Every business owner I know has hired someone brilliant, watched that person walk away after a year, and pondered what might have gone wrong. Chances are, it has little to do with compensation.
Your team members can likely find comparable opportunities in the marketplace, but they cannot find your values.
Business owners are discovering that values-based leadership training helps them develop the kind of culture that compels people to stay.
The Cost of Culture
The cost of turnover is incalculable, except that it always seems to come due at the worst possible time.
Hiring and training expenses, the loss of productivity as a new employee comes up to speed, the erosion of team morale as a colleague leaves, the slowdown of operations as the organization loses institutional knowledge, these are all expenses that compound, and they all trace back to culture. The root cause, more often than not, is that the employees did not have a clear understanding of what their leader valued.
People stay in an organization because they believe in the person in charge more than they believe in the competition waiting in the wings.
They do not commit to a business plan, product, or service; they commit to a person, trusting that this leader will make decisions that benefit everyone on the team. That trust is not established by a pithy vision statement posted on the wall. It is established by demonstrating through actions and decisions that this leader is trustworthy.
Nehemiah did not have to post a vision statement on the gates of Jerusalem when he began rebuilding the walls.
The Scripture tells us that the people worked with “all their heart” (Nehemiah 4:6), which implies that the workers believed in him.
It did not happen because he made a nice vision statement; it happened because his character was such that he earned their loyalty.
How Values-Based Leadership Training Empowers Business Owners
Business owners who undergo values-based leadership training show improvement in several key areas:
Their teams have higher retention because they realize the leader truly cares about them.
Communication improves within the team, which reduces misunderstandings, miscommunication, and wasted time.
The quality of discourse within the team improves because people base their interactions on shared values.
New employees add to the team’s knowledge instead of subtracting from it because they understand the culture right from the start.
This is why business owners from multiple industries use this particular values-based leadership training program, Beyond Success, as a tool to help them grow their business while inspiring and motivating their team.
Beyond Success is a Seven Session Roundtable Experience Designed For Groups Of Six To Eight People
Beyond Success was designed as a roundtable experience for six to eight people to meet seven times, each session lasting sixty to ninety minutes. The sessions explore the values that underlie a successful, significant life and leadership.
The seven discussion questions were designed to help participants determine what values matter to them individually and what values they can adopt in the workplace. Beyond Success is beneficial for business owners in several ways.
First, this roundtable experience examines the kind of life and leadership that produces the kind of culture that compels people to give their best effort. Second, business owners can complete this training with their team, an ideal peer group, or as part of a strategic leadership initiative.
Beyond Success Can Be Used In Three Simple Ways For Business Owners
Conduct the roundtable with your team.
Host the roundtable as a peer group with other business owners in your community.
Sponsor the roundtable as part of your overall leadership development strategy.
When a leader sponsors a roundtable discussion about values for their team, it makes people feel that the leader cares about them.
That kind of motivation is invaluable when trying to inspire a group to produce extraordinary results. Even more important, it is the catalyst that creates a retaining culture.
Culture Takes Its Cues From The Leader
Business owners sometimes attempt to outsource the creation of a retaining culture to a generic statement or a values statement.
People do not look to a catchy vision statement on the wall to determine if they are valued at work.
They look to the leader’s actions to see if they care about the employees. As a result, culture is within the leader’s control. The creation of a retaining culture is not an HR initiative.
It should be an initiative driven by the leader who sets the tone and direction for everyone else in the organization.
If you are ready to build a retaining culture where your best people want to stay, bring Beyond Success to your organization.
Visit iequip.org to set up a roundtable session with your team or with other business owners in your community.
