A Simple, Scalable Process for Helping Managers Improve Employee Engagement, Performance, and Retention
By Matt Tenney, bestselling author of Inspire Greatness: How to Motivate Employees with a Simple, Repeatable, Scalable Process
If you’re feeling frustrated by how hard it is to help managers improve employee engagement, retention, and performance, you are not alone.
According to Gallup, at least 70% of employee engagement is driven by direct managers.
So, naturally, organizations have invested massive amounts of time and money into leadership development.
Yet, despite hundreds of billions of dollars spent over the last 20 years, average employee engagement levels haven’t improved at all.
It’s clear that traditional leadership development efforts aren’t helping.
In fact, research suggests that roughly 85% of typical leadership programs are a complete waste of time and money.
Why 85% of Leadership Programs Fail
I believe there are three reasons for this massive failure rate.
First, most leadership training programs aren’t part of a leadership development strategy with a clear, unifying purpose.
Training programs tend to be seen as short-term “projects,” and it’s often hard for managers to see how the training will solve their biggest frustrations or make their work more meaningful and fulfilling.
Instead, managers feel like the leadership team thinks they’re broken and need to be “fixed,” so they don’t engage with the training.
Second, managers are too busy for long workshops.
It’s hard to find time to provide high quality training on an ongoing basis, especially when most leadership training is offered in large chunks like half-day workshops or longer.
And, third, when leadership training is offered in large chunks, it’s very unlikely to create any lasting behavioral change.
Managers may leave a training session very excited, and with pages of notes for things they want to do differently.
But, when they get back to the office, and reality punches them in the face and they start putting out fires, they quickly forget about the training and end up applying either very little or none of it.
3 Simple, Scalable Steps for Helping Managers Drive Employee Engagement, Performance, and Retention
If you want to offer leadership development that actually results in lasting behavior changes that drive higher levels of employee engagement, retention, and performance, you need to solve the three issues I just mentioned.
1. Frequent, Ongoing Training that Logically Solves Manager’s Problems
The first step to offering a successful leadership development program is to offer frequent, ongoing leadership training that is connected to a unifying theme that is logical and helps managers see what’s in it for them.
The primary job of a leader is to bring out the best in their team.
In other words, the primary job of a leader is to inspire greatness.
Fortunately, there is a simple algorithm for consistently bringing out the best in one’s team.
According to decades of research from Gallup and others, there are 14 needs people have for thriving and being engaged at work that are universal.
And, organizations with leaders who consistently meet these 14 universal needs, resulting in top quartile employee engagement levels, see 20% higher sales and 21% higher profitability than organizations with leaders who don’t consistently meet these needs, and place in the bottom quartile of employee engagement levels.
Meeting these needs also helps leaders to find much more meaning and fulfillment at work and reduces many of their biggest frustrations like employee turnover and underperforming employees.
These needs are pretty common sense things, including feeling appreciated, having clear performance expectations, and being in an environment conducive to excellence.
Knowing what these needs are doesn’t help much.
What moves the needle is having systems and habits in place to ensure the needs are consistently met.
So every leadership development initiative should fall under the overarching theme of helping managers solve their biggest frustrations and find more meaning and fulfillment in their work by more consistently bringing out the best in their teams, serving as a coach who consistently meets the 14 universal needs.
2. Non-Disruptive, Small Time Commitment
Second, once this logical framework for ongoing leadership development is clear, training needs to be offered in a way that doesn’t take up much time.
Ideally, you should use micro-training that consists of brief 10 to 15-minute videos.
However, to further increase engagement and accountability for taking action, these videos should not be viewed by managers in isolation, on their own.
The training should be viewed in a recurring monthly meeting of at least a small group of managers.
During the meeting, managers watch the video, have a discussion on how to apply what they learned, and then ensure that they have a clear plan for putting systems in place that will ensure they take action on building just one or two lasting habits.
Not only is this approach more affordable than traditional leadership training, it’s also more effective!
This brings us to the third step for offering leadership development that actually drives results.
3. Less Information, More Time to Practice
By utilizing frequent micro-training sessions instead of half-day workshops a couple times per year, you offer leadership development that is inline with modern learning theory.
We can’t just read a book or attend a day of training and magically become a great leader.
We need to gradually build the habits of great leaders over time.
For instance, imagine a coach who is trying to help a basketball player with her free throws.
The coach watches the player take a few shots and then tells the player ten things they need to fix.
The coach says, “You need more knee bend. Your feet aren’t aligned. You’re too bent over at the waist. Your elbow is flaring out. And so on. Now, fix those things and take some more shots.”
This will not be effective.
Now imagine a coach who watches the player take some shots and then says, “It looks like your elbow is flaring out. Please try a few shots with your elbow right under your hand and tell me how it feels.”
The player takes a few shots and says, “This feels great! The shots are straighter. They’re more consistent. And, they’re going over the rim more consistently.”
The coach says, “Great. Let’s spend the rest of the practice working on that. Then, at the next practice, we’ll review a little more and build a regular review into your training before we move on to the next adjustment.”
This will be highly effective.
And, this is how we should be approaching leadership training.
How to Immediately Execute this Strategy
Now that you have the approach at a high level, I’d also like to help you execute it.
I’d like to provide you with a 3-month leadership development program, along with hardcover copies of my USA Today bestseller Inspire Greatness for your leadership team and the managers who participate in the program, at zero cost to you.
You can include only a few managers, or your entire leadership team.
There’s no catch and no sales pitch as part of this offer.
I have found that the most enjoyable and profitable way to grow our impact and our business is to simply be generous and prove our value, which often results in ongoing partnerships without us having to pitch anything.
This fully-funded, 3-month program includes an inspiring introductory keynote-style session that can make a significant impact all on its own.
It will also help your managers understand how the program will help them solve their biggest frustrations and realize more meaning and fulfillment at work, all while taking less than an hour per month of their time.
The introductory session is followed up with 3 micro-training video sessions.
This combination of the introductory session, 3 micro-training video sessions, and copies of Inspire Greatness is an effective, standalone leadership program that will make an immediate impact on employee engagement and retention in your organization.
It will also help you to create an ongoing leadership development program that follows this approach.
At the end of the 3-month program, you’ll have the expertise to build out your own videos for the ongoing monthly meetings or to use the books we’ve provided to supply the content, or you may decide it makes more sense to partner with us.
We’re happy to help you with any of those options!
If you’d like to learn more about this opportunity to get a powerful, 3-month leadership development program and hardcover copies of Inspire Greatness for your managers at no cost to you, just click or tap here to see if your organization qualifies.
Let’s start building a culture that consistently inspires greatness in your people.
