue working here?

How often one asks themselves this question lies on a spectrum. At one end of the spectrum is the employee who loves everything about their job, and never asks himself that question.  At the other end is the employee who finds very little to like about their job and asks himself that question multiple times a day. In-between lie infinite degrees of these two extremes.

four mindsets that drive employee retention

At Retention Architects, our focus is on helping companies improve their employee retention. Think of retention as the heart of your business. A healthy retention rate pumps life-giving support throughout your organization. It is what allows you to live up to the promises you make to your customers.

When we work with clients, it helps to have a framework in which to look at their company culture and the employees who work for them. To that end, we have identified 4 mindsets that reflect the level of commitment employees have to the company they work for. And that level of commitment is what drives them to ask the question “do I want to work here?”  

The first mindset is what we call Insignificant. This means that an individual finds your company to be a difficult place to work. It is so stressful for them that they don’t hold the company in very high regard. They have one foot out the door and the other will soon follow.

The second mindset is what we call Temporary. This means that an individual finds your company to be an okay place to work, but it is only a steppingstone until something better shows up. This person may have one ear hanging out the door, always listening for other job opportunities.

The third mindset is what we call Exclusive. This means that an individual finds your company to be a good place to work. You are meeting most, if not all, of their current needs and they are not thinking about leaving.  

The fourth and final mindset is Career Company. This means that an individual loves working for your company, and they would be happy to stay with you until they retire. Likened to a romantic relationship, they would gladly marry you.  

It’s what most of your employees think that matters

These mindsets are fluid. To illustrate, here is a hypothetical situation. An employee comes in with a Temporary mindset. Their supervisor is so relational and nurturing that their mindset moves favorably up to the Exclusive mindset. Two years later their supervisor retires and is replaced with an authoritarian style leader who has little to say other than the orders for the day. The employee’s mindset quickly drops to Temporary, and it may just be a matter of time before it falls all the way to Insignificant.

Your company and leaders have the primary influence over these 4 mindsets. Remember, your employees are evaluating everything. Finding out what employees really want from their employer and then delivering on those desires will drive their mindset higher. The Gallup Q12 survey is a powerful survey that reveals very clearly what your employees want from you.

In a company with enough employees, let’s say 50 or more, you typically will find each one of the four mindsets represented among the employees. The value lies in discovering which one is predominant as this is what determines your rate of employee retention. In other words, finding out what most of your employees think.  

However, without a mechanism to do that, you may end up as surprised as I was when our prized technician suddenly left. So how do you find that out?

find out what your employees are thinking by having retention talks

The best way to find out what anyone is thinking is to sit down and have a conversation with them. We recommend that supervisors have a retention talk with each one of their direct reports at least two times a year.

This is a one-on-one conversation where the supervisor asks their direct report “how is your job working out for you? Is there anything I or the company can do to assist you?” The purpose of these conversations is to increase employee retention by communicating to the employee that the company values them and wants to do all they can to retain them.

Here are some important points about these one-on-one conversations. A retention talk:

• Is not a performance evaluation.
• Is a conversation focused solely on what matters to your direct reports at the time.
• Is a conversation that works only when your direct reports trust you as their supervisor.
• Will provide insights as to which one of the 4 mindsets your direct reports currently possess.

You can’t control all the factors that determine why your employees quit working for you. An employee’s age, personality type, their wage and salary, their level on the organizational chart, and how much they like the nature of the work are some of the things that make employees restless for a new place to work.  Even the best companies cannot overcome all of them.

That said, companies would do well to contend for the employees who work for them, at least the ones they want to keep. Is it possible to have only employees with an Exclusive or Career Company mindset? Probably not. But in the spirit of “aim small, miss small,” it is a target worth shooting for.

Having consistent retention talks can play a key role in boosting your employee retention rate.  

My father-in-law, Bob Rogers, has told the story of when, as a young boy growing up in Detroit, Michigan, he was sitting around the dinner table with family. They all grew quiet when Bob’s dad, a factory machine-operator, said he had some news. He then told how the boss of the entire factory came to his station that day and had a conversation with him. Bob recalls how much it meant to his dad and how they were all so impressed.

This simple act of conversation was transformative. For Bob’s dad, the routine of working at his machine each day for 20 plus years, was suddenly imbued with importance.  He felt his own value.

How meaningful it is that when Bob grew up, he became a plant manager. And guess what he did. He made it a practice to walk through the factory every day and talk to the people who operated the machines.  

Bob describes these conversations as very informal. He said, “I would allow the men to guide the conversation.” By getting out of his office and talking with these men, on their turf, Bob was communicating with more than words. His action said: 

• I’m interested in what you have to say and what I can learn from you.
• I value you and want to know you as a person.
• I am available if you need anything.
• We are in this together, if it wasn’t for the work you do, I wouldn’t have a job.

If having informal conversations is truly valuable, are there more intentional conversations leaders could be having with their direct reports?

The coaching style of leadership is one of many

Mary Parker Follett, one of the most influential experts in the early days of classical management theory, said a leader’s challenge is to get work done through others. Easier said than done. Therefore, many styles of leadership have developed over the years. i.e. Authoritative, Transactional, Delegative, Participative, etc.

Which leadership style is the best? I explore the answer to this question in my blog on personality types and their influence on leadership styles. But one could generally answer by saying the style that is needed in the moment. Why? Because all styles have a particular situation or environment where they work the best.

That said, for an everyday approach to leadership, the coaching style of leadership is being utilized more and more for its focus on making every player on the team better and stronger.

The coaching style of leadership focuses on every employees development

Many traditional leadership styles, characterized by command and control, do not focus on employee development.

It is just the opposite with the coaching style of leadership. Sir John Whitmore is a leading voice in the field of coaching. He said that skilled coaching involves “unlocking people’s potential to maximize their own performance.”  

When perfectly executed, the manager-as-coach invests in the growth of their employees. They provide a balance of support and challenge, without ever judging them.

When perfectly received, employees are genuinely interested in the feedback they receive. It’s a culture of give-and-take where all staff are open to honest and constructive critique, including those in positions of authority.

Asking questions is what releases self-discovery

The supervisor is in charge because they typically have the knowledge and experience. So, aren’t they supposed to impart that knowledge to their direct reports? Yes, but that’s not all.

Supervisors with a coaching style of leadership spend as much time, if not more, creating an environment where employees can make their own discoveries. So how does a supervisor go about helping others make discoveries for themselves? They must learn to stop telling people how to do it all the time and start asking more questions.

Specifically, it is the art of asking a sequence of open-ended questions. When a person participates in finding the answers, it generates self-responsibility and self-belief, a deeper level of learning.     

3 High Value conversations supervisors can have with their direct reports

So much of how a supervisor gets work done through others is through the medium of communication. Supervisors who practice the coaching leadership style can implement 3 types of conversations that foster feedback and self-discovery that is characteristic of the coaching culture.

The first type is what I will call feedback. Supervisors must give feedback so that their employees are equipped to keep the promises made to customers. It is also important for keeping employees interested in wanting to work for you.

It is within this conversation where the coaching style of leadership, less telling and more asking of questions, can really be practiced. Using the GROW model developed by Sir John Whitmore, employees can achieve more lasting performance improvement.  

The second conversation type is what I call retention talks. This is a scheduled one-on-one conversation that a supervisor has with each one of their direct reports, one to two times per year. This is where much of the discovery, development, feedback, and support, characteristic of the coaching style of leadership can take place.  

In this high value conversation, the supervisor is mainly asking questions and actively listening. Questions like how am I doing as your supervisor? Is there anything I or the company can do to make your job work better for you? The skill comes from listening intently and knowing how to ask meaningful follow-up questions.

The third conversation type is what I will call Team Huddles. Some people take too limited a view of this opportunity and only report information related to the task at hand.

This is an opportunity to inspire and to encourage the ideal behaviors you desire to see in your team members. The GROW model can be applied in this setting also where the supervisor asks meaningful questions that improves team performance as they come up with their answers,

coaching takes more time up front but pays off in the end

Some leaders and organizations may feel they don’t have the time to practice the coaching style of leadership. Sometimes it is all we can do just to get the work done that we have promised our clients and customers. It is quicker just to tell employees what to do rather than ask questions.

But one would do well to track time across the whole equation. The coaching style of leadership will require more time up front, but it will equate to more equipped, satisfied, and productive employees; employees who will stay with you longer.

That means less time finding, hiring, and training new employees to take the place of the ones who left.

Does this hypothetical sound at all familiar?

Thrilling news has just graced Linda’s ears. She has been asking for leadership development training for her first-line managers and today she was given the green light. Most of their managers were promoted from within because they were standout individual performers. But leading a team of others requires a completely different skillset than leading yourself, and many of their shortcomings have been on display for all to see.

Immediately, Linda begins an online search for an outside trainer, and it doesn’t take long to find and make her choice. In making her selection, she discussed with the prospective trainer the challenges the managers are having and the content that would address those behaviors. Now all that remains is to schedule the training.

Fast forward…It is now the closing minutes of a full day of off-site leadership development training. Linda is very satisfied as she listens to the participants share with the trainer their biggest takeaways. The trainer delivered the content in a compelling manner, and all the managers were very engaged.

Six months later she is sitting in her office coaching one of the first-line managers on the importance of setting clear expectations for his team members, something he is not doing. Linda thinks, he should know this, it was covered thoroughly in the leadership development training.

In fact, Linda has been saying “He/she should know this” about many of the managers lately. That is when she realizes there isn’t much to show for the leadership development training that took place six short months ago. All that time and money…ugh!

Emotional Intelligence, the essential leadership ingredient.

Daniel Goleman, in his Harvard Business Review article, What Makes a Leader? identifies emotional intelligence as the sine qua non of leadership, i.e., the essential ingredient. The ability to understand and manage personal emotions while being able to influence the emotions of others counts twice as much as IQ and technical skills in determining which leaders will be successful.

Goleman goes on to say that emotional intelligence is born largely in the limbic system of the brain, the part of the brain that governs feelings, impulses, and drives. He contrasts that with the neocortex, the analytical part of the brain where logic and comprehension take place. It is the part of the brain that learns how to do something by reading a book for example.

And here is the thing, most leadership development training programs, in their quest to develop emotional intelligence, are targeting the neocortex where emotional intelligence does not live. In other words, they are targeting the wrong part of the brain.

This helps explain why Linda from our opening story, and countless others like her, are left bewildered and frustrated when they don’t see the fruit from their leadership development training.

Leadership Development involves a change in behavior

Leadership development will always involve a change of behavior. Maybe a leader changes the way they communicate with their direct reports. For example, a leader that used to only talk about the job and the task at hand now asks the team member how the overall job is going for them. They spend time finding out what their career goals might be and how they can help.

But it isn’t always adding a new leadership behavior. Marshall Goldsmith, in his book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, has identified 20 bad habits that show up again and again in the many leaders he has coached. The premise of his book is that leadership development often involves removing a bad habit, period.   

One of the 20 bad habits is withholding information. When a leader withholds information, he/she is typically using it to gain an advantage over others. Marshall would coach them to stop doing this, making the case that this is preventing them from reaching the next level of leadership. But he said they often resist because they mistakenly believe withholding information has contributed to their success.

In countless leadership talks that I have given over the years, I have shared Marshall’s 20 bad habits. I do that to shine light on potential blind spots. But awareness alone rarely creates change, it requires something else.

The Power of Habits

In his book, The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg provides powerful insights for removing negative habits by explaining what he calls habit loops. A habit loop involves a cue that triggers a habitual behavior which results in a perceived reward or payoff. To remove bad habits, you create a new way of behaving in response to the same cue.

Let’s say there is a guy named Matt who has a bad habit of interrupting people in meetings at work. It has been brought to his attention and he agrees, realizing it is negatively affecting how he is perceived. Through self-reflection, he sees that the cue is when others in the meeting start commenting on anything about his department. The cue triggers a defensive posture that manifests itself in physical tension; Matt literally feels himself tighten up. He can only sit like this for a short time before he must speak. The reward is the tension goes away. 

To stop interrupting people, he was given a new way to behave. When people start talking about his department, and his body tightens up, Matt slips the tip of his tongue between his upper and lower teeth and gently bites down, occasionally nodding his head up and down as he listens. He continues to do this until the person has finished their thought. If applicable, he briefly summarizes what the other person has said. Only then does he respond.

Leadership development training requires time and an individualized approach

To increase emotional intelligence, trainers should target the limbic system. This happens best through motivation, extended practice, and feedback. Breaking old habits while establishing new ones, requires what one concentrated session of training cannot provide, time and a more individualized approach. This is what our company, Retention Architects, seeks to do in the different trainings that we provide.

Leadership is not rocket science; the concepts are simple to understand. The hard part is having the discipline to change. In Matt’s case, the concept is simple, stop interrupting people. The behavior change is hard, stop interrupting people.

Leadership development training that is spread out over time with multiple touch points, that provides support, that gives guys like Matt an opportunity to report on their progress and receive feedback, this is what creates transformation.  

We don’t come to the world as unbiased reporters; we see it through a lens of our own making. 

Ken Keyes Jr. said, “A loving person lives in a loving world. A hostile person lives in a hostile world. Everyone you meet is your mirror.” In other words, your attitude about others is really a reflection of yourself.

If true, this presents a kind of chicken and egg situation. Does a person love because they were first loved by another? Or do they love despite a world that has treated them harshly. The question is not a useless one; people often experience transformation only after they identify conditions that influenced their thinking in the first place. Seeing it truthfully, they can make a more positive choice.  

Each one of us has a lifetime of experiences and decisions that have shaped who we are, which then determine what we see in others. That said, we are notorious for spotting the faults of others while ignoring our own. Our challenge has always been to see ourselves and others honestly. 

If we remove from our consideration, the hopelessly and helplessly bad, and consider the imperfect people who remain, I believe this: there is plenty of good and plenty of less-than-good to see in every person. The question is one of lens and focus, do you want to live in a hostile world or a loving world?

tHE lEADERSHIP SKILL OF EMPATHY

Theodore Roosevelt is credited for saying, “Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” Many desires that employees have about their job can be satisfied by a supervisor who genuinely cares for them. Caring for another person is not possible without empathy.

Empathy is the ability to appreciate the needs of another person and be mindful of their feelings, thoughts, and day-to-day challenges. This doesn’t mean you have to agree with them; it just means making an honest effort to understand what they are experiencing.

I was on a coaching call with a sales manager when he started to express frustration with his supervisor. She was making decisions that were negatively affecting the performance of his team. What was a great working relationship had morphed into a loss of trust.  

With each question I asked, we peeled back the onion. He eventually identified a previous misunderstanding between the two of them where she had incorrectly assumed he was responsible for a mishap. When she confronted him, he was able to show that was not the case. Yet he thought she was still holding him responsible.

I encouraged him, for the sake of the relationship and the company, to get outside of his own interpretation of events, and try to understand what his supervisor might be thinking and feeling. His assumptions, potentially false, were affecting how he now thought of his boss, something I write about in my blog, A Collaborative Mindset: The Key to Preventing and Resolving Conflict. To his credit, he was able to see that everything his supervisor was doing to supposedly hold him back, had a more positive explanation to consider and not rule out.   

organizational benefits of empathetic leadership

John Maxwell says “people quit people, not companies.” When leaders demonstrate empathy, their direct reports are more satisfied with their job and more likely to stay. This helps the bottom line. But empathetic leaders benefit organizations and the bottom line in other ways also. 

• At the end of the day, supervisors are expected to get results. The pressure to produce in a highly competitive marketplace can create a very results driven culture. The leadership skill of empathy allows supervisors to not lose sight of employee needs as they push for results.     

• Empathetic leaders can expect empathy in return. Reasonable people are ready to reciprocate with an expression of generosity when it has first been expressed to them. 

• Empathetic leaders are good listeners. This allows them to discover issues that otherwise might have gone undetected.  

• Empathetic leaders can put the thoughts and feelings of their employees on an equal footing with their own. The result is employees who feel more valued and appreciated. 

• Empathy equips the supervisor with more patience to deal with the struggles certain employees might experience. This increases the overall performance of their team as no one gets left behind.  

• When the employee realizes they have a supervisor who is willing to understand and appreciate all they go through to perform their job, it builds trust. On the flipside, a lack of trust will mute every leadership skill, including empathy.

One final thought

To understand how others are feeling we might just study ourselves. We are all made of the same stuff.  We might be put together a little differently, but our essential ingredients are the same.  Many of our experiences and deepest longings we have in common. Therefore, look to your own wants and needs to better understand others. And treat them the way you would want to be treated.

The result is a world filled with people who make the interests of others equal to their own. But it isn’t easy. It requires a committed resistance to the self-centered nature, a daily effort to reach out to others and collaborate.   

A collaborative mindset is the common thread that weaves through every system of communication and conflict resolution. It is what makes conflict potentially meaningful and productive.

Read on as I share 3 characteristics of a person with a collaborative mindset. When you put on this mindset, you are certain to enjoy more fulfilling relationships with less drama, accomplishing more along the way.

#1 A collaborative mindset understands that reality is complex, and no single person can account for all its parts.

Susan Scott put it well in her book Fierce Conversations when she said nobody owns the entire truth, we all own a piece of it.  This is especially helpful when you have conflict with another person.

There is nothing wrong and everything right with analyzing the situation to try and figure out what is going on; you couldn’t stop doing that if you tried. The problem comes when your analysis turns into assumptions that you think are true. Some people will describe themselves to me as, I’m very intuitive. Sometimes I want say stop being so intuitive, it’s hurting your relationships. No one can possibly know all that motivates and contributes to another person’s behavior.

When you collaborate to resolve conflict, you let the other person speak for themselves, you learn to draw them out with questions, you share your thoughts in an unassuming way, demonstrating a commitment to discovering the truth.

#2 A collaborative mindset is empathetic, seeking to understand the other person’s position.

Now that discovering the truth is your agenda, it is not enough to let the other person speak for themselves, it must be combined with a desire to understand their position. This does not mean you have to agree, it is the sincere attempt that makes the difference. In his book Never Split the Difference, Chris Voss describes it as being “experts in empathy.”

When people experience you listening carefully and without judgement, they start to listen to themselves more carefully, openly evaluating and clarifying their position. They become more open to your views, being less oppositional and defensive. Instead of a power struggle, you are collaborating to find out where it went wrong and what you can do to correct the situation.  

#3 A collaborative mindset understands that everyone benefits when we can resolve our differences.

There are always good reasons for finding a solution to our differences, even if it is just to reduce the amount of emotional baggage we are all carrying around. Very often these reasons can be found in what the authors of the book Crucial Conversations call our mutual purpose.

Mutual purpose often involves the higher calling we share with another individual. A divorced couple sharing custody of a young child still have the important job of providing a loving and caring existence for this little person. A supervisor and his direct report have the important purpose of keeping the promises their company makes to their customers.

Stating our mutual purpose builds a bridge where we can safely meet with another person to mend our differences. It helps us see that our relationship is worth preserving because of the value we provide.

A commitment to the truth, combined with a desire to understand the other person’s behavior, while focused on your mutual purpose is the essence of the collaborative mindset. It creates the space for solutions to appear where you thought none existed.

Table of Contents

How to manage conflict. We will leave it to the theologians, philosophers, and psychologists to tell us why people can’t get along. Whatever you attribute it to, wherever men, women, and children gather, there you will find conflict. 

Once you acknowledge that conflict is inevitable, how to manage conflict in your workplace is what every business leader should be asking themselves.  

Here are 7 steps leaders can take to protect their people from the cancer of conflict. 

STEP 1: Share the cost of conflict with your team(s). 

To correct or control negative behavior, it helps to make everyone aware of the cost. Most people can see and feel how conflict hurts morale and relationships; they either experience it firsthand or have a front row seat to the conflict of others. What they probably don’t know is the financial cost to the organization, which ultimately affects them.   

The Society of Human Resource Management sites a study by The CCP Global Report that revealed many of the costs of workplace conflict. For instance, on average, each employee spends 2.1 hours per week dealing with conflict. One in ten of the respondents spent 6 hours or more each week dealing with conflict. That is time spent not doing their job.   

When your team(s) is aware of the cost of conflict, you are ready to take the next step. 

STEP 2: Set the expectations for how to manage conflict and back it up by your example.

With your team(s) fully aware of the cost, communicate that minimizing conflict’s negative effects is a top priority. Meet both as a team and individually with each team member to gain their support and commitment to the cause. Ask everyone for their ideas on how to manage conflict. 

Getting input from your team(s) increases commitment and accountability because people buy-in to what they create. 

As the leader, you must then live it out for all to see. Your integrity is on the line. You will probably need some tools. This leads us to the next step.

STEP 3: Provide training for you and your team(s) on how to manage conflict.

Most people have never received any formal training on how to address the inevitable conflict we all experience. Instead, your personality, role-models and experiences combine to give you your own unique approach.

Because confrontation is so uncomfortable, most people avoid it, but that usually doesn’t end well. With tools that foster collaboration, people become more confident to address difficult conversations and do so sooner. 

There are many great books on the topic. A book that started it all for us at Retention Architects is Crucial Conversations. It was so impactful that I went on to become a certified Crucial Conversations trainer. 

Now that everyone has the tools to talk about the hard stuff, what’s next?

STEP 4: Practice and encourage vulnerability-based trust.

We’ve all heard and understand the importance of trust in our relationships. Patrick Lencioni in his book The Five Behaviors of a Dysfunctional Team introduces a different type of trust. He calls it vulnerability-based trust.

This is where people feel comfortable to be real, to be open and honest about their strengths and weaknesses, to say things like “I messed up, that was my fault, I’m sorry.”

For this to take root, it must first be established and demonstrated by you, the leader.

When people on your team demonstrate this type of trust, back-office politics, and personal agendas fade. This promotes better teamwork and less conflict. For how to manage conflict, this is key.

There is a workshop created by Wiley Corporation and Patrick Lencioni, that helps teams move from dysfunction to cohesion. We at Retention Architects are certified to offer this workshop to our clients. 

Now that you are working better as a team, there is some very important work for you to do.

STEP 5: Reduce conflict by clarifying your values, goals, processes, and job roles. 

We worked with the C-Suite of a company who contracted our services to help them overcome their dysfunction. Yes, they were doing things like sending long nasty emails, but those were only symptoms of a deeper problem. 

It was a group of people who, under normal working conditions, would work well together. Instead, they were trapped in an inferior system that set them up to fail, marked by a lack of definition, transparency, and accountability.    

Following many of the principles we learned from the book Traction: Get a Grip On Your Business, we were able to help them clarify and define the values, goals, daily processes, and job roles of the company. The result was a much more cohesive team with less conflict.  

With so much now working in your favor, here is the next step in how to manage conflict. 

STEP 6: Have regular one-to-one conversations with each one of your direct reports. 

So much conflict comes from a lack of communication. When people are left to wonder about the motivations or actions of others, they often fill the void with false interpretations.  

We recommend having what we call Retention Talks. This is a one-to-one conversation that you, as the supervisor, have with each of your direct reports. If you have supervisors that report to you, we recommend you have them do the same with their direct reports.

This is a conversation you have 2 to 4 times per year where you ask things like, “how is it going with your job?  Is there anything I can do better as your supervisor?” First and foremost, Retention Talks are a development and retention tool.

However, what you learn from these conversations will position you to proactively address conflicts before they get out of hand or even get started.

Now that you’re having these meaningful conversations regularly, what’s next? 

STEP 7: Stay tuned for the next blog from Retention Architects where we will take a deeper dive in how to manage conflict.

I wasted so much energy wondering why this guy didn’t like me. DISC showed it wasn’t me, it was his personality.  It was liberating!

In the short time that Retention Architects has been training organizations in the DISC Model of Human Behavior, that statement is typical of what we hear. 

Retention isn’t just another issue; it is the issue.  If you are going to be a company employees never want to leave, something we call a Career Company, people are going to have to work well together.  DISC helps make that more possible. 

Personalities aren’t so random after all, there are established patterns of predictable behaviors.

Patterns exist all around us, in popular songs, the weather, stock market charts, pass receiving routes in football, we could go on.  And the person that can see the patterns, stands to benefit. 

Most people intuitively know there are parts of their personality they didn’t choose.  What they might not know is that personalities are not so random after all; there are established patterns of predictable behaviors.

In a 2012 article, a BBC reporter wrote that in the U.S. alone there are 2500 different personality assessments on the market.  DISC, the choice of Retention Architects, is used by organizations all over the world for its accuracy and ease of application.   

With a simple assessment, in 15 to 20 minutes anyone can learn their unique DISC personality style.

A sense of self-acceptance occurs when you realize you don’t have to change your personality, it is perfect just the way it is.

Where other personality assessments may have 16 or more character types, DISC identifies 4 personality types, D – I – S and C, and the patterns of behavior that come along with them.  Every person is a blend of all 4 personalities in different degrees, with one being their dominant, most natural way of being.

The D personality is the Dominant Determined Doer.  They are motivated by challenge, choice, and control.  Every situation is one to conquer. 

The I personality is the Inspiring Interactive Influencer.  Motivated by popularity, approval and recognition, they thrive in positions where they can verbalize their ideas to inspire and influence the people around them. 

The S personality is the Steady Sentimental Supporter.  Security, assurance and appreciation is what they need.  Their focus is on building relationships and helping others carry out their plans.

The C personality is the Cautious Calculating Contemplator.  They are motivated by quality, value and excellence.  How well policies and procedures are followed is a big deal to these precise people.  

Each personality brings something unique and equally important to the table.  A sense of self-acceptance occurs when you realize you don’t have to change your personality, it is perfect just the way it is. 

Emotional intelligence is the sine qua non of exceptional leadership, the essential ingredient.    

IQ (intelligence quotient) is a measure of a person’s reasoning abilities. i.e., the ability to use logic to solve problems and predict events.  It also includes the extent of one’s memory. 

Crystallized intelligence is knowledge rooted in facts that comes from past learning and experiences. 

Any mention of intelligence should include emotional intelligence.  It is the area of cognitive ability that facilitates interpersonal behavior.  Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, describes it as understanding and managing your own emotions and influencing the emotions of others.  

Surveys support Goleman when he says emotional intelligence is the largest single predictor of success in the workplace.

At Retention Architects, we help companies move ever closer to being a Career Company by developing their supervisors to be leaders employees want to follow.  In doing so, we teach that emotional intelligence is the sine qua no of exceptional leadership, the essential ingredient,  

People often ask what the best style of leadership is.  The answer is the one needed at the moment. 

With an appetite for results, it comes very natural for the leader with a D style personality to drive themselves and their team.  

With a desire to inspire, it is very easy for the leader with an I style personality to speak in uplifting tones to their team.

Motivated to support others, the leader with the S style personality is fluent in words and actions that encourage and care for their team. 

With a cautious eye, the C style leader is adept at spotting what can go wrong and upholding standards.    

Regardless of whether their dominant personality style is D – I – S or C, the exceptional leaders have developed the ability to express all four leadership styles.  People often ask what the best style of leadership is.  The answer is the one needed at the moment.   

Confidence of Competence leads to employee retention

In my book Retention: Key Mindsets That Retain Top Talent, I talk about what I call the confidence of competence. The idea is this, when a person is good at something, say their job, they develop a confidence about their work, and they enjoy it more. Their competence breeds confidence. 
One of the best things you can do for your employees is make them competent through training. A trained employee is competent; a competent employee is confident; a confident employee is engaged; an engaged employee is productive; a productive employee enjoys success; and a successful employee is more likely to stay with your company. 

Inside this chain reaction of good it isn’t difficult to see the benefit training has to the organization. Zig Ziglar has a well-known quote that I have repeated from the speaker’s platform more times than I can count. “You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” By giving your employees the development and training they want, in return you get an experienced and knowledgeable workforce that is able to keep the promises you make to your customers and clients. This is huge! 

Training, Documentation, and Experience

So back to my client with the high turnover rate.  With the help of the HR administrator and supervisors, we have set out to create a 2-week training program for every position in the plant. Each supervisor has been assigned the task of writing down all that is required for a person to do each job in their department, backed up with written standard operating procedures (SOPs). When completed, every hour of every day, for the first 2 weeks of a new employee’s employment, will be accounted for with training, along with all who will be in charge of that training. 

In addition, plans are in place to produce quality training videos for every machine operation in the plant. When completed, these videos will be viewed by a new employee, accompanied with an online test to ensure the employee learned the procedures. Repetition is the key to learning, so as the new employee watches the videos, coupled with the hands-on training of an experienced operator, the employee will achieve competence. No longer will an employee answer no, when asked if they understand their job. 

If your company lacks a robust training program, I hope you are getting inspired! Now, regardless of how developed your training process is within your organization, let me pass on a couple suggestions to be mindful of. 

A Teacher’s Heart

Assign a specific person, or persons, to be in charge of training your new employees. In no way leave who will train them to chance. The last thing you want is for a new employee to feel like they are in the way, asking questions like what do you want me to do now? New employees are constantly evaluating their experience working for you, from the interview process, all the way up to 90 days and beyond. Surveys show the first 30 days are critical in determining if they keep working for you long term, so a great training experience is vital.  

If at all possible, choose trainers who have a teacher’s heart. The person with the most knowledge is not necessarily the best choice if they lack the empathy and patience to teach. You can recognize the teachers among you without too much difficulty, but having your employees take personality assessments, like DISC, can really help the process. As a certified DISC trainer, I am very familiar with the 4 personality types within DISC. Each type communicates and receives information differently and each can make for a great teacher. Knowing who is what type can take your training to the next level. For instance, if you have an outgoing/people-oriented person, they are sure to make the training engaging and fun because they love to influence and inspire others. All of this can make a great impression on the new employee! 

You might be saying to yourself, this all sounds great, but we don’t have time to create a repeatable training program; it is all we can do to get today’s work done. I get it! I have experienced the same in my business when I want my team to create new processes. And that is where I come in. What I do for businesses is provide the spark and the energy to help them implement their wish-list initiatives.  

Recently I did compensation research for a Central Florida client.   Their challenge is to find and attract employees who can help process their ever-increasing orders.  Business is good!  There are several places an HR professional like myself or business owner can go to research the average pay in a given area.  (Examples: Payscale.com, Glassdoor, Zip Recruiter, Salary.com)  What I found is that pay has drastically changed from just 6 months ago.   Because pay rates are changing so fast, even the research sites I typically use aren’t up to speed with the current rate of pay.  More specifically, they were $2 to $5 less  than what businesses were advertising for entry level hourly positions.  

Why is entry-level pay increasing and so fast?  Well, Universal Studios announced that entry level positions will start at $15 an hour beginning June 27, 2021.  Amazon commercials state that none of their employees make less than $15 an hour.  What this means is that large employers like Amazon and Walmart are helping to set the wage rate for everyone else, including small and medium sized family owned businesses.

But another force is at work.  Simply put, there is a greater demand for workers than supply.  We all  know that COVID has hurt businesses everywhere. Perhaps it is the  extra $300 the Federal Government has tacked onto the state unemployment or perhaps it is the stimulus money that incentivizes people to stay home rather than work a job.  Whatever the reason, we have all seen the many help wanted signs.  

So after sharing the results of my findings with my client, they knew an upward adjustment was in order.  This is easier said than done because it means that everyone’s pay will need to increase.  But the bottom line is the market dictates what we need to pay, even if that market is being influenced by non-market forces.  

If you are having trouble getting employees through the door, even to interview, you too might be surprised to find your pay is low.  Therefore, do thorough research to know if you are truly competitive.   And be ready to do this more often than you would typically do until things settle down and we get past all the stimulus.  Once you have determined your competitive pay rate, I recommend you post the amount of pay with the job ad.  Just like a dating app, where someone is less likely to respond to a potential match because they did not provide a picture, potential job applicants are less likely to respond to a job ad when they don’t know the pay.    

So, what do you look for in these employees whom you depend on to make your business a success?  After determining that they meet the needed experience, skill and aptitude requirements to do the job, the smartest companies pay strong attention to the personality traits of the applicants.  It is these traits that identify those who are most likely to have future success.   

Here are some traits to look for in future employees

• Dependable:  Employees you can count on to show up on time, be prepared, and get the job done.
• Passionate:  They are by nature engaged and productive.   
• Amiable:  A positive influence within the organization, bringing people together. 
• Honest:  Can be trusted with what matters most to the organization.   
• Team player:  The best ideas are usually the result of people working together.
• Confident:  Confident people are natural leaders which every company needs.
• Humble:  They would rather let their actions do the talking than their words.
• Ambitious:  Naturally seek and fill leadership positions within organizations. 
• Integrity:  Sometimes it takes just one person to speak up to prevent the whole company from doing the wrong thing.
• Communication skills:  Good communicators get business done efficiently and with fewer mistakes. 
• Initiative:  Employees with initiative don’t have to be told what to do next. 
• Organized:  Organized employees finish projects on time and within budget. 
• Flexible:  Flexible employees understand that events don’t always happen as planned and are able to adjust.   
• Enthusiastic:  Enthusiasm keeps the positive energy flowing which keeps teams engaged and productive.  

These personality traits will not be revealed in their resume, so questions need to be asked in the interview to draw out the traits you think most important. Let’s say you want someone with initiative.  You could ask the following:  Would you describe yourself as a person who takes initiative? What does taking initiative look like to you?  Can you name a time when you took the initiative? Were you comfortable taking initiative? 

More to the point, by asking Behavioral and Situational questions you can identify important personality traits and competencies that are required to be effective in any given position.  With Behavioral questions you ask the candidate to provide specific examples of when he or she has demonstrated certain behaviors or skills as a means of predicting future behavior and performance.  With Situational questions you ask the candidate to provide specific examples of how the candidate would respond given the situation described.

Here are some examples of Behavioral and Situational Questions

• What was one of the toughest problems you ever solved? What process did you go through to solve it?
• Give me an example of a time you were able to take the lead in changing a policy for your department and for the organization?
• Have you ever faced a significant ethical problem at work? How did you handle it?
• Describe a time when you made a mistake at work. How did you deal with this situation, and what was the outcome? 
• A new policy is to be implemented organization wide. You do not agree with this new policy. How do you discuss this policy with your staff?

I’ve conducted countless interviews in my 20 plus years in Human Resources and I got better at it along the way.  When you consider the high cost of turnover, typically 6 to 9 months of an open position’s salary, it is not enough to hire a warm body to fill the position.  Ask the right questions and listen attentively to their answers to identify candidates with the right stuff.