All-Inclusive Employment

Practical Applications in Servant Leadership, part 12

(Previous posts: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11)

Leadership, as we’ve said over and over in this space, is about service.Serving the people in your care, serving God’s Kingdom. And it bears repeating again (and again). Think of the most amazing service experience you’ve had and what made it special. It could have been anything from a surprisingly simple trip to the grocery store all the way up to a full service, all inclusive resort experience. And beyond that memorable experience, consider what made similar experiences pleasant or enjoyable. In every case, it’s likely that it wasn’t a chore for you. In the same way, you should make it easy for your employees. The goal should be an all inclusive experience, where you have considered their needs before they even have a chance to. Make it easy for your employees to work for you in a way that is fulfilling for them.

Serving those who you lead isn’t necessarily simple, but it can be super rewarding. One of the things that makes it rewarding and worthwhile is when you get to see growth or when you catch sight of that “aha!” moment for someone you’re training and leading. Here’s the last question in the Q12 Survey as we wrap up this series:

Q12: This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow.

You’ve likely caught that there’s a lot of overlap in the focal points of the questions over the past 11 posts and this one has an obvious tie in to the Q11 post on Charting Progress. Places that are excellent to work have cultures that show care and planning for their employees. If you have been reading the whole series, you will start to see how good work culture has a multi faceted impact. The pieces you put together to make a culture of caring, interlock and build on each other to bring about good in the workplace and beyond.

In the previous post we’re looking at how much you talk to your team members about progress. Now we’re looking at the opportunities you’ve created for individual growth.

Here’s a brief list of suggestions from previous posts (with links) that relate to providing opportunities to learn and grow:

• Create a feedback loop after presentations or project deliveries

• Build a planning cycle wherein your team members are encouraged to be a part of planning out future projects

• Put time together in a career growth plan

• Perform regular “Stay” interviews with your team members.

Everything you do to create good culture and good communication for your team will open up opportunities to ways your team members can pursue growth. Here’s a few other specifics you should consider:

• Budget for Training and Development. Opportunities, as the question implies, need to be created. You’ll certainly have some outlier people who will create their own opportunities to learn and grow, but you should be proactive on this. I like to benchmark training and development at 3-10% of an individual’s salary and time. Yes, four hours per week and several thousand dollars per year are a lot to throw at training and development, but the result is that you get better engaged team members and your direct reports know that you care about more than what he or she can provide in immediate productivity. In the right companies, the return on that investment, when there are opportunities for advancement as well as growth and learning, even that 10% number pays off.

• Create a specific learning and development plan for each person. I know I mentioned this one around checking on progress in the Q11 post. But it bears saying again: no matter what her or his job is, there should be a path to growth. You may not have a way to do career-planning style growth or have paths for promotion, but your job as a leader includes investing in the people on your team. If you have the budget, talk about how it should get spent and make that a collaborative process.

• Set an example by pursuing growth, learning and development yourself. Nothing creates better paths to advancement than drafting behind a boss who is outgrowing her or his role. And knowing that you’re pushing yourself to grow will help to inspire those who may not see the point if there’s no immediate promotion as a payoff.

Your job, leader, is to develop doors for growth that each one of your direct reports can walk through and find an ever improving version of themselves. Talk to your team about where they’re feeling stifled in their growth and create those opportunities for everyone under your care. Making these changes for serving your employees can be tricky to establish, but once they are in place, the momentum is energizing for the whole team!