Leading At The Next Level

Since we now have a solid understanding of how a poor promotion can kill profitability, let’s dig into what we need to look for when considering existing team members for any leadership role we need to fill in our organizations. I’ve seen firsthand how valuable an internal promotion process can be for a company. The opportunity to apply for, interview for, and even accept different positions played a significant role in my staying with the same organization for nearly two decades. According to an article from Censia.com called “The Many Benefits of Internal Promotion,” applying this practice can help capture profit in several ways. The author suggests that the candidate will stick with the role longer because they know what to expect, that it saves time and money versus hiring externally, and that it can increase engagement, retention, and overall performance. Promoting the right team member can pay dividends for years and years to come, both in that individual’s performance and with many of the team members who can observe the process taking place. To that end, I always emphasized career growth opportunities in the hiring process—especially when the position paid a little less to start but had a much higher pay range long term. As a quick side, that only works more than a few times when it’s true. Still, I’ve seen far too many recruiters attempt it when they have no intention whatsoever of helping the individual take advantage of the opportunities they’re selling… With that in mind, promoting the wrong internal candidate can have just as much—if not more—of a negative impact on the profitability in each area the article detailed. I’ve seen this happen, and I’m sure you have too! A year or two before I accepted responsibility for the internal job posting process at the manufacturing facility I was with, I saw a great example of how much impact this can have. A fellow applied for a lead role in one particular department a few times in a row. In each case, someone with more seniority and more experience troubleshooting each specific machine in that department was awarded the position. The challenge in each of those cases was that the individuals with more experience had far worse relationships with most of the other folks they would soon have some authority over. In contrast, the candidate with slightly less technical experience had developed excellent relationships with his coworkers. I’ll remind you of that Harvard Business Review statistic suggesting that “Increased commitment can lead to a 57% improvement in discretionary effort—that is, employees’ willingness to exceed duty’s call. That greater effort produces, on average, a 20% individual performance improvement…” I doubt I have to spell out the level of commitment the ones who were promoted got from the coworkers who didn’t particularly like them when they were peers. Many of them were constantly frustrated with the individuals selected for the role. They were also very critical of the process that awarded them the position rather than their coworker who had earned their respect. Don’t get the wrong idea here; I absolutely believe that technical skills, experience, and tenure are critical things to consider for any position. But when that position carries leadership responsibility, regardless of how formal or informal the authority that comes with it, those factors cannot be all such a decision is based on. For more on this, you're welcome to reach out to us directly at admin@dove-development.net to get a 45 Day Trial Access to our COMPLETE Leading At The Next Level program or you can check out Wes's recently released book, What's KILLING Your Profitability? (It ALL Boils Down to Leadership!) that was a #1 Best Seller on Amazon!

An article from Forbes.com called “Promoting Wrong People Hurts Employee Retention and Productivity” opens by stating, “Managers are key to employee retention and productivity. But many companies don’t promote into management the people who would do the best job as managers.” A separate article from human resources consulting firm Insperity called “You Promoted The Wrong Person, Now What?” shared this list of potential consequences a business can face from a poor promotion: Negative impacts to the employee’s team, including lower morale, productivity and damaged trustLoss of clients, especially if they’re in a client-facing roleExposure to legal liabilitiesTime and financial resources lost for a role that you then must spend more time and money on to recruit, replace and trainSafety issues (in some cases, depending on the job) And Job Monkey’s article called “Why You Don’t Want to Promote the Wrong Person” cited Jim Corter as saying, “companies put the wrong people into management positions a whopping 82% of the time.” To this point, we’ve outlined a host of things that can kill profitability in our organizations. It borders on terrifying to see how many of those things can become exponentially more costly just by working to fill an open leadership role! Here’s what I’ve seen throughout my career: Since formally entering the workforce right after I turned fifteen, every company I worked for had some process for internal promotions. For what it’s worth, I’ve always felt this is an outstanding approach to reward our best team members for their hard work and loyalty. The challenge, however, generally comes from forcing the ole square peg into a round hole. For one reason or another, even the best intentions in growing our team from within can rapidly become no good deed going unpunished. A harsh reality that every business owner, executive, and high-level manager needs to face is that the best doers don’t always end up being the best leaders. As we address this profitability killer, we’ll look at several reasons that can happen—without placing blame—and we’ll work through some concrete steps we can take to build a succession plan in our organization that can keep each of the pitfalls listed in those articles I just referenced at bay. But first, we should probably consider the price tag that comes from imposing our will on someone who’s perfectly happy right where they are… For more on this, you're welcome to reach out to us directly at admin@dove-development.net to get a 45 Day Trial Access to our COMPLETE Leading At The Next Level program or you can check out Wes's recently released book, What's KILLING Your Profitability? (It ALL Boils Down to Leadership!) that was a #1 Best Seller on Amazon!

Whether we can tie it directly to a profit and loss statement or not, the costs any organization incurs when no one is held accountable are significant. Those costs can be so high and spread across so many business areas that it’s almost impossible to imagine leaders not recognizing the need for more accountability—almost impossible but certainly not entirely impossible because it happens pretty often! As we examined how high turnover and constant recruiting kill profitability, I shared some of what I experienced during the last year and a half with a large manufacturing company. I mentioned hiring over 225 new employees for that organization during that time, 150 of whom were for just one job title! Oh, and there were only 150 positions within that job title across all shifts in the facility. In case you’re not tracking with the math, that translated to 100 percent turnover in that position within eighteen months, a position that played a critical role in the overall quality of the products customers purchased from us! I could easily tie that mess, in one way or another, back to every single profitability killer we’ve worked through here. For our purposes right now, I’ll only share how a lack of basic accountability contributed to it all… For more on this, you're welcome to reach out to us directly at admin@dove-development.net to get a 45 Day Trial Access to our COMPLETE Leading At The Next Level program or you can check out Wes's recently released book, What's KILLING Your Profitability? (It ALL Boils Down to Leadership!) that was a #1 Best Seller on Amazon!

If we want to avoid the costs that pile up when no one is held accountable and capture the profitability that’s so often killed as a result, the first step is realizing there’s even a problem. Before you tune me out here, I’m not inviting you to an AA meeting! When there’s a leadership issue, it’s anything but anonymous. That said, recognizing the need for more accountability can be challenging. In an article from Pareto Labs called “How to Identify a Lack of Accountability in Your Team (and What to Do),” the author shares that “In a team that lacks accountability, work is subpar and often late. No one takes responsibility for their actions, leading to poor outcomes across the board,” and goes on to list five areas that suffer from that lack of accountability: Low-quality workDecreased productivityHigh turnoverDisengaged employeesLow morale That’s quite the list! In fact, it looks a lot like the profitability killers we’ve been working to address through this process. For more on this, you're welcome to reach out to us directly at admin@dove-development.net to get a 45 Day Trial Access to our COMPLETE Leading At The Next Level program or you can check out Wes's recently released book, What's KILLING Your Profitability? (It ALL Boils Down to Leadership!) that was a #1 Best Seller on Amazon!

Okay, leaders, I’m counting on you to have done the work to address the last profitability killer we looked at, The Cost of Confusion, by taking steps to set clear expectations for your teams. Even with the most detailed explanation, though, we’re not likely to see our team members meet or exceed those expectations—at least not over the long haul—if we don’t have a culture of accountability. With that in mind, the next profitability killer we need to work through will address the costs our businesses must eat when no one is held accountable! Accountability covers a broad range; we each hold ourselves to a certain standard and are all accountable to the rule of law within the society we’re a part of. There’s inevitably some level of accountability for performance in the organizations where we make our living. For our purposes here, I’m going to skip the personal accountability. If you’ve hung with me through the other profitability killers we’ve looked at, I expect you’ve got that well in hand. And as much as I’d like to jump on a soapbox about the importance of accountability for our actions in society and how the lack thereof directly contributes to the decay we’re experiencing in the rule of law, that’s a fight for another day. What we will be digging into with both hands is how we can recognize when more accountability is needed within the teams we lead, what it costs us when we haven’t maintained accountability, and what steps we can take to ensure accountability is a vital part of our culture. First, though, let’s make sure we’re singing from the same sheet of music about why this even matters. For more on this, you're welcome to reach out to us directly at admin@dove-development.net to get a 45 Day Trial Access to our COMPLETE Leading At The Next Level program or you can check out Wes's recently released book, What's KILLING Your Profitability? (It ALL Boils Down to Leadership!) that was a #1 Best Seller on Amazon!

To have a mentoring mindset you have got to always add value to others. To have the correct mindset around this is to believe this is an opportunity and not just a task to accomplish.  Do you see adding value to others as something you have to do?  Or are you treating it as a discipline or a task to check off the list?  Or, are you approaching adding value to others as an opportunity?  Because it is a tremendous opportunity to be a driving force in your organization and frankly in your legacy as well. Demonstrating personal success in the area of mentorship is about giving a return on time to those who mentor us.  There needs to be a 'return on investment' established in mentorship.  And an expectation that on a regular basis the mentee will be providing examples of how they have applied what they are learning and gaining from the mentor.  This adds value both ways and keeps the mentorship productive and demonstrated on a consistent basis.   Mentorship is a commitment of giving a return on time to those who mentor us and expecting a return on time from those we mentor.  We need to be able to demonstrate a return both ways for those we are in mentoring relationships with. As always, you're welcome to reach out to us directly at admin@dove-development.net to get a 45 Day Trial Access to our COMPLETE Leading At The Next Level program or you can check our how Dove Development & Consulting can help increase your profitability by building better leaders through a tailored approach to Total Leadership Solutions.

Here’s some questions to find out if a mentor would be beneficial for you. Would you like to have a trusted and experienced person to bounce ideas off of? Are you making a transition or considering a transition and would like access to a proven leader in making successful transitions themselves with a powerful track record of also helping others do the same? Are you in a new role with responsibility for leading yourself and others well? Are you a business owner, CEO, or high level executive who would benefit from brainstorming and problem solving around issues leaders in your position face? Are you considering launching a new venture or expanding a current one and are seeking expertise you don’t already have? If you answered yes to one or more of these then a mentor who has your best interest at heart AND is further ahead in an area you would like to be more successful in…would be a priceless benefit to you! As always, you're welcome to reach out to us directly at admin@dove-development.net to get a 45 Day Trial Access to our COMPLETE Leading At The Next Level program or you can check our how Dove Development & Consulting can help increase your profitability by building better leaders through a tailored approach to Total Leadership Solutions.

Getting into developing a mentorship mindset, as well as establishing some disciplines around gaining mentorship in your life and providing mentorship to others, is crucial. This circle of mentorship can truly be The Difference Maker for you and those around you in numerous ways. How do you cultivate the mindset that mentoring makes a difference? Hopefully, you are both mentoring and being mentored. Seek out men and women who can provide mentorship, both in person and from a distance. The Mentorship Circle of Life is akin to being a river rather than a reservoir - consistently being filled up and then pouring out into others. When you mentor others, you share your life with them and help them to reach their full potential. The impact of mentoring is profound. By giving of yourself, you are helping others to grow personally and professionally, guiding them towards a new level of living. You truly make a positive difference in their lives! As always, you're welcome to reach out to us directly at admin@dove-development.net to get a 45 Day Trial Access to our COMPLETE Leading At The Next Level program or you can check our how Dove Development & Consulting can help increase your profitability by building better leaders through a tailored approach to Total Leadership Solutions.

We've know Phillip Read for more than a decade but we've had the pleasure of building a strong friendship with him since he accepted the Chief of Police role in Bridgewater, VA in September of 2021 and having his as a member of our Executive Leadership Elite Think Tank since January of 2022. Chief Read brings significant experience with a demonstrated history of working in the government administration industry. He's skilled in Law Enforcement Administration, Investigations, Evidence Collection, Social Media, and Training. He's also an Afghanistan and Iraq military veteran and protective services professional with a Master of Science (M.S.) focused in Criminal Justice/Public Administration.  In this interview, we're able to hear his unique perspective on the importance of leadership, even in a role that carries tremendous authority. Phillip has built an incredible team and has earned the reputation of a true servant leader throughout his community. As always, you're welcome to reach out to us directly at admin@dove-development.net to get a 45 Day Trial Access to our COMPLETE Leading At The Next Level program or you can check our how Dove Development & Consulting can help increase your profitability by building better leaders through a tailored approach to Total Leadership Solutions.

Daniel N. Jones is currently an Associate Professor of Management in the College of Business at the University of Nevada Reno (UNR) and a core faculty member in the Interdisciplinary Social Psychology Program. Prior to UNR, Dr. Jones was an Assistant Professor of Legal Psychology at the University of Texas, El Paso. He received his BS in psychology from Stockton University and his Ph.D. in Social / Personality Psychology from the University of British Columbia in 2011. He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed journal articles and chapters, many in flagship journals such as Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Business Ethics, and Perspectives on Psychological Science. In 2019, Dr. Jones received the Early Career Award from the Western Psychological Association. He has also received several grants from agencies such as the National Science Foundation and Army Research Laboratory to study dark personalities as they pertain to topics such as secret disclosure, phishing attacks, and cyber-security. Historically, his research has focused on the differentiation of the Dark Triad (Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism) and Dark Tetrad (Dark Triad + sadism) of personality. Dr. Jones has published several influential pieces on the overlap and distinction of these traits, with a special focus on the vexing trait of Machiavellianism. His research has expanded to discuss differential models of betrayal, long vs. short-term deception, organizational harm, and novel perspectives on destructive leadership. Most importantly, Dr. Jones is examining the utility of the Dark Triad traits in different contexts and is developing interventions that are designed to prevent the harm these traits cause. However, Dr. Jones is not only focused on manipulative behavior. For example, he has also authored a forthcoming book on “Emophilia: The Science of Serial Romance,” with Oxford University Press. This book addresses the dispositional tendency to fall in love fast, easily, and often. Dr. Jones’ passion lies at the nexus of multiple disciplines, including Organizational Behavior, Management, and Psychology, especially where one can utilize new solutions to solve real problems. Specifically, his next steps are to establish a consulting presence to implement many of the evidence-based solutions he’s developed. Wes and Dan will be talking about how often dark personality traits show themselves in highly skilled team members and executives, and how this can be addressed. As always, you're welcome to reach out to us directly at admin@dove-development.net to get a 45 Day Trial Access to our COMPLETE Leading At The Next Level program or you can check our how Dove Development & Consulting can help increase your profitability by building better leaders through a tailored approach to Total Leadership Solutions.

If we want to have a shot at capturing the profitability that’s killed by confusion in our organizations by providing our teams with the kind of clear expectations they desperately need in order to produce excellent results, it will require a very focused effort! We must become experts in providing our team and each individual team member with extreme clarity as to the results we need from them and the behaviors we expect from them to achieve those results. In attempting to do that, some leaders shy away from setting the bar too high. Their concern in those cases seems to be that if expectations are too high, people will become overwhelmed and avoid the work altogether… As we’ve worked through these profitability killers, I’ve referenced multiple lessons I learned in the approximately fifteen years I was directly involved in a successful behavior-based safety process. I’ll share another here at the risk of beating that horse to death. This time, though, the lesson came from two of my mentors in that process rather than from the science the process was based on. The first piece of this particular lesson came in May 1999 during my initial training to perform behavior-based observations on my coworkers throughout the facility. Most of that two-day training was given by the gentleman responsible for overseeing the initiative at our location, but one segment was done by the then-maintenance supervisor, Terry Ward. Terry’s piece was geared at detailing how our behaviors are determined by the consequences that come from them, but learning to recognize certain things that trigger those behaviors serve as an effective way to predict them in advance. I certainly can’t go into all that he shared in the ninety-minute lesson here, but one thing he emphasized was a core tenet he had learned in his time at the United States Military Academy (West Point): the importance of choosing the harder right over the easier wrong, and how that always produced better results over the long haul. So, how does that tie in to eliminating confusion by setting clear expectations? By itself, Terry‘s story made a solid case for how choosing an easier yet riskier behavior at the moment would inevitably result in an injury when it was repeated over time. He went on to explain how taking the extra step to reduce the risk may require some additional effort right away but would pay huge dividends long term by eliminating the potential for injury. The second part of this lesson ties back to something I learned from an old chap from across the pond. Dave Stanley was one of the folks charged with implementing the behavior-based safety initiative throughout the company in 1998. He was the last remaining from that initial group when I got to know him in 2003. At that point, Dave held global responsibility for the process within our company. While his home was in South Wales (UK), he traveled worldwide, providing training at each of the 75+ facilities the organization had at the time. During his first visit to Harrisonburg, he explained that the difficulty of a task and the compensation involved RARELY served as the primary reasons someone would choose not to perform it. Dave shared that the biggest reason for avoiding any task was not seeing value in performing it. He challenged us to consider all those who risked their lives in the military or as first responders for very little or even no pay in some cases. Regarding safety, his message was that clarifying how specific behaviors would eliminate injuries and why that mattered would be critical if we wanted to build and maintain a successful process. Tying that with Terry’s “harder right over the easier wrong” is where we, as leaders, come into the picture to help our teams produce great results by providing them with extremely clear—and high—expectations. As I shared from Tony Jeary before, “It’s hard to sell mediocrity,” so why even bother? We absolutely should be challenging our teams to exceed expectations daily. Still, we also have to make sure we’re giving them the clarity they need to understand exactly what that looks like, how they can achieve it, and why it matters—to them individually and to the organization. Doing this can be difficult, so let’s look at a few steps to simplify it. For more on this, you're welcome to reach out to us directly at admin@dove-development.net to get a 45 Day Trial Access to our COMPLETE Leading At The Next Level program or you can check out Wes's recently released book, What's KILLING Your Profitability? (It ALL Boils Down to Leadership!) that was a #1 Best Seller on Amazon!

The cost of confusion hits our bottom line in many ways: increased downtime clarifying details, quality errors (regardless of our industry or process), delayed deliveries, and even lost customers. All of those things kill profitability! When we think about the statement I shared from Nicki Rankin’s LinkedIn article, “Managers are tasked with productivity and numbers for their department or division,” it’s not hard to understand why those managers get so frustrated when their team members underperform… What’s often missed is just how common poor performance really is. In August 2015, I had the opportunity to be with a small group of folks in a private session with John Maxwell at the beginning of an event that would complete the first stage of the licensing process to use some of his material. While this “small” group consisted of between three and four hundred people, it was just over 10 percent of the folks who would be participating in the entire event in the following few days and far smaller than any live venue where I had heard John speak before that. One of the things he stressed in the session, since we would be completing the process to use his material (and carry his name) in the following days, was how hard he had worked throughout his career to build and maintain a strong reputation. He also shared how he struggled with the idea of licensing people he didn’t know personally to represent that reputation. Before throwing any stones in John’s direction for having too much ego or pride in the reputation he worked so hard to earn, consider what it feels like when one of your team members (or children) does something that shines a negative light on your organization (or family). It can hurt, right? Especially when that something is so contrary to the values we hold most dear… For more on this, you're welcome to reach out to us directly at admin@dove-development.net to get a 45 Day Trial Access to our COMPLETE Leading At The Next Level program or you can check out Wes's recently released book, What's KILLING Your Profitability? (It ALL Boils Down to Leadership!) that was a #1 Best Seller on Amazon!

Make no mistake; confusion contributes to several of the profitability killers we’ve looked at already, so much so that I believe it’s critical we take a focused look at it individually as well! Whether it’s through the lack of clear expectations that we touched on when we worked through the High-Risk Areas early on, the importance of maintaining high expectations that I covered when addressing how It All Starts at the Top, or how misunderstandings eat away at our bottom line as we looked at The Cost of Poor Communication, a lack of clarity in any aspect of our business is sure to impact our margins! Quite frankly, I’m convinced that confusion contributes to each of the other profitability killers we’ve worked through as well. Think of the performance reviews you’ve received (or delivered). Have you ever been told you were doing great without getting specific feedback on what that meant? I sure have! Have you ever gotten one of those dreaded “needs improvement” marks on a review but no details about what you could or should be doing to produce different results? Ugh! That’s even worse than the random “great job!” pat on the back… Now, put yourself in a scenario where you’ve been tasked with the painfully vague goal of “improving performance” over a previous period. I may be going out on a limb here, but I’m assuming you’re like me and strive to do your best every day. If that’s not the case, I can’t imagine you’d be investing your time with me here. The only thing I can picture making such a broad request any worse would be working with team members who weren’t interested in that same level of achievement and were allowed to drift through each day with no ramifications. And just for good measure, think about that boss who barks a few quick commands and expects everyone around to know exactly what should be done—and how soon. How much time, effort, and profitability are wasted trying to figure out what’s expected of us in a situation like that? In hopes of keeping you from slipping into complete depression, I won’t ask you to consider how each of those things impacts our desire to stick with an organization, how hard they make it to attract great talent, or what happens to our willingness to give it all we have when we deal with any of those things on a routine basis. What I would like to work through with you now, though, is how much it costs us and our entire team when we’re not diligent about removing every bit of unnecessary confusion. We can do that IF we’re intentional about setting (and maintaining) extremely clear expectations—and we’ll look at exactly how we can do it. For more on this, you're welcome to reach out to us directly at admin@dove-development.net to get a 45 Day Trial Access to our COMPLETE Leading At The Next Level program or you can check out Wes's recently released book, What's KILLING Your Profitability? (It ALL Boils Down to Leadership!) that was a #1 Best Seller on Amazon!

With an understanding of how impactful this profitability killer is to our organizations, it’s time we look at the steps we can take as leaders to drive employee engagement and eliminate the costs of a disengaged workforce. Make no mistake here: the productivity improvement that’s said to come from increased engagement is just one of the areas where we’ll capture profit… I’m so convinced that employee engagement ties directly to attracting and retaining great team members that we built a lesson called How to Make Sure Working for You Doesn’t Suck into our Recruitment, Retention, & Culture course for leaders at all levels of their organizations. As I shared before, I believe it’s in every leader’s best interest to have simple processes in place to earn buy-in and engagement from their teams in every interaction, as a group and individually. In trying to find the three C’s of employee engagement in the Forbes article I mentioned previously, here are the eight things the author suggested leaders do through their “clear, consistent communication”: Be transparentBe a good listenerBe the energy you want to seeBe humbleUnderstand your team’s “why”Promote personal growthCelebrate small victoriesNever stop learning I’ll repeat it so there’s no misunderstanding my point: I’m not knocking any of these things. All of them are critical for anyone in a leadership role. Still, I could also make a strong case showing that they each need to be very targeted to yield any level of increase in employee engagement. For more on this, you're welcome to reach out to us directly at admin@dove-development.net to get a 45 Day Trial Access to our COMPLETE Leading At The Next Level program or you can check out Wes's recently released book, What's KILLING Your Profitability? (It ALL Boils Down to Leadership!) that was a #1 Best Seller on Amazon!

By this point, we should have a solid understanding of how much profitability is being killed in our respective organizations by just an average number of employees who aren’t actively engaged. But knowing the issue exists and having a plan for addressing it are two VERY different things! We’ll wrap up this look at the cost of disengaged employees with a few very practical steps any leader can take to begin capturing that lost profitability. Before we work through HOW, though, let’s think about WHY it matters, not why it matters to our bottom line but to each team member. Think long and hard about the kind of leadership you’d need to deliver that “57% improvement in discretionary effort” that the HBR study I referenced before suggests. Let’s be honest when considering this—it’s a huge statement! This isn’t a factor of someone already performing at 100 percent capacity simply dialing it up a few notches to give it 157 percent; there’s no such thing. For more on this, you're welcome to reach out to us directly at admin@dove-development.net to get a 45 Day Trial Access to our COMPLETE Leading At The Next Level program or you can check out Wes's recently released book, What's KILLING Your Profitability? (It ALL Boils Down to Leadership!) that was a #1 Best Seller on Amazon!

Once we’ve been intentional about creating a culture of top-down leadership that provides effective communication on an ongoing basis and we’ve worked to minimize the profitability that’s killed by high voluntary turnover and ongoing recruiting, the next—but indeed no less critical—profitability killer that needs our attention is the cost of disengaged employees. To have any real shot at doing that, we need to understand how widespread this issue truly is, how it impacts individual performance, and how each of those things ultimately affects even the best members of our teams. But first let’s make sure we’re on the same page. I’m not suggesting we do everything we can to make our employees happy, nor do I believe we can get long-term results by simply working to ensure employee satisfaction. Employee engagement is very different from either of those things. An article on Indeed.com called “How to Improve Employee Engagement” differentiated the three like this: "Employee engagement is a measurement of how committed an employee is to their employer, how passionate they are about the work they do and how well their personal goals and values align with the mission and objectives of their employer. An engaged employee is enthusiastic about working with customers and providing them services that generate profit and a good reputation. Not only that, but if your company has an engaged workforce, you’re more likely to retain your current staff—instead of having to frequently spend time and money hiring new employees. It’s important not to confuse employee engagement with employee satisfaction. While the two may sound similar, they’re actually two different concepts. A satisfied employee is someone who likes their job and feels their employer meets their needs, while an engaged employee is someone who is committed to their work, dedicated to their employer and consistently performs at a high level. An engaged employee is always satisfied, but someone can be satisfied without being engaged. For example, an employee may be happy with the compensation and job duties, but they may not be emotionally connected to their work or loyal to their employer." With that perspective in mind, we need to understand the widespread lack of engagement. Over the decade or so that I had hands-on involvement with doing employee engagement surveys, the message most frequently shared with me was that in the best organizations in the world, close to 20 percent of their workforce was actively disengaged, and around 30 percent of their team was actively engaged. The analogy I’ve used most often to describe this has been one with ten folks in a rowboat; the three at the front row just as hard as they possibly can to reach the destination. Two in the very back are working just as hard to sink the boat. In the middle, however, we still have five folks who may or may not be holding oars, but they’re certainly not breaking a sweat in their rowing efforts! For more on this, you're welcome to reach out to us directly at admin@dove-development.net to get a 45 Day Trial Access to our COMPLETE Leading At The Next Level program or you can check out Wes's recently released book, What's KILLING Your Profitability? (It ALL Boils Down to Leadership!) that was a #1 Best Seller on Amazon!

Any way we slice it, recruiting great candidates to join our team comes with a price tag! When we’re forced to recruit constantly because the business is growing, it’s hard enough—especially in a world where those great candidates are hard to come by. But suppose our voluntary turnover is an issue, and we haven’t provided the best team members we did have with a solid reason to stay. In that case, we can expect those recruiting costs to turn into real profitability killers. While leadership involvement can significantly impact our recruiting process, there’s never a shortage of demands on a leader’s time, so we must be highly intentional about being involved where it can help the most. Not so long ago, a friend who does high-end video production for a national healthcare system asked for my feedback on streamlining that organization’s orientation process. He told me that each executive team member had a direct role with all new employees. They had approached him about the potential of creating video orientation to replace what they were doing to free up some of that time. He explained that this would also ensure consistency in the message and provide coverage whenever one of those executives wasn’t available. I replied that it certainly would be possible and that both of the things he mentioned could be achieved. But then I shared the comparison of the two management teams I described before—and, more importantly, the feeling I still have about their different levels of involvement all these years later… Here’s the thing: just showing up and rambling through a canned speech isn’t the secret sauce. The managers who never participated in the weekly orientation sessions I held with new employees from March 2013 until I moved on in October 2014 likely improved retention by NOT interacting with those team members right away! The impact the plant manager made on me in 1996 wasn’t simply because he popped in and talked to us; it was abundantly clear that he meant what he said, and he backed his words up with his actions for as long as I knew him. I emphasized to my friend that how and when the executives he was working with interacted with their new team members was far less critical than it was for them to be completely genuine in every interaction they had with their teams—and that would never just happen! They need to be very proactive in their approach. While doing that seems far too rare in organizations today, I’m convinced it’s not complicated. I also don’t believe that the majority of executives and owners who aren’t involved in the recruiting process have ill will toward their teams; I think it’s usually a matter of being pulled in all directions, and initiating involvement in the recruiting process or engagement with the folks at all levels of their organization isn’t necessarily the fire that seems to demand their attention the most. For more on this, you're welcome to reach out to us directly at admin@dove-development.net to get a 45 Day Trial Access to our COMPLETE Leading At The Next Level program or you can check out Wes's recently released book, What's KILLING Your Profitability? (It ALL Boils Down to Leadership!) that was a #1 Best Seller on Amazon!

Earlier, I mentioned starting a job on March 12, 1996, that I thought would get me through college and how much that organization invested into hiring forty of the one thousand or so candidates who applied. I didn’t share how much of that investment came during the first two weeks we were on the payroll. The company certainly had a lot of time and money tied up in the process before we ever set foot on the property: several rounds of off-site interviews, competency testing at the local tech school, background checks, and drug screens—which shouldn’t be confused with “drug testing” because testing drugs was a bit more taboo back then. That all carried a hefty price tag, even back in the ’90s, but not nearly as much as the organization invested by having all forty of us go through two full weeks of orientation! At that point, the starting wage for hourly positions at that facility was $9.48 per hour before factoring in any of the benefits—some of the best in the Shenandoah Valley at the time. They paid each of us almost $1,000 to sit in training rooms for two solid weeks, some of which covered the processes and procedures we’d soon be expected to follow to the letter. Still, there was just as much face time with the local management team. I won’t pretend like I remember the majority of the material that was shared over the course of those two weeks. My point here isn’t to make a case for whether or not that much time was necessary. But I do remember like it was yesterday the impression the plant manager made with us from day one and how he walked the talk for the next few years until he retired. What stood out the most to me was his focus on the importance of safety, his making sure we knew he was always approachable, and his emphasis on paying little attention to the rumor mill. Regarding rumors, he assured us we’d hear at least one every day and said we should start one of our own if we didn’t! While joking about us starting rumors, he was incredibly serious about safety and how approachable he was. I saw him on the shop floor interacting with the off-shift crew I was part of more in my first month than I had seen the construction foreman at the job I came from in the entire year I worked there—and that foreman was only responsible for the six or eight of us on that one crew. Fast-forward to late 2013 and most of 2014. I was doing almost all the hiring for that facility I started with in March of 1996. At that point, the amount of time we were given to complete all the new hire paperwork, cover all the rules and regs, and introduce the new employees to our safety and quality processes was limited to just four hours. Those new team members spent the rest of their first day engaged in something similar to what they were hired for. I’m still not making a case for whether the time for the orientation process was good or bad. Still, I will challenge you to consider which version of orientation in that same facility provided the new folks coming on board with more exposure to the local leadership team. Since I’m too impatient to give you much time to guess, I’ll lay it out for you! During my final eighteen months with the company, when I hired around 225 people, I don’t remember a single instance where the plant manager even said hello to one group of new employees. To that end, the only managers who were regularly involved in the orientation process were the safety manager and the quality manager, both of whom I consider close friends still today—which is likely tied to the fact that they gave a crap about the people we were bringing into the organization… Here’s one more question: If you worked in that facility under both of those management teams, which would you be more likely to recommend to your friends or family as a place to consider when they were looking for employment? For more on this, you're welcome to reach out to us directly at admin@dove-development.net to get a 45 Day Trial Access to our COMPLETE Leading At The Next Level program or you can check out Wes's recently released book, What's KILLING Your Profitability? (It ALL Boils Down to Leadership!) that was a #1 Best Seller on Amazon!

Having just wrapped up our look at how high turnover kills so much of an organization’s profitability, it makes sense to shift our focus to the costs involved with recruiting. If we can provide our best team members with a solid reason to stay, the pressure to add anyone with a pulse to the team should be nearly nonexistent. But any time we have to fill a critical role, attracting great candidates comes with a high price tag! As we take aim at this profitability killer, we need to come to terms with what the total costs are (because most organizations don’t capture nearly all of them) and how having a strong leadership culture improves the entire process. Then, we’ll tie it all together with some steps any leader can take to develop a strong pipeline of future team members. For more on this, you're welcome to reach out to us directly at admin@dove-development.net to get a 45 Day Trial Access to our COMPLETE Leading At The Next Level program or you can check out Wes's recently released book, What's KILLING Your Profitability? (It ALL Boils Down to Leadership!) that was a #1 Best Seller on Amazon!

Now that we’ve identified some of the causes of turnover, specifically the reasons great team members leave an organization voluntarily and the high costs associated with that voluntary turnover, and we’ve looked at the extended reach of those costs, let’s address this profitability killer by providing those folks with a reason to stay! As we wrap up this look at the high cost of turnover, I will base what we’ll be working through on a few assumptions. I realize that can be dangerous, but it’s a chance I’m willing to take! First, I assume that the folks who leave our organizations voluntarily have solid skill sets that are important to what we do. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have been with us in the first place, OR their departure wouldn’t be voluntary. I will also assume that their overall compensation package is fair, or at least it was at some point. Again, without that being the case, we probably wouldn’t have had them on the team. Finally, I’ll assume that any team members we’re interested in keeping have predominantly good attitudes. Sometimes, someone with a great skill set and a terrible attitude adds more value by taking their mess to the competition… I’m not suggesting that turnover only kills our profitability when all three assumptions are correct. Still, I’d argue it costs us the most when they are! Without at least a foundation of requisite skills, the person leaving doesn’t incur all that much cost—even if they’re an overwhelmingly great person. Sure, we may have had some time and money invested into their onboarding and training, but part of a leader’s responsibility in the hiring process is making sure the employee has an existing set of skills that can translate to what they’ll be doing moving forward. The sooner we identify a mismatch, the better. If that’s after they’ve joined our team, we’d still do well to help them land with another organization rather than dropping them like a bad habit, but choosing not to address the issue won’t serve them or the rest of our team long term. And when we can handle a scenario like this by balancing our candor with care, we’re likely to earn a long-standing relationship with that individual even if they’re not in our organization. We show the rest of our team that we value individuals over short-term profit. Now let’s consider that third assumption, the good attitude. I realize that losing anyone who’s mastered their craft can be challenging, especially when we have a significant workload, and finding anyone with the needed skills has been increasingly difficult; skilled labor shortage anyone? Sometimes, though, having a high performer with a crap attitude can do far more harm than good. I’ve seen solid folks walk away from various companies as they were beginning to dial things in because a more senior member of the team was just an ass to them on a regular basis. In many cases, that high performer with a lousy attitude costs us more than their work earns us, and that’s why they may be more valuable to us if they worked for our competition! Regarding that assumption about overall compensation, we need to keep an eye on the market we’re in. With the minimum wage in Virginia nearly doubling in the last two years or so, coupled with a global pandemic and what appeared to be a massive labor shortage, wage ranges have shifted a lot—and quickly! I’m not about to suggest that we need to throw money at every individual in our organization. Still, we need to be sure we’re in the same ballpark as any other company that might try to lure them away. When each of those things is in place, making my assumptions at least close to correct, there’s one specific thing we need to be sure we’re providing our best people if we want to give them a reason to stay; we need to make sure they see purpose in the work they’re doing! When we’ve invested the time upfront to ensure everyone in our organization knows and understands our core values, and we’ve been intentional about explaining how the work they do daily ties directly to the mission and vision of the organization, the sense of purpose a team member has can serve as a solid reason to stick around even through some of the most challenging times. I believe having and buying into a strong purpose is why so many volunteer their time with various organizations, why so many great men and women have served in the armed forces, and a big part of why folks choose careers in public safety. But let’s be honest, would you or I do what we do if we didn’t find purpose in it? Since that was a rhetorical question, I’ll just add that it’s up to us as leaders to help our team members find that purpose so they do want to stay! For more on this, you're welcome to reach out to us directly at admin@dove-development.net to get a 45 Day Trial Access to our COMPLETE Leading At The Next Level program or you can check out Wes's recently released book, What's KILLING Your Profitability? (It ALL Boils Down to Leadership!) that was a #1 Best Seller on Amazon!