Tuesday 22 March 2022

It's Time To Talk To Our Team

As the two year anniversary approaches of this global pandemic - which remains far from over - my time so far this year has been absorbed with loss….not only loss associated with the generation defining experience of Covid-19, but also loss of good people: from our teams, our company, our industry. ‘The Great Resignation’ appears to be well under way and organisations everywhere seem to be focused on finding, hiring, developing and keeping their best people. Added to that is the challenge of wanting to encourage people back into the office (dependent on where we are in the world), and there is a wide variety of views regarding employees’ level of excitement at this prospect.

The beginning of year represents new beginnings, reflections, hopes, dreams and aspirations… and now – as we charge through March – it feels as it always does – that being that the year is starting to speed up very quickly.

So, what does this means for leaders everywhere who are responsible for engaging their teams to deliver, in spite of everything that has happened?

Well, if we haven’t already; it’s time to talk. Really talk with our people about what they want, need, aspire to and dream about achieving as we move through 2022. In this fast paced, distraction filled world in which we all operate, as leaders we may think that we do this well, often and usefully… the challenge here is genuinely a reflective one: do we?

We live and work in a highly distracted environment. We kid ourselves that we can ‘multi-task’ (no such thing by the way; we simply task switch). As leaders, we’re in the business of relationships… so how to do this well?

Questions on which to base a meaningful, useful, connected discussion include:

How are you? (And mean it).
What are you enjoying at the moment?
What aren’t you enjoying?
How do you feel about the prospect of returning to the office?
What would make that prospect work for you?
What’s next for you in terms of your career?
How can I help?
What do you need from me?

We join companies but leave managers; the point is to start talking. Really talking. Now.