Executive Podcast #222: Do I Have a Future Here?

Do the people on your team know they have a future with your organization? Or, are they wondering where this all leads? When they see they have a place in the future, you will see increased levels of commitment, engagement, and buy-in.

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Perry Holley:

Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast, where our goal is to help you increase your reputation as a leader, increase your ability to influence others, and increase your ability to fully engage your team to deliver remarkable results. Hi, I’m Perry Holly, a Maxwell leadership facilitator and coach.

Chris Goede:

I’m Chris Goede, executive vice president of Maxwell Leadership. Welcome, and thank you for joining. As we get started, just want to remind you, go to maxwellleadership.com/podcast. There you can learn more about some of the workshops that we have, both virtual and in person, and even some of our coaching. You can learn more about that if you fill out a form. Perry and I were just talking as we were getting ready to roll about a group that he’s going to be coaching this afternoon, a part of a leadership team where he is doing some group coaching with them throughout the year. If that’s something that you or your team would be interested in, please fill out that form and we would love to get in touch with you.

Well, when we talk about developing people, when we talk about people on our team, one of the things even personally we all think about is what’s our future? Not what does the organization need, I use that sometimes as a statement, but what is my future in the organization and your team and is asking the same question and they’re kind of wondering about it as if you would be as well. I think if you could answer this question, you increase commitment, engagement, buy in. That’s what we’re going to talk about today. The topic that Perry has for us today and the content is, do I have a future here?

Perry Holley:

Oh, that’s not the topic. I was asking you that question.

Chris Goede:

I’m sorry. It was an email. Oh, I thought this was the outline for the podcast. No, it was an email from Perry asking me if he had a future here. The answer is yes. We don’t have to have the podcast for that. Kidding, kidding.

Perry Holley:

Thank you for joining. Though the idea was, I thought about this working with some teams, like Chris said, group calls about do the people on your team know they have a future here? Why would that be important? Is it’s an engagement, buy in, do I want to be part of what you’re doing? We talk about that commitment to you and to the organization. I recall in early in my career having working for an individual that actually never spoke about my development, they had an IDP, individual development plan process, but it was a tick in the box exercise. Nobody ever followed up. I could have written a comic book strip thing and nobody would’ve known. They never looked at it. Then I moved to another boss and she, from the day one, she said, “Tell me about yourself. Where you want to go? Tell me about what you’re thinking about where you are today. Where do you see yourself in three years or five years?”

I was shocked. No one had ever asked me this before. Which leader do you think I was more connected with? Which one I was more engaged with? Once I knew that this person was going to take my progression and my career on as part of their contribution to my life, okay, I’m in. Sign me up for that.

Chris Goede:

Yeah, I completely agree with that. One of the things I think that is, we really kind of at Maxwell Leadership focus on this is that if you don’t know where your team members want to grow, how they want to grow, what they’re doing and what they have interest in, what their aspirations, there’s no way that you can help them grow and develop. You got to start asking these questions. Perry just gave us a great example of the difference that you will get from your team in regards to the commitment and the engagement level if you begin thinking like this, asking that question. I know we’re going to go through some ideas here that you have for us, but I think first, the number one that I want to put at the top of this, I’m going to kind of jump your list here for just a minute, should be this, is the leader making this about their team member or their persons aspirations for the future, or are they making it about what the leader needs of them.

I think we need to make sure that leaders, it goes back to the motive is where we’re going with, there’s a fine line between that. As leaders, I want to make sure that that motive is pure between influence and manipulation. There’s a fine line there. You need to be aware of that because at times we’ll be thinking about, this is what I need from Perry in the future of the organization. I said that starting out, that’s not the right question. It is what does Perry, what is Perry’s aspiration in this organization in the future or maybe even somewhere else? Those conversations are okay too, by the way, because we do have those and that employee, that team member is going to be more engaged if you’re willing to be open and have those conversations.

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Perry Holley:

Good. Oh, I’ll make that my new number one though.

Chris Goede:

There you go.

Perry Holley:

I don’t think I’ve ever said that on a podcast. I would say my new number two then would be, which was my number one, was if you want to really be good at this and developing people on your team, insisting on individual development, you’re going to need to have a development plan yourself. I ask leaders when I ask them, are you developing your people? They say, well, I get two issues as one they verbalize and one they’re afraid to say, the one that they verbalize is, I don’t have time. We can address that in many ways.

The second one is, it’s very difficult for you to take personal development of your people seriously if you’re not developing yourself seriously. I’ve just found that the better I am at having a plan for myself and being a leading by example, and they see me, they know what I talk about it. I talk about what I’m reading, what I’m learning. I ask them what they’re reading, what they’re learning. We share that way that it just makes it easier for you to pursue development of your team and look aspirationally to the future if you’re doing it for yourself. Yeah, I

Chris Goede:

Yeah. I love that.

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Chris Goede:

Number three, use this individual development plan, that process to measure and track progress not only for yourself but for others. You have this plan in place that Perry just talked about, and what I highly recommend that you do is that you begin to track and formally review the progress that you’re having, but also each person on the team. When you do that, you’re going to get their buy-in. What we want to make sure is that you guys are walking in unison, share your development plan. Let share it with each other so that you guys are aware of it. Also we talk about leadership being contagious. If they see you doing it, living it out, they see you measuring it and progress and part of your development plan, by the way, is helping to develop others for their future aspirations and you measure against that, that’ll be extremely powerful as you begin to get your team to buy in to what you’re doing.

Perry Holley:

If you don’t have an IDP process, individual development plan officially in your organization, can you make one? Absolutely. You should do that. I think when you do, people begin to know that, I think the biggest thing I ever noticed was in the organization that they had the process, but they didn’t execute it. They got measured on whether everybody had a plan in but my leaders never did anything. When I got this new leader, she required once a quarter for us on our regular one-on-ones once a quarter, a part of that one-on-one was to discuss our, my IDP, my development plan. Where was I? What was I doing? What did I need help? All things that she took it seriously. I knew I had better not just put in words, I’d better actually have a plan in there. If you want to develop an IDP, how would you do that?

Chris Goede:

Yeah, let’s talk about this because I think this will be for yourself and for your team. I’ll give you three things and then I’ll throw it to you and you can add a couple as well for the IDP that we’re talking about. The first is following back up what Perry said, have each person on the team decide 1, 2, 3 things that they want to improve on for their performance. Keep it simple and make sure that you can measure it. Make sure that you guys can look back and see the growth that’s happening there. Second one, have each person on the team describe where do they see themselves. I used to say, where do you see yourselves in 5 to 10 years? That may be a little bit far out for them to even think about or even aspire, maybe not. They might have that.

Definitely go say, hey, where do you see yourself in one year? Where do you see yourself in three years? I always throw in here, inside this organization or outside this organization. It’s okay to have those types of conversations. Then the final one that I have here is schedule time for one-on-ones with each person to discuss their growth areas. We at the Maxwell leadership do it on a quarterly basis. We’ll set it in the beginning of the year and then we kind of review it on a quarterly basis so that we can talk about their growth areas and their career ideas.

Perry Holley:

Yeah. Another thing you could do is help each person determine what could they do to facilitate that growth. Is it attending class? Is it following a podcast? Like great podcast?

Chris Goede:

Subscribe.

Perry Holley:

Yeah.

Chris Goede:

Hit it now. Yeah.

Perry Holley:

Could it be reading a book? Could you be reading a book together? I mean, how can you help them to get started on this? Put plans in place for their careers. Inside your organization. What are the steps? If they say, I’d like to have your job one day, I’d like to be a manager or a supervisor, what are the steps to get there? Make sure you think about operationally, how does that happen? Then like Chris said, you’re following up, you’re having these one-on-ones, but at least quarterly or semi-annually, checking in with them to see if the plans are moving forward. I’m going to tell you that little accountability piece is the magic sauce that people, for two reasons. One, they’ll know that you’re serious about it and it shows that you value me. You, you’re actually checking on me to see if I’m growing, which is not for you, it’s for me. But you’re checking on it to make sure I am, but it also makes me know that you care about it. I’m accountable. I’m going to be more serious about it.

Chris Goede:

Yeah, I love that. If you want to continually do this with your team on an annual basis, you need to hold them accountable and check out, because then the to Perry’s point, you’re not going to keep you serious. And then when you ask them for their new growth plan, they’re not going to put the heart into it that they really should be. Let’s go to the new number four as the last kind of step you have in here for us. Credit that number one, that number one, I like that. Make growth and career discussions a regular part of your one-on-one conversations. Don’t wait till the dreaded annual review to have those type of conversations. Make sure that you have a good cadence of connecting with your team to be able to do that. This is where if you do that and you’re very intentional about it, it will give you huge results versus just having good intentions about doing this. There’s a difference here about going beyond good intentions that we want to be intentional about doing this.

Perry Holley:

Well, people want to be clear with you about where they stand regarding their performance, their career, where they stand with you. I can’t emphasize enough your ability to have, Chris used a great word, be intentional about giving feedback to people, letting them know where they stand, how are they doing, where are they going? Be intentional about your desire to help them and that it’s important and you have a plan with them and you’re going to follow up with that. When you do these things and people know they have a future, they are really going to invest their presence with you. I actually found myself wanting to perform well for my boss. She was taking a risk on me, she was investing in me. I wanted it to pay off. It helped me to raise my game.

Chris Goede:

Yeah, I love that. Well, as I wrap up, if you want to increase the engagement level, man, be intentional about what the future looks like for your team members. I was reading an article the other day where 52% of people saying it’s the number one reason why they’re joining or staying at organizations is because there is a career path for them. There is a future laid out for them. There’s opportunities that they can see and are being talked about. So man, if that’s the number one thing, number two is compensation. This is now above the compensation. It is so important to people. Now, we’ve talked about this as a leader, someone leading team. Let me just encourage you, maybe you’re an individual contributor and you’re on a team and you say, I don’t know where my future is. I don’t know what my future looks like and we’re not talking about it. Go have that conversation with your leader.

I want to encourage you to do that right now. Go ask your leader now, when you go into the meeting, I want to encourage you, be prepared, have some thoughts about what you want your future to look like. Have questions about what it would take to get there. Don’t go in and just sit down and say, “Hey, what’s my future here?” But if you’re not getting it from your leader, then I want encourage you to set up that meeting to have those conversations with your leader because it’s extremely important to you.

Perry Holley:

Most leaders want that.

Chris Goede:

They want that.

Perry Holley:

They get distracted, but I think you’ll be doing your leader a favor.

Chris Goede:

Yeah.

Perry Holley:

Yeah. All right. Great stuff Chris. Just a reminder, if you want that learner guide or leave us a question or a comment, learn more about our offerings, you can do all that at maxwellleadership.com/podcast. We always love hearing from you and we’re very grateful that you would spend this time with us. That’s all today from the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast.