Are you hearing what your teams are saying through their words or actions, or are you limited because of the box you have put yourself in?  

 Are you just hearing the voices of your peers or those that align with your way of thinking, or are you listening to a broad, diverse audience?  

Are you hearing individual insights but not stepping back to see if there's a broader message?

The world has shifted, and so must our approach to leadership. The rules of yesterday no longer apply to the challenges we face today. As leaders, it's crucial to acknowledge this shift and adapt our roles, measurements of success, and methodologies.

Heather E. McGowan 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ 's insights at the TriNet PeopleForce conference last week were a call to action: “We can't lead the way we were led.”

Do I have to do it all because I can?

❓Am I a failure if I choose not to try to do it all?

❓Have I failed if I can’t do it all?

The answer to all of these questions is NO.

If you could make one decision that would guarantee an improvement in employee engagement and retention, would you make it?

I think most of you would.

And what if that decision would also drive higher business performance?

You know you would do it.

Unfortunately, most organizations are not yet doing this one thing.

Based on an idea from a friend, I have been sharing one insight from each of the 12 Ted Lasso Season 3 episodes as part of my weekly LinkedIn content. Now that the season is over, I thought I'd share the aggregated view here.

Many of us would not describe ourselves as brave individuals. We have a persona in mind that doesn’t “look” like us. We think that a brave person is strong physically or assertive in their communications or bold in their risk-taking.

If we revise our definition of what being a supervisor means, from oversight to performance coaching, employees and organizations will perform better. Being a performance coach means asking two key questions: how do I help this person be better tomorrow than they are today, and what can I do to help them? In many cases, senior leaders may operate as performance coaches for their team members, but often, it doesn’t trickle down to the line and middle management levels.

Though the hiring pace seems to be slowing a bit, many organizations still have significant gaps in their employee rosters. These gaps are addressed day to day by work either being de-prioritized or, more often, current employees covering the workload, often leading to frustration and burnout. Closing open roles is key to productivity, business performance, and employee morale.

What was your first reaction when you read the statement in the title? Were you the reader thinking I was crazy, the one wondering if they don’t need to be managed, why we have a performance management process, or are you the reader who already believes this?

Identifying people managers for your organization is one of the most important tasks because of the impact of not having the right people in place. Though there should be a best practice for identifying who should take on people leadership responsibilities, I have not seen one put into practice.

Give some thought to the recent feedback messages you have given or received.  Would you change anything?  If so, take that lesson forward to the next one.  Make sure you don't end up with unintended consequences from your message delivery.

If you’re building a product, you want each person to follow the same design specs and end up with the identical product, but that doesn’t mean there’s a one-size-fits-all approach to leading the team to that prescribed outcome. A cookie-cutter approach to motivating the team members will not get you to the optimal impact.

One size fits all doesn’t make sense anymore in the workplace. The flexibility I might value will be different from that of a co-worker who has different priorities and needs. With technology innovations, there shouldn’t need to be one answer for how, where, and when people work.

Are you hearing what your teams are saying through their words or actions or are you limited because of the box you have put yourself in? Are you just hearing the voices of your peers or those that align with your way of thinking or are you listening to a broad, diverse audience? Are you hearing individual insights but not stepping back to see if there's a broader message?

One of the comments I hear from employees is that they have an unclear career path and that this is impacting their overall employee engagement. I think supervisors and leaders would benefit from getting past hesitancy to discuss this issue, because I believe what people really want is not always a single answer but the dialogue on how they get started or what they should think about.