How Meaningful Conversations Will Retain Your Best Employees

42% of employees who voluntarily left their organisation in the last year report that their manager or organisation could have done something to prevent them leaving their job.

A significant amount of staff attrition could be avoided if our managers just got better at talking to their teams.

Easier said than done. 

In this week’s episode of with INTENT: we break this trend down and offer some key guidance to support managers in initiating meaningful conversations with their teams to drive high performance.

Transcript

Chris: 0:00

Hey, Chris, here at FROM:TODAY. So 42% of employees that voluntarily left their organizations in the last year say that their manager or organization could have done something to prevent it, and we know that replacing employees costs a lot. That's nothing new. It's not new information, but what this stat shows is that a lot of it could be entirely avoidable and it all comes down to good old fashioned, meaningful conversation. So it could be really easy to throw the onus on the employees and say well, look, why didn't they say anything? I'm a pretty approachable guy. I like to think I've got an open door policy. I'm not a mind reader. It's a two-way street, surely.

Chris: 0:45

But the response to that from most employees that have left, the response to that question is I didn't feel like I could. We never spoke about this stuff, not the important stuff around my development, my career advancement, my opportunities for growth, my performance. We didn't talk about any of it. And it made me think of, believe it or not, something I heard whilst I was watching Beverly Hills Cop Axel F. It's a guilty pleasure of mine. I've always liked the film franchise, but Axel is talking to his estranged daughter, jane, in the car and in response to her question around why he stopped trying. As a parent, he says look, we both messed things up, let's call it even. To which she replies the parent is always the parent, the child is always the child. We didn't mess things up, you did goodbye and clearly, as a manager, the people in your care are not your children, nor should you treat them as such, but they are the people in your care, and it does require you to take the initiative to start these meaningful conversations, to build the right kind of relationships and to foster the right level of care so that people are more likely to speak up when they're concerned or when they're not happy.

Chris: 2:04

And we, as a business, talk about care all of the time as a crucial element for high performance for any team or any organisation, and there are two elements to it really there's connection to people and connection to purpose. The first one, connection to people. That is about a genuine care for the individuals in your team on a personal and professional level, and it takes a foundation of curiosity, understanding and trust, and something that we often get managers to ask their teams is this really simple question what do you need from this team to feel safe, supported and inspired? And we don't often talk about this stuff explicitly, and the process of hearing people share those fundamental wants and needs can be incredibly powerful. So if we come on to that second point around connection to purpose, this is about a genuine care for what you are looking to achieve together. So, yes, there's that strategic direction and the associated goals, but there's also that shared reason to believe that bigger picture purpose. And when people see their part as fitting into a bigger picture, they understand how they fit into the whole. They care more.

Chris: 3:19

And when you have that higher level of care in an organisation, then things just become too important not to bring up when they're not quite right. And it's a manager's job to foster this culture of care and connection very proactively, rather than reacting to things when they might be too late. So if we come back to those people that are voluntarily leaving, so 36% of them said that they didn't have a single conversation with anyone before they came to that decision. And of the people that did have a conversation, 40% said that they said nothing to their manager. So the purpose of this piece is not to provoke a load of anxiety over what your team might not be telling you. Instead, it's to reinforce the importance of building authentic relationships, to continue talking to your teams. So David Richmond, who is an executive coach on our team, we're so, so lucky to have him. He is a leadership expert and an absolute well of inspiration, but he said the other day that leadership is a deeply human business and so much of your ability to keep your team challenged, motivated, inspired and high performing comes down to the ability to serve fundamental human needs. And in order to understand what these are for your team, you have to initiate those meaningful conversations, you have to continue having them and continue to keep those channels of communication open.

Chris: 4:47

So if you're feeling a bit daunted right now, or a bit lost, or really curious to find out more and understand your team better, we do have a fantastic tool that can help serve a basis for these meaningful conversations. It is Intent, our diagnostic organizational performance tool. We ask 25 questions to measure the five founding elements to high performance in your organization Authenticity, care, empowerment, presence and purpose. So you can fill this in right now. Take five minutes under, assess your performance on our website and this will be you answering the questions in relation to your team. From your perspective, the real value comes in the ability for you to compare your results to those of your team, and what this insight can provide is a fantastic basis for some brilliant, honest conversations with your team, raising the level of trust, raising the quality of the communication. So if you'd like to find out more about how that works, please do get in contact with me" at chris fromtodaycom or, if it's easier, just hit me up on linkedin. I look forward to hearing from you. Cheers, bye.