Today's workforce craves development.
From the time people are hired until the day they leave your organization, this new generation of employees demands to be coached. You know this, but how does one build an organization so that development happens organically every day?
Your managers play a crucial role.
Find out more in this preview from It's the Manager, Chapter 29: "Creating a Culture of High Development."
Here are four dominant patterns we see in organizations that have successfully built a high-development culture:
1. High-development cultures are CEO and board initiated.
"Strategic alignment" sounds good to almost everyone. But the term has become watered-down consultant-speak. What does it really mean? Strategic alignment is when managers and employees can see a seamless connection between what they are asked to do and what the organization stands for and is trying to get done.
Anything you call "employee engagement" has no value unless it meets those criteria. Here's what the best do:
The organization has a well-defined purpose and brand -- why it exists and how it wants to be known. Everyone in the organization understands that employee engagement is a system for achieving unity of purpose and brand. Leaders explicitly connect engagement elements to their business issues. This means making engagement relevant to everyday work rather than an abstract concept.
Top executives initiate the effort. They know that their attitudes, beliefs and behaviors have a powerful cascading effect on their organization's culture. Leaders of great workplaces don't just talk about what they want to see in the management ranks -- they live it.
Leaders map out a course for improvement. They identify where the company is today and where they want it to be in the future.
2. High-development cultures educate managers on new ways of managing.
The best organizations have leaders who encourage teams to solve problems at the local level rather than using top-down commands. They focus their training and development programs on building local manager and team capability to solve issues on their own.
Engagement, performance and training are all aligned. Training is strengths-based and grounded in the 12 elements of engagement. Managers learn how to identify the strengths of team members and how to use and build strengths as a way to achieve outcomes.
Training is tailored to each manager's capability. Managers with high performance and high team engagement receive more advanced curriculum than those with low performance and low team engagement.
3. High-development cultures practice companywide communication.
The best organizations have exceptional CHROs who build systems that teach managers how to develop employees in line with their innate tendencies.
These organizations have a designated "champions network" that communicates, collects best practices and answers questions.
The ongoing collection of best practice examples creates a vivid picture of what highly engaged teams look like.
4. High-development cultures hold managers accountable.
The companies in our study with the highest engagement levels see employee recognition as a means to develop and stretch employees to new levels of success. Recognition of outstanding team leaders sends a strong message about what the company values.
Tolerance of mediocrity is the enemy of the best organizations. They define high team performance based on a combination of metrics such as productivity, retention rates, customer service and employee engagement. It is clear to managers that their job is to engage their teams. The best companies have consequences for ongoing patterns of team disengagement -- most importantly, changing managers.
The best organizations believe that not everyone should be a manager, and they create high-value career paths for individual contributor roles. No one should feel like their progress depends on getting promoted to manager.
The best organizations know there is no meaningful mission and purpose in the absence of clear expectations, ongoing conversations and accountability.
