It happened again. Just this morning.
A colleague had a defection of sorts.
Two key tech employees independently gave their two weeks’ notice.
I’m close enough to have some insight into what happened in this particular case.
This is a growing, vibrant technology firm. The leaders are smart, nice, hard working people. They want to do the right thing for their clients, and for their team members.
Each employee decided to leave the company. Why? One key factor: senior leadership.
One of the “defectors” was an up and coming leader himself. His key frustration is that his boss was unwilling, or perhaps unable to let him lead.
Think about this: you have a smart, hard-working, emerging leader on your staff. Your vision is for this team member to grow and become a future leader of your company.
You look for opportunities to help them grow.
But:
- because you are overwhelmed,
- because you are incredibly busy,
- because it’s not a crisis for you,
YOU just simply have not made the time to grow your leadership skills.
Your lack of leadership skill is a key factor holding you back, and holding back your team from growing.
Your People Skills Matter More Than Technical Skills
The research is clear that our success is tied to our “people knowledge” but time and again, we invest our energy in product knowledge!
I wrote about this a few months ago – the demand for tech talent in Charlotte is high – and unless you set yourself apart, your best folks are going to leave. Period.
The Cost of Turnover
What does this turnover cost you?
For this colleague, some of the impacts that they are dealing with right now are:
- Knowledge transfer.
- Customer relationships.
- Developing a plan to deal with all of this transition.
- Follow through on delivery of promises made to current customers.
Reassuring customers that the company can continue to meet their needs during this transition. - Finding time to keep up with all of the commitments that were made to other customers.
- Opportunity cost: what deals are lost because leaders are distracted by all of these activities right now?
And none of these costs are related to actually replacing that staff member!
You still have to invest time in:
- Updating job descriptions.
- Advertising the position on job boards.
- Reaching out to recruiting firms to try to identify good candidates.
- Scheduling interviews with potential candidates.
- Assessing the skills of potential recruits.
- And on and on.
This turns out to be a pretty expensive exercise, doesn’t it?
Again, let me emphasize that this is a good company. The owners of the company are decent, hard-working, nice people. They are smart. They care about their team members. They want their team members to grow. And yet they’ve suffered this loss.
What Went Wrong?
1. They didn’t “Mind the Gap” between their intent to grow, and their ACTION to grow.
They talked about personal growth. They talked about a staff development program, but by the time they actually started working on that, the emerging leader had lost hope.
The delay between the company leaders intending to do something and ACTUALLY DOING SOMETHING was just too long.
2. Neglecting personal development. The owners of the company were “too busy” to work on their leadership skills.
What Can You Do Now?
There’s a huge gulf between your intent and your action.
- Make a plan to grow your leadership skills and then
- Take Action!
Think you don’t have the time or money? Neither did this colleague.
In this market you can’t afford NOT to invest in your people and your people skills.
Just ask my colleague.
Want help? Give me a call. 240-668-4799
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