I was reading this article today called If Your Employees Act Like They Don’t Care, You Might Be Doing These 11 Things Wrong by Sunny Bonnell. The first quote in the article is: “People come for great vision and leave for poor leadership.”
This is such a true statement. I have seen people make decisions to stay in an organization because of the vision that a leader shared. They were inspired and believed that the leader would help them reach that vision. If the leader is unable to make changes to enable that vision to become a reality, then people start to question if they should stay. Is there still hope for a change? Are there other factors at play now that make them doubt the credibility of the leader?
The article lists out 11 signals where this occurs:
- You’re too busy to meet with people in person or you constantly reschedule on them.
- You make decisions out of your own stubbornness without regard for how those decisions will affect people when they trickle down.
- You make everything urgent, and you don’t give people the time and resources they need to do good work.
- You give no sense of purpose or vision, so your employees don’t know what they should care about and why.
- You provide a physical work environment that is messy, stale, generic, or dated, which makes going to work depressing.
- You get defensive with anyone on your team who challenges your ideas.
- You tell your employees to figure it out on their own when it’s clear they need your help.
- You don’t celebrate accomplishments and milestones.
- You never validate anyone by saying thank you for a job well done.
- All you care or talk about is hitting goals and numbers.
- You fail to see how the business operates in the eyes and shoes of the people beneath you.
This is a list of reasons that people in an organization become disengaged and begin to look for roles in other companies. The leader is sending a message that they don’t really care about collaborating with their team. The focus may be on meeting goals, but at the expense of the people who need to help the leader accomplish them.
These are also examples of a leader who doesn’t demonstrate emotional intelligence. A very important leadership characteristic that many leaders are lacking. They are so focused on results, but not necessarily on the development of their team. Being able to connect with your team is crucial to get things done effectively and retain people in the organization. Spend time understanding who your team is, what is important to them, what motivates them and how you can help them. You will have a team who wants to stay and will do whatever it takes to get things done, because they feel supported by their leader.
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