“If you take care of your people your people will take care of your customers and your business will take care of itself.” JW Marriott
A key tenant of #LeadershipFlow is Cultivating Other Leaders and Teams. How do you do that? Well, let me ask you a question. Do you care about your employees? Oh, sure you care about them, you say. After all, your success depends on them delivering you results. I am talking about care for them as individuals, as humans with personal cares, with family cares, with cares greater than your organization’s. See, when employee’s real cares are taken care of they have more capacity to deliver results to you and your organization. Help your employees take care of their cares, and as Mr. Marriott stated, your business will take care of itself. A great way to learn if your employees feel cared about is to observe their behavior. If your employees know you really care about them they will trust you. If they trust you, you will likely answer “yes” to the following 7 questions. See for yourself. 1) Do your employees regularly share with you personal failures?A great clue that your employees’ trust you is whether or not they share with you the disappointments that they have experienced in life. If they are not sharing them, then it is likely they do not see you as a leader who cares for them as human beings. Think about it, if they trust you and share with you their personal challenges, they will be more likely to share with you their work challenges. 2) Are employees’ personal challenges your team’s challenges?
Any time a team member is challenged by personal issues, the issue will affect the team. When a team cares about one another they care about each person’s personal issues. The personal cares become the team cares, and the team will then work together to deal with the individual challenges. A leader’s job is to help the team deal with issues, personal and professional. 3) Do you schedule time with your direct reports to just talk about their cares?
(And not yours!) The concept of recurrent conversations, just to focus on your team members’ cares can go a very long way toward creating more passionate, engaged people. These interactions are full of gifts to you as a leader. Many times in these conversations your team members give you clues on how to help them succeed. These authentic dialogues allow the team members to see you as a leader they can trust, a leader they will follow. 4) Do you notice changes in behaviors in your direct reports, and if necessary have conversations with that employee?
During your meetings do you see when team members are all of the sudden not engaged? Or, are you so focused on getting the results you want from the meeting that you are oblivious to the clues your employees are giving you – that they have checked out. A sudden change in behavior can be just an anomaly, but it could be the start of a pattern. 5) Do you regularly make assessments of your team’s moods and emotions?
As the leader of the team you are the caretaker of moods and emotions whether you realize it or not. Negative moods and emotions are easy to spot during your interactions with your team members if you know what to look for. The sooner a negative mood is addressed, the sooner the team can move forward. When a team is healthy emotionally, there are high levels of trust. 6) Do your employees operate with passion?
Strong moods and emotions will be present on teams. When employees feel neglected or not heard those emotions will show up as negative. Passion can only live in environments where it is nourished, fed, and taken care of. 7) Do you have a high performing team?
When all is said and done, sustained high performance can only happen when there are leaders who care about their teams and the team’s success. If you have a high performing team, congratulations. If not, you might want to shift your care from outcomes to people’s cares. Remember the adage, people do not care how much you know, until they know how much you care.