As the competition in the talent marketplace continues to grow, global companies fight to land and keep those most sought-after top leaders. Attracting and retaining great leadership talent is vital to the survival of any business. Good managers are not just adept at decision making, but a great management team helps your employees do their best work. Attracting these candidates requires a robust talent management strategy. To do this requires a more robust talent management strategy!
In this blog, we will share 4 essential strategies to help companies retain their top executives and leaders.
Welcome all ideas and unlock innovation
Create spaces for your teams to think, share ideas, and stay engaged. Allowing your leadership team, the opportunity to share ideas fosters creativity, encourages brainstorming, and keeps innovation a priority. Allowing team members to contribute openly creates a genuine sense of agency. This increases feelings of engagement and fulfillment, increasing job satisfaction. Even ideas that aren’t used are useful.
Including members of your management team in these brainstorming processes is a great way to ensure that they feel valued, and will help you retain top leaders in your company.
Launching new items like products, apps, processes, etc., entails a lot of administrative support and documentation. This can hinder growth because even if the idea is good, it takes a lot to bring it to light. To soften this hurdle, look for ways to streamline this process, making it clear, direct, and simple. People respond well when they feel that they are welcomed and that their ideas are valued. This will also reflect in how the leadership team communicates with the employees. As Ed Catmull, CEO of Pixar said, “To take full advantage of every thought in the room.”
Create a leadership team that connects
Leaders also need a social outlet. Encourage engagement by allowing leaders to have a space to consult, collaborate, vent off-record, or compare situations with their peers. Have more personal space where great leaders and top executives can freely express their thoughts. Conversations that include comparing wins and struggles give light to new ideas and opportunities that can guide the leaders. This not only improves the efficacy of our leaders, but also can improve retention by reducing undue burdens of stress that come with the responsibilities of leadership.
According to Srikanth Velamakanni, co-founder of Fractal Analysis based in Mumbai: “As each of us shares our goals, triumphs, and failures, you quickly get the feeling that the problems and opportunities we face as leaders are very much the set of struggles wherever you are in the world.”
Turn worries into productive paranoia
It is normal to be concerned about the different things that surround you in the workplace, especially for leaders with a variety of professional responsibilities. However, when it is not managed well, it can be burdensome and bring unnecessary stress to leaders and their teams. So, convert these worries into a productive exercise where the executives and leaders dissect the issue facing the company.
Consider collaborating on a mini SWOT analysis as a leadership team, do a quick round of dot voting, and wrap it up with a the classic Eisenhower Square to determine what actions can be taken immediately, which actions can be scheduled, and what can be delegated to move the dial on the issue. This exercise can bring new insights that can lead to more effective problem solving, and it also helps keep stress and anxiety at bay.
Like other employees, leaders and executives will be able to compare their notes on what worked and what didn’t and be more empowered to implement more effective processes. Empowerment also breeds engagement and positive feelings about one’s work. Engagement is motivating and results in better retention of talented leaders.
Make innovation and collaboration a priority – it gets noticed
So far, we’ve proposed strategies to improve job satisfaction and retention of top-level leadership. The flip side of this is that retaining great leaders and team members also helps you attract great leaders as job candidates. When you have a positive workplace environment where talented leaders and staff are able to excel, that word travels. Keeping your workplace culture healthy and thriving will make the leadership team happy and will trigger a fly-wheel effect to attract more excellent leaders.
A Harvard Business Review article mentioned: “Unleashing your leadership team in this way, along with intentionally building a safe peer network for each of your high achievers, increases loyalty and engagement by creating a welcome space for them to wrestle with the toughest issues, and in turn, it increases their capacity to accelerate innovation and growth in one of the most volatile markets in history.”
Be creative and innovative in developing your leaders and they’ll reward you with a great attitude toward their work, career, and the company. This will make them more effective and productive in leadership roles, and also attract great new management talent at the same time. It’s a win-win situation.
