While part of me understands your limiting self-destructive thinking that you don’t want to lose your prize employee, I’m more inclined to celebrate your success if you do. Sure they make you look good, they help you reach your targets, heck they’re gold and you’ll do just about anything to hold on to them (tightly); the reality lies in that they’re not yours to keep. When I think about it deeply, it’s this very essence that makes me so proud to be in the position to help people grow, and outgrow their positions.
So while I wont be poaching any of your team (it’s a personal policy), it’s an honour really if you poach any of mine. Here’s what I focus on instead:
- The alliance: First introduced to the work of Ben Casnocha online only a few weeks ago and now having ordered but not yet read his book, The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age, I realise that there are many elements of what he advocates that form the very fabric of what we have been building as the ethos of #happywork within our team. Face it, your business is your mission. Your employees, while building in to your mission, have a mission of their own. It’s our job to not only know what their mission is, but to also support them in getting there. I see it as a series of mini missions to get to the great big glorified ultimate all singing and dancing mission that will make them excessively happy, fulfilled and satisfied. Thinking of your employer/employee relationship as an alliance allows you to help your team reach their goals. You support them with this, you cheer and clap and cartwheel each success milestone they reach and in return, they deliver supremely which benefits your businesses mission. What’s not to love?
- Qualifications mean naught: Flip, if my academic colleagues and studious friends read this I’ll be in for some backlash without a doubt; but for me a fancy qualification is less impressive than application. I want to build a high performance team which I’ve come to understand has less to do with study and more to do with taking massive, uncomplicated and effective action. Practical, practical, practical is what I want to bring out in my team and to do this with excellence I need to outgrow them from their current positions, and sometimes right out of the company altogether. I reward them for their excellence, support them wherever I can, but ultimately they will leave … it just won’t be taken as a negative.
- Ditch the CV: Music to your ears no doubt, but why then is there still such a ridiculously high value placed on the accolades you can list over multiple pages of b-0-r-i-n-g. I don’t mean to be disrespectful so my apologies in advance if I am, but frankly the fact that you can list down all the things that should impress me to hire and retain you, shows that you are antiquated and ineffective if you can’t deliver excellence while at work. So before I run crying cause I might lose someone I think I can’t replace right now, let me first question:
- why I brought them on board in the first place
- where are they in their mission
- what can I expect from them once they leave
Sure I don’t want to have to lose our great people, I trust you’ve got that by now, but what is more important is that I realise that I might, and besides the inconvenience, that’s not a problem.