#sharethelove in practice

Valentine’s Day might have come and gone, but that doesn’t mean that the time to shower your team members with love has passed. In fact, our best managers and leaders are constantly thinking about how to ensure their people are thriving every day of the year. This month, I had a chance to sit down with Aimée Eubanks Davis, CEO and Founder of Braven, and a personal mentor and former manager of mine. Everyone should be so lucky to have someone like Aimée in their corner. I highly recommend watching the recording of our co-mmunity webinar to listen to the full conversation.  To wet your appetite, here are some of the gems that are still sitting with me.

Firing slow

We started out talking about where we learned the lessons (some good and some not as good) that define our leadership and management today.  Aimée talked about a principal she worked for early in her career that taught her that instead of hiring slow and firing fast, a common piece of advice, great leaders hire slow, believe deeply in their people and fire slow.  And in the ways that you may never truly know your legacy, Aimée then taught me, and so many others, that same advice. 

This guidance reminds us that great leaders get curious. They dig in to understand why someone is struggling, they trust their own hiring instincts by developing their people and they model that sort of care for their people, because other managers and staff members are watching. That matters even more as the workforce shifts, and this next generation of workers are going to suss out quickly if the organization isn’t investing in them and their teammates. This isn’t to say that there aren’t times when someone does, in fact, need to leave your organization.  Pulling from another lesson I learned from Aimée, if someone has to leave, you want them to leave with dignity. That means a commitment to their professional growth and transparent conversations about their performance, including when they need to develop more.  

The next generation

Given Aimée’s work now with those early in their careers (18-24 year olds), we talked more about what sharing the love for this group looks like.  She started out, with her observation, that, ‘[this group] does not feel beholden to anything that looks like an organization. And if anything they are highly skeptical of anything that gets formed into an institution.”  However, she went on to say that they can still be fully engaged in their work.  “They are deeply inspired by a sense of justice and pushing the for profit world in important ways.  They know that they can make money and have a purpose without doing harm in the world.” So it is up to managers and leaders to support their people to find their purpose.  On the flip side, a note of caution, when people are not being treated well, this group is much more ready to blast social media to let their peers know.  The institution has to be a place where they can learn and grow and thrive and as Aimée put it, be a multidimensional person. 

Measuring Management

As another mentor and great manager of mine used to say, people respect what you inspect.  And that is no different for management.  Aimée talked about both her expectations of managers and how she assesses their work.  She says, “I expect more from my managers and leaders in how they amplify and exemplify our core values than other staff members.  And although there is no way you can be a 100% because there is no perfection in living out core values, I am looking for the spirit of how they try to live them out.”  And that is measurable, based on their own self reflection and 360 feedback from their people.  She also talked about measuring to what extent people are thriving on their team.  Are they getting promoted, not just internally, but externally?  How is their professional development going?  Managers need to know that they are on the hook for their people doing great. 

Legacy

We finished up the conversation talking about legacy.  As Aimée said, “I really hope that when it is my time to go and there is a celebration of life for me one day, I hope that what is said about me is the number of people that became great leaders as a result of working with me.” That is really, in my opinion, the biggest testament to someone's leadership and management – who did you develop around you that becomes their greatest selves?”  What a powerful north star to guide our actions as leaders. Did that action lead to someone becoming their best self? And if not, what can I do better?

I had a colleague who once took out the book, Recruitment and Retention for Dummies and we all laughed, but when we looked at the first bullet point under retention, we stopped laughing. It suggested that managers should ask their people if they plan to stay. Often we stay away from conversations if we are unsure how they will go and so few of our managers were ever asked that question themselves. But if we are committed to the people we spent so much time hiring, we have to start the conversation and listen to what they have to say.

Don’t miss the opportunity to #sharethelove each and every day. That is the legacy I hope to leave one day too. And if you are appreciating you could use some support and you don’t have the internal capacity to make it happen, it may may be time to reach out to coLeague.

* #sharethelove campaign was the brainchild of the TFA, Business Partner team, a team that put people first in everything they did.