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8 Opportunities and Trends to Compete, Engage and Retain the Best People
by Kevin D. Crone
September 18, 2017
There are some unique opportunities and new trends that high-performing companies are addressing in their efforts to compete, engage, and retain their best people.
- It seems that every high-performing company is creating a culture that embraces and drives change so that their business can be talent-ready and have the capacity to hit stretch goals.
- Organizations realize that they will achieve greater results if their teams can collaborate and partner within their matrix. Leaders need to develop consultative relationships across teams and foster movement and readiness for role succession. Employees need to be engaged and empowered as internal consultants who can challenge, question, and think strategically.
- Organizations understand that virtual teaming is now an essential reality. Leaders need to foster execution and engagement across a virtual environment, and make their valuable people a part of the team even when they are not physically present with colleagues and clients.
- The increase in competition due to the ease of entry into markets means that many organizations that have not had to sell, now have to do so. Leaders are needed to teach, coach, and train people who are uncomfortable and not yet ready for a consultative sales approach.
- The expectations and demands on mid-level leaders are ever-changing, and organizations are realizing that some of them just don’t fit anymore. Finding out who can be developed, and providing resources to support them, builds the business for the present – and executives for the future.
- Customers no longer need salespeople to get information. But helping customers make the right decisions to solve their problems through advising and coaching them is a competency that sales forces need to provide. What’s required are leaders who can offer a compelling vision, coach sales teams to think through how to transform themselves and their business, and build and train their people to develop the crucial habits and skills.
- To be globally competitive, companies are making use of dealers, alliance partners, franchisees, and distributors. Their teams need to act as true strategic consultants and partners. Leaders who have the ability to strategize must be identified and developed. They need to be able to coach teams, to interact effectively within their teams, and to relate successfully to their partners. Leaders need to work with underperforming partners or they need to change with the markets to ensure a proper mix of representation. Leaders need to inspire and engage all their teams and partners to work toward common results.
- There are four keys to developing leaders and increasing engagement:
- Management and human resources have to create a helpful culture with an environment where people feel that they are important, belong, and that they have the opportunity to fail and learn while being connected to what is going on and where the business is going.
- Informal and formal mentors are available to journey alongside new leaders through their development.
- Making use of resource networks, through social media and live groups, where leaders can get answers.
- Ensuring that leaders have the necessary confidence, grounded in best practices, to persist and adapt in the face of changing expectations and assumptions.
The most important question is: how does this help you?
Where does your company need to implement modifications? What can you do to improve leadership, engagement, or training at your organization? Where do you need to change to become that better leader? What are you going to do to get better?We promise to continually help you learn what you need to do, develop the plan to do it, work with you to engage your people, connect them to the organization, pinpoint your high-potential people, and even work with you one-on-one or with management and human resources to make everything work.I’m very proud that our firm invented the first behaviour-changing system over 100 years ago, and we still stand for creating and following highly effective systems that help organizations and individuals tremendously. To this day, we refuse to take popular shortcuts that don’t work. We have conducted thousands of innovation and business-improvement team projects, and have helped the best companies worldwide to develop millions of their leaders through experiential learning that genuinely impacts them. And you probably thought we were just about presentations and a book!
