By Mark Warren, Training Coordinator/Consultant
Texas Association of Counties
The most successful organizations have an uncanny ability to keep their people, regardless of their product or service. They keep turnover to an absolute minimum, and a minimum of turnover ensures that when a customer comes in, they meet a ‘member of the family’ and not a stranger.
So, what makes people leave their jobs?
Author and lecturer Marcus Buckingham believes it’s their boss. More than 65% of people who leave a job quit their boss, not the job. What is it about the boss that makes us want to leave?
It might be this: in 2002, while lecturing at the Gallup Leadership Institute, Buckingham helped to commission a poll that asked the following question: “Which will help you achieve greater success – building your strengths or fixing your weaknesses?” Only 41% of the respondents believed that focusing on their strengths was the key to success.
Time after time Buckingham found the numbers to be just about the same. The fact is, most people are less interested in deploying their assets than in lessening their liabilities. Companies, either inadvertently or deliberately, send a message to the staff that, despite the public proclamation that “the customer is always right” or “our people are our best asset,” that they must win at all cost.
Just look at Major League Baseball in America. What does it say to the public? “Baseball is America’s game. Baseball is great for the family.”
But, what is management’s message to the players? Win at all cost. There is no future if you don’t win today. Perhaps that’s why some players think, “Maybe steroids would enhance my performance and give me another couple of years.”
If it’s true that the “squeaky wheel gets the grease,” let’s either change the wheel or not make grease the solution. In other words, employees will pay attention to what the boss values.
If the boss values something the employee hates, then the worker will float along and miserably try to appease, in many cases leaving a job that forces them to concentrate on their weaknesses instead of taking advantage of their strengths.
Consider the language of weakness fixing, for example. In performance appraisals, if a person is evaluated in 26 areas and 22 of them exceed standards, 2 meet standards and 2 need some improvement, what message does the company send the employee? The message is: Concentrate time on the aspects of your job that you hate or are not good at, and abandon work time and attention in areas where you excel.
If you are one of those rare employees that gets to focus on your strengths during the majority of your work time, be thankful. But in the meantime, figure out some strategies for everyone else.
As basketball player and Texan Shaquille O’Neal learned under coach Phil Jackson, if I concentrate on what makes me great (working on my skills in the paint), then my weaknesses (free throws) will come up. Shaq knows (and so do the rest of us) that he’ll never be a great free throw shooter. But, that’s not why he was recruited and hired.