Investing in your people
You’ve heard it before: “People are your greatest asset…”
Putting common business slogans aside, it largely rings true, right? Not according to Jim Collins, the author of numerous best-selling management and leadership books.
“People are not your greatest asset,” Collins writes in the classic Good to Great. “The right people are.”
So how do you get the right people in your organization? Of course you could always fill every position in your organization with the right person the first time. And that is manageable! But what do you do as your business changes and grows?
The question then becomes not how to get the right people, but how to keep the right people in the right positions and help them grow at the same pace as your business.
Investing in your employees requires taking a proactive approach to their development. They are, after all, the people who move the needle for your business. If you don’t already have a good talent map in place, that’s a great place to begin. Start by listing the five biggest skills (technical or soft) that someone would need to be successful in each role. You can also enlist the help of your team in this process and have each of them self-report these five skills. Then, keep mental note of where you think your team members’ skill levels are in each of those areas and ask them about ways they think they could improve.
Using that information, you can start to put together development plans for each of your team members. This has several important benefits. First, it can help organize training and developmental activities around a single area. Second, it shows your employees that you care about their development, which builds trust.
Further, developing your employees can lead to greater productivity, retention, and job satisfaction. Now who wouldn’t want that?!
But maybe you’re not quite ready to dive deep into employee development just yet, and that’s OK. Maybe begin the process by opening up a dialogue within your team about how you can best be serving them to equip them to do the tasks you’re asking them to do. Here are a few questions you can ask that could be fruitful:
What are you working on that you don’t feel 100% confident in your ability to do?
What is one thing you always wanted to learn?
Is there a tool you need in order to do this better?
How can I support you as you take on this new project?
Even simple questions like these could lead to opportunities for you to invest in your greatest asset: your people. As you continue to develop your people and grow your business, always be thinking about ways to improve your employee development programs. They’ll pay for themselves in greater retention and productivity, and you’ll have a stronger business to boot.
Not sure where to start on your talent development journey? That’s what Counsel is here for. Schedule a free meeting today to see how we could help you take your team to the next level.
