As a leader, you make a choice on what your style is going to be. Do you want to be feared? Do you want to be respected? Do you want to be beloved? Do you want to be relatable?
This is something I have been thinking about a lot, especially lately. Employee retention becomes increasingly more difficult in this pandemic environment and loyalty seems to be out the window. For example, while I was out on my 20-week maternity leave, we lost 6 people on my team, which equates to about one third of the staff. I looked at the list and tried to come up with commonalities. The big ones were that most losses had started with my company during the pandemic in a “virtual world”, and that the individuals were more likely to be those with whom I didn’t have strong personal relationships. By contrast, those with whom I have formed these personal relationships have remained committed to the team and excited for the futre.
But how do you get loyal team members? It is certainly a balance, and no leader can be perfect every day. Part of it is setting high, yet achievable, expectations for your team members. And those expectations must vary person by person based on current abilities, future potential, and speed of growth potential. Staying committed to that career path for your team members is important too. While I like to say that everyone is responsible for their own path and destiny, the reality is that few people have the vision or feel the permission to even lay that out themselves and stay committed to it day in and day out. They are looking for a leader to say “I see this for you” or “I see these options for you, and I am committed to helping you achieve your potential.”
I recently worked with the leaders on my team to lay out the hard and soft skills required for each level/title, focusing heavily on the Junior, Analyst, and Senior Analyst roles, where I felt employees probably needed the most guidance. These skills were across several key criteria areas, including analytics skills, communication skills, creative skills, etc. We also launched our first Marketing Science team “Bootcamp” that is occurring as we speak, focused on our newest hires, while inviting all other team members to attend who either need to refresh their knowledge on a tool or capability or who never learned that skill in the first place. The Bootcamp will take place over a 4-week period, touching topics like our subscription services, pulling data, understanding key metrics, and running some of our fundamental analytics. The responsibility for building out the materials fell on a wide range of team members and focuses on teaching the material, workshopping the content, assigning a set of example exercises, and reviewing the results to those exercises a few days later. I am really excited about this focus on gaining a set of skills, regardless of the level you are hired at within our agency. I look forward to seeing how it can be expanded to other departments and set the gold standard for training and onboarding.
One of my other big initiatives for my team this year has been “vision sprints.” I realize that we all get so caught up in our day-to-day deliverables, working with the same people on the same things. I wanted to get the team excited about driving future innovation and partnering with new team members on areas that may be outside their comfort zone. So, on one of our first team meetings of the year, I walked the team through my vision for Marketing Science for 2022. It ended with my 5 big bucket priorities, surrounding things like automation, presentation skills, insights & storytelling, and dashboard visualization standardization. I had team members sign up for their areas of interest, put the team in groups of three and left it to them to set up regular check-ins. The goal will be to all share back progress at the end of Q1, decide on next steps, and potentially hand off the work to date and swap the teams to continue making progress with fresh eyes and ideas. I hope that this will drive ownership and allow for more creativity than the team may feel in their day-to-day work. I also hope that it can drive some of the “water cooler conversations” that we are all missing out on in this virtual world, as the team connects regularly in small groups outside of their daily teams.
I share these examples just to show some of the very real, tangible ways I try to lead my team with ideas and support. These are the work-related ways I show I am invested in their careers and their growth. The ways I start to show I care. But these are just the start of being a good leader in my opinion. There are so many other pieces that are harder to put in a box but can be just as important.
It’s taking the time to give my point of view on graduate degrees, the pros and cons of going to business school, going part-time vs. full-time, going to top ten vs. non-top ten programs and more, to a junior team member who is trying to find her way. It is fighting the good fight day in and day out to make sure leaders hear about the great work and client kudos my Senior Analysts and VPs are getting and then not letting them fall between the cracks when it comes time for promotions and raises. It is making sure that each team member is known, both by me through monthly or bi-weekly 1:1s no matter how busy my schedule or how junior their level might be, as well as by other senior business leaders. It is checking in, asking questions about their days, getting to know about their family and home life (as much as they want to share of course) and following up on things that are important to them. It is sharing my own life updates about my kids, my dogs, my husband, and letting myself be vulnerable to them in terms of the things going on in my home and my life outside of work hours so that they might feel comfortable doing the same.
I think one of the most important things I have done as a leader, for my team and beyond, is giving people permission to set boundaries, to prioritize their families over their work without apology and to realize that it is possible to be a hard worker with huge impact but to still say “no” sometimes. This was a lesson that was hard for me to learn, especially in the early years of my career. I felt like I could never say “no”, that that would say something about me as a “team player” and that the opportunities would stop coming.
I’ve learned that that isn’t true at all. I recently talked to a co-worker about the endless slew of meetings in this pandemic world. When we are all working from home on different time zones, the meetings starting at 7 AM and going until 6 PM have started to feel like the norm. It is up to us to take our personal lives back and make it clear that that isn’t good enough, this can’t be the norm. I told him that 5-8 PM are my core hours with my children that I am not willing to compromise on. Of course, there are exceptions because life isn’t black and white, and we must be flexible. So, if there’s an important client meeting or pitch preparation that can’t be moved, my family and I find ways to make it work. But that must be the exception, not the rule. My fellow leaders know that and don’t question it. This co-worker told me that once he saw my lead on this, he felt comfortable following. My move gave him permission to set his boundaries when he had to be at home to be there for his daughter as well.
This same co-worker has been dealing with some very big personal challenges lately, and so I reached out to him with my most honest, authentic support, letting him know that I am there as a friend, as a human who cares about his well-being. One might say that this goes outside of the responsibility of a co-worker, but I would argue that it is one of my most important places that empathy can come from. Your co-workers and your team members know you so well; they spend such a high percentage of your waking hours with you. And they know many of the challenges you face from a work perspective. Being able to round that out with your personal challenges can really help them to see where you are coming from and partner with you in even more meaningful ways.
I have personally been through a lot in my life, and I know that those things impact me every day. Sometimes my personal life motivates me and gives me an extra spring in my step at work. And sometimes the challenges, the struggle, the sadness can be so overwhelming that I am not the best version of myself, and it means my work isn’t as good, or I am short with someone. That self-awareness allows me to empathize with others on my team or other teams and to realize that there is so much more that impacts a person every day beyond the work that sits on their computer screen.
And at the end of the day, I truly believe that those who lead with empathy are the most likely to grow their influence in a positive way. The relatable leaders who truly care about the people and getting to know what’s inside, those are the people I want to work for. Those are the people I want to emulate. That’s the person I hope to be…. The leader I hope I am.
Business and Babies 