3 Habits That Will Quickly Point to Someone With Exceptional Leadership Skills
I want to share with you a beautiful truth about leadership: When leaders value their employees as human beings, careers advance and companies ultimately flourish.
Valuing people is a necessary and essential (soft) skill; it takes both mind and heart to do it effectively. But doing it well will seamlessly drive human behavior down the path of higher productivity, better service and ultimately, profit.
If you're in the assigned role of motivating and inspiring your tribe to perform at extraordinary levels, I'm going to supply you with some ammo. Here are three primary ways by which leaders value their people.
1. They promote and leverage trust
Leaders who truly value people as their #1 stakeholder work hard to promote trust. That means that they create an environment where risks are taken, where employees feel safe and motivated to exercise their creativity, communicate ideas openly and provide input to major decisions without reprimand. Because there's trust there.
Trust in corporate circles, however, remains a baffling stigma. In too many workplace surveys I've poured over, nearly half of workers, in some cases, say they don't trust their employer and an equal percentage believe their employer is open and upfront with them. Too many to count also believe that their employer is not always honest and truthful with them.
2. They recognize their people
While at one point in time fancy perks and unique benefits may have swayed employees to stay on the payroll, it just isn't enough anymore. Achievers Workforce Institute surveyed more than 4,200 employees and 1,600 HR leaders across the globe earlier this year to find that the key to engagement and retention came down to two words: Employee recognition.
According to the survey results published in Achievers' 2022 State of Recognition Report, 48 percent of employees say culture has deteriorated during the pandemic, placing blame on a lack of communication, employee input and meaningful connection.
HR leaders should spend their time and resources building a recognition training program, leaning into how and why to properly send a meaningful recognition. By doing so, it will ignite a positive, retention-worthy culture and a brand that is attractive to new talent.
3. They place their employees ahead of their customers
Every leader's role should be about serving the employees first – those closest to the customer experience. Great leaders realize that their No. 1 customer is their employees. If they take care of their people, train them and empower them, those people will become fully engaged in what they do.
In turn, they will reach out and take care of their second most important customer – the people who buy their products or services. Now that's valuing your people.