Executive Podcast #333: The Recipe for Retention

Perry Holley:
Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast, where our goal is to help you increase your reputation as a leader, increase your ability to influence others, and increase your ability to fully engage your team to deliver remarkable results. Hi, I’m Perry Holley, a Maxwell Leadership facilitator and coach.

Chris Goede:
And I’m Chris Goede, executive vice president with Maxwell Leadership. Welcome and thank you for joining. Today we’re going to talk about retention. And the word that we often get a phone call about from organizations is we need help. Our turnover is bad. Our retention rate is not where we want it to be. And so Perry put together some thoughts around the recipe for retention. So we’re going to dive into that before we do.

Chris Goede:
Want to encourage you to visit MaxwellLeadership.com/Podcast, click on this podcast and there you can leave a comment or a question for Perry and I. You can also get a link and download the Learner’s guide. Before we get started, I thought I’d look and just share some statistics with different industries.

Perry Holley:
Look at you.

Chris Goede:
Because I wanted to do something to come prepared. I know.

Perry Holley:
Let me.

Chris Goede:
Let me prepare. Yeah. Listen, don’t quit your day job on me, okay? Because I started thinking we have so many different industries that we impact. It’s amazing when you look at the clients that we have the privilege of serving, not only through this podcast, but in the front of the room and on coaching calls. It’s all. It’s across the board. And so I thought, well, let me grab a couple of different industries and just share this. Now, this is the turnover rate, not the retention rate.

Chris Goede:
So hang with me. This is the turnover rate of some different industries. The hospitality, 79. Turnover, 21 of the staff staying. That’s what that’s saying. Professional services, 57, turnover, turnover. Okay. These are how many people on an annual basis.

Chris Goede:
Construction, 24. Manufacturing, 37%. Government, 18%. Those are just some quick percentages for you to think about when you think about turnover. And I don’t know what industry you’re in. You’re listening right now, but I know you’re probably close to one of these. And we have the same problem as you’re listening, saying, man, how do we do that? And the other thing is that Perry and I watch very closely, what is the engagement level? Because that’s a. That’s a key indicator of what’s going to happen with turnover and the percentage in our business.

Chris Goede:
And it took another dip in, in the reports that have just come out. Right. And so although that’s good job security for us, it’s not necessarily good. The engagement and the morale of organizations. And so the reports of great detachment tell us that your teammates are more inclined than ever to detach from what they’re doing and maybe even from you. Not only just to work, but from you. And so while people join your amazing company, for obvious reasons, they’re quitting the leaders that are inside your organization, or maybe even you, that’s the hard part.

Perry Holley:
To get your mind around is that they join because of the reputation of your company. They quit because of you. And it’s a wake up call to all leaders that the engagement of your team is a leader issue. The detachment of your team is a leader issue. And we did a podcast on the great detachment a few weeks ago. So you can go listen to what we think about that. But it really says a lot that people, you know, that the war for talent is real and talented people, people with skills and talent are, they have choices. They don’t need the quiet quit or detach.

Perry Holley:
They can just, they can put their name into the portal and somebody will take them to do that. So I thought we’d talk about a few things that leaders could be doing to retain top talent would be my goal for this conversation.

Chris Goede:
I love that.

Perry Holley:
And give the. Get some real practical ideas on that.

Chris Goede:
And all of this. Again, let me just talk about. I believe a key to decreasing your turnover, right. Would be to understand how influence works, to understand the five levels methodology. That’s why we’re so passionate about that. Because as leaders, if we understand that, and again, leadership is influence for us, if everybody in our organization understands that methodology, it’s going to drive you to increase your influence, which then in turn will lower your turnover rate.

Perry Holley:
I think as you’re saying that it’s such, such a deep. You’re really on the right point is that if I agree that, yeah, leadership is not about my position, it’s about influence, your very next question should be, how do I get more of that? That’s right. And that’s what we do in this workshop, is we, you know, actually I said influence is a fun word to say influence. It’s fun to say, but what does it mean? What does it look like? How do you get it? How do you lose it? That’s the question you should be asking. And if you’re, if you’re taking an intentional course, that’s what some of these ideas here about an intentional path to developing influence, your retention rate will drop, your engagement rate will increase because people will make that amazing leap from level one. I follow You. Why?

Chris Goede:
Well, because I have to.

Perry Holley:
And to level two, which I follow you. Why?

Chris Goede:
Because I want to.

Perry Holley:
I want to. So what would make somebody go from my follow you? Because I have to. To follow you? Because I want to. Influence.

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Perry Holley:
I was like, gosh, if that’s. I. I wish I’d known this when I was your age. No, that’s. I wish I know this by Jake’s age, man. I just. I was trying so hard to be the boss, and I couldn’t retain talent and I couldn’t engage a team. But if you decide, oh, I want to be influential with them, how do I do that? I want you to make that amazing leap.

Chris Goede:
That’s good.

Perry Holley:
From level one to level two.

Chris Goede:
So I love that. That’s good. No, that’s good. I like that. So the first part of that building off what Perry’s talking about is I gotta take responsibility for my relationship with others.

Perry Holley:
Yes.

Chris Goede:
You can’t gain influence of what we’re talking about if you don’t intentionally initiate a relationship. Now, I want to be careful here because we don’t have to build these relationships and these long drown out conversations. I was with an organization just a couple days ago and happened to be a very, very smart room of engineers that do some incredible stuff. You say the word relationship to them, that they were like, I’m not listening to one thing you’re saying after you said that word. But when you talk about how do I connect with people, that’s much different. Right. And so you got to initiate, you got to be intentional. And so you, as a leader or as a teammate, because we’re talking about influence, you got to connect with people.

Chris Goede:
If you’re going to sit in your office, if you’re going to sit in your cubicle, if you’re going to sit on your Zoom in your house, and you’re going to say, well, I sure hope Perry reaches out to me today and connects with me. Right. That’s not going to happen. And so no matter my position in the organization, if I wanted to connect with Perry, I need to send Perry a text, give him a phone call, whatever. Jump on a Zoom, connect with you. I see it happen all the time. And it doesn’t have to be a hierarchical thing. You just got to initiate it, be intentional about it, and you have to take responsibility for the relationships inside the organization.

Perry Holley:
Leaders initiate, leaders initiate. It is so strong. But your point’s exactly right. There may be a power dynamic, and there’s always. There always is. 100%. A power dynamic could Be a lot, could be a little. It’s not because of you.

Perry Holley:
You happen to be the leader, you happen to be the boss, you happen to have the title. People just naturally apply the power dynamic to you. Now you may be going out of your way to reduce it, to be one of the team and one of the guys and one of the group and reduce, reduce, reduce. But there’s always going to be there. And so people are thinking, well, I don’t want to bother him, I don’t want. They’re not going to initiate. John calls it walk slowly among the crowd. I’m old enough to remember when it was called MBWA management by walking around.

Perry Holley:
Just see people initiate, build the relationship. Take responsibility for that.

Chris Goede:
Let me. You just triggered a thought. We had a guest on here. May have been our most listened to downloaded episodes ever. It was Brian Porter.

Perry Holley:
Say Brian’s name. Right.

Chris Goede:
Unbelievable, right? Broke all kinds of records.

Perry Holley:
That’s right.

Chris Goede:
And what I love about their university and their organization because Hendrik has a university and then inside the organization is they make this very easy for all of their employees. Right. Because when you said management by walking around, it made me think about their personality assessment. And they go by management by strengths. And so all of a sudden they’re wearing name tags which allows when you get up and you walk around, it’s not just a name tag. It’s a name tag that has an identifier of how they connect with people, how do they like to be connected with. And so you get to that point where it makes it a little bit easier to initiate if you’re intentional about it. And all of a sudden you walk around and I can remember one time I was walking around their office and because I think he’s guide for the office there and he’s like, so right here, this is so and so.

Chris Goede:
And because of they have their color on their door. This is right. We’re not going to interrupt him. He doesn’t want to talk to us right now. But you know, I’ll send him a text, whatever. I’ll just let him know. And we would go through that. I thought, man, that’s brilliant to take ownership of a just a little key, little helper in initiating relationships.

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Perry Holley:
Number two would be if people do leave, I absolutely do exit interview and you know, I want to discover and I really want to know what’s going on. If I’m really good at leading, I’ll already know. But I want to know why are you leaving if. And am I the reason you’re leaving now? If, if I am, I want to be sure to apologize and let people know that wasn’t my intention, but. And I may not be able to save the person from leaving, but I need to know, you know, is there some. This is like an after action review, an aar. Can I at least understand what’s going on so that if, if I do have a problem, if I do have a blind spot, if I and haven’t built that relationship, what can I do about it? So you’re definitely, you’re not going to have 100 retention. People are going to leave for various reasons.

Perry Holley:
So some of them will be positive for their career. They’re making a move. Some of them will be negative against you perhaps. I hope not. But you need to know. And I, I worked with one group that we hired an external exit interview firm to do some of that just so we would be clear, because they don’t always tell. One thing I learned, they always telling me is about money. Well, I’ve learned that most people, there are some, but most people don’t leave for money.

Perry Holley:
But what they told the exit interview firm was I didn’t feel valued. Okay. Money was number five, by the way. They told the exit it was I didn’t feel valued. I didn’t feel like I belonged. Didn’t feel relevant, didn’t feel like you knew me, wasn’t making any progress and you don’t pay me enough. It was, it had a lot more to do with me than I would have liked. So, you know, people don’t usually leave for money.

Perry Holley:
They leave because they don’t feel valued.

Chris Goede:
Isn’t this so true? It’s easier for them to say that it’s money or say that it’s another opportunity or a development of something, a skill set, because it leans on an IQ side of things. It’s easier than to understand or say, hey, Perry, in this example, you let me down from an EQ standpoint, right? Emotional intelligence standpoint, which ultimately was probably what happened. But there was probably another offer, another opportunity. But the easy way we get in exit interviews, and I love that you used a third party is, oh, yeah, no, it’s a, It’s a money thing and it’s a better opportunity. So why were you looking in the first place or, you know, what happened there versus really what they wanted to sit down and says, I don’t feel like you value me. I don’t feel. Those seem like, again, we talk about EQ and servant leadership as being soft terms. Right.

Chris Goede:
They’re not going to come sit down and say, well, Perry, but that’s what you needed to hear in order to become a better leader. Again, going back to the relational side of these things. So you mentioned it. So let’s unpack this a little bit. You got to put. But third, you got to put a high value on those that work with you or those that work on my team. And it’s super powerful when the leader believes in their people. Right? It is super powerful.

Perry Holley:
I think this is so big, though. But put some practical to this. So it’s easy to say, I’m going to put a high value on those I lead. What does that mean? You salute me when you walk by. I mean, what are you doing? How do you value a person?

Chris Goede:
Yeah. Okay. I want to talk about this a couple different ways with you. Number one, I think there are different things that you can do to value people. They need to align with how they’re. How they’re wired. Right. And, and, and what their appreciation language is.

Chris Goede:
So if it’s. They like to be recognized. Okay. I have a team member that, if I’m being honest with you, if I said, hey, would you prefer me give you a, a bonus or recognize you in a team meeting? They’re going to want to recognize in a team meeting. Okay. And I know everybody just drove off the road. If you’re driving or you, you the stair climber, you went the wrong way. But understanding what it is that they see value in is how you need to value them.

Chris Goede:
It’s not, you know, you love value. We were talking about just a minute ago, before we started, you love woodworking, right? I don’t. Okay. So showing value to me is not buying me a tool. That I would have no idea how to even use, including a tape measure. When we just recently worked on a project together.

Perry Holley:
You probably worked out.

Chris Goede:
I worked it out, yeah. I mean, I just took a picture of the numbers, the old turn, you.

Perry Holley:
Know, measure twice, once.

Chris Goede:
Yeah. May have been more for me, but understanding how they. What they value, right. And recognize that how do you invest in them? How do you include them in certain things when you do those things, that’s not. We’re not even talking about any type of financial, you know, value to them. We’re just talking about things of understanding your people. I think the other thing too is providing feedback shows value. I’ve heard you say this in our team meetings before with our team, which is so great because we all need to hear it, which is I realized when I was getting that candid feedback that they were my leader was valuing me as a person enough to give me that feedback in the right way.

Chris Goede:
And so I’m valuing them. I was with an executive team in an organization and we were talking about really how to give candid feedback with care. So we talk about care and candor as we lead people. And they were like, okay, so we’re talking about this level two skill set of connecting with your people. And then level three of we got to give really candid feedback for production standpoint. I mean, how do you do that? Right? And so we got into a conversation which was really good. At the end of the day, they all decided that in order for me to show value and care for the individual, I need to give feedback to them the way that they best receive feedback. And I go, you got it.

Chris Goede:
Like, now you are getting to a place where you are understanding that you’re valuing that individual. And when you do that, even if you have to give them some tough information, they’re going to receive it well and they’re going to value being a part of that organization. And again, going back to this is just a part of the recipe for retention.

Perry Holley:
Well, I love that. And I’m just thinking, as you’re saying, I wrote two words down that I. This is new to me. I’m hadn’t put these two words with it, but everybody on the team wants to feel that they have status that I’m not. You don’t look down on me. You don’t put me down. You don’t put yourself above me. And even though you may be titled above me, you value me by giving me status.

Perry Holley:
So how would I give someone status? John Maxwell did it to me A few weeks ago, we were standing in a group and I always stand back. You and I were actually standing back. A lot of people gather around him and he turned around and said, well, come here, Perry. Perry does. And when he put his arm around me and told somebody about me, he instantly gave me status. And the second word was respect. He respected what I did. He told people about what my contribution was and, and made me feel like I was a value.

Perry Holley:
Now he’s obviously the star of the show, but he brought me into light. I thought it was such a simple gesture, but it’s very meaningful to me now. Am I going to, are you going to retain me and my talent here? I think so, because John and you do the same thing. You, you, you give me status, you give me respect. And I feel like I’m a contributing member of the team. And now we do things as leaders. I think almost 100%, unintentionally, accidentally, is we talk quick, we move past people, we force things down, we take away their status and we act a little disrespectful or they, they receive it. We didn’t mean it that way, but they receive it that way, which makes it real.

Perry Holley:
Right? So I love these two. I’m thinking about if I’m going to add value to you, am I, am I promoting your status and you respect, probably by having your voice allowing you to speak, inviting you to speak.

Chris Goede:
That’s good.

Perry Holley:
Contribute to that.

Chris Goede:
Yeah, I love that.

Perry Holley:
The fourth one, my credibility. I put credibility at the top of my leadership list. How credible am I? So you can think about tied to competency, how good am I? But it also about my trustworthiness with the team. So I’m looking at integrity or competence, transparency, accountability, all these types of things. When people see me, am I that leader that I would like to be? Am I, am I actually living out and putting action to those great words?

Chris Goede:
One of the things that you mentioned there was consistency. So I say to my kids all the time, consistency compounds all the time. And so I think we need to make this number five. And I know that it’s my job as a leader, right, to create an environment, to create a place where not just not fluff, right. But one that is a consistent, right, behavioral, organizational team. What does that look like? And how do I lead consistently so that you know what to expect, right. When you show up, that’s going to show value to you in the fact that, hey, I know consistently when I show up to do X, Y and Z, this is what’s going to be happening. This is the environment, this is the, the culture that I’m in.

Chris Goede:
And so to be able to do that consistently is key.

Perry Holley:
Well, you’re hitting on a really important, this consistency of emotion. If you’re watching anything in leadership right now, they’re talking about wellness and employees, psychological safety. And is it, do I feel. It’s an inclusion thing, a belonging thing, but it’s also, do I feel psychologically safe with you? And that inconsistency of emotion where you might blow up or be impatient or stomp your foot or slam your, your fist, People think, yeah, I don’t know if I, I don’t, I’m not feeling it around you. I’m going to hold back, I’m going to, I don’t feel safe. It’s not safe to tell you stuff. And so I thinking when you hit that word, psychological safety is a big deal and that speaks to it. And I’ll just give you, you can wrap up.

Perry Holley:
But the number six for me, the last one was around teachability is that am I teachable and do I have a teachable spirit? As a leader, you can come across two ways. One is I have all the answers and I already know all that. And you could learn a lot by watching me or I’m teachable and that means I, I can learn from you. And I’m, I put myself out that I’m always. I value personal growth. I value your growth. And I think we should be growing together. That makes people want to be a part of what you’re doing to do that.

Perry Holley:
I keep learning so I can keep leading. I think I probably heard John say that. Yeah, but I want to lift the lid on me. That lifts the lid on my team, the law of the lid. And it just, it just makes everybody come together better.

Chris Goede:
Rising tide raises all boats And John, you’re right. John’s key word lately has been, you know, teachability. And he models that there’s not meetings we don’t go in or we’re sitting around or dinner. It’s like, hey, tell me a little bit more about that. Right? Like, what does that mean? How did that happen? And so, or when I did this, how did that make you feel? And so he models that and expects that of his leaders. Well, I started off with some statistics that for me, I just look at that and it just, it breaks my heart right, to see because not only is it a statistic, but if we want to take the people side out, that’s a lot of money in organizations are spending when they could be taking that type of money of bringing on new talent and losing talent and hiring and investing that back into the people inside their organization. There’s no telling what the organization could actually do and the impact that it could have on people. But the key to what we’re talking about here, and the recipe for retention is do your team members feel valued? That’s the word we talk a lot about.

Chris Goede:
You know, John’s got three questions. You’ve heard us talk about that. But we also say, do your people feel seen, valued, and heard? And when you think about that, if you could answer those three questions and it’s yes, then I guarantee your turnover is not as high as some of the percentages that I started off with. If you can’t answer it, then I just want to challenge you and say, what do I need to be doing intentionally and how do I need to initiate almost tailoring how you answer those questions? And I know as a leader you’re like, well, that’s going to take a lot of time. But you got to tailor that to each one of the people that report directly to you and then expect your leaders to do the same thing. Because when that happens, then you’re going to have a entire team that feels valued and a part of that organization.

Perry Holley:
So good. Well, as Chris reminded at the very top of the broadcast, if you’d like to learn more about our offerings, about our podcast offerings, or get the learner guide for this episode, you can do that at Maxwell Leadership. You can also leave us a question or a comment there. We love hearing from you and very grateful you’d spend this time with us today. That’s all from the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast.

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