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In what ways are you sowing into and giving inspiration to your leaders? They have a crucial role within your business, guiding one of your largest investments, your people. Are they being encouraged in areas that actually motivate and drive them?  Do they feel and observe your support?  Is fuel being put in their tanks or being depleted from it?  Are you preparing the way for them to soar? The way you lead, the vision and values you live by and the culture that has been established within your organization or your team matters.  Are leaders within your organization expected and empowered to do the same for the leaders in their sphere of influence?  The answers to these important questions may determine the motivation level of your leaders and the ultimate success of your company.

An Unstoppable Force

As a leader, taking time to understand and affirm leaders in the way they are naturally wired helps to unlock and fuel their potential.  Investing time in better understanding the deeper things that drive within each leader individually will maximize their contributions within your company or organization.   Encouraging leaders to clearly see the organization’s vision, and their part in its success helps to unleash their potential, not only within the organization, but your organization’s impact within the community.

This type of discovery and encouragement can be viewed as adding fuel to their leadership tank.  It is like providing a little spark as a vision that can continue to be fanned and grow.

Consequently, our businesses and organizations can achieve great things.   I believe we tend to reap what we sow.  There is a wise old saying that those who sow sparingly will reap sparingly. Those who sow generously will also reap generously. Although I believe the context of this idea is encouraging generosity in our personal lives, I believe it also has a similar application to the investment of the people in our business or on our team.

If we sow sparingly into the development and future of our team, I believe this will ultimately impact what we reap from the returns of their work.  If we sow into their development and future, the return is significant. It is within our power to provide both the encouragement they need, as well as influence the culture that is conducive to healthy growth.  As we do this, we can encourage them in their leadership journey and potentially see our team soar.

Monday Morning

As part of developing leaders, it is imperative that we are guiding and developing a healthy culture within our organizations.    A healthy culture inspires, values and develops what is likely one of your largest investments, your people.  This should include down to the rank and file.  In reflection, assess whether there is an expectation of all leaders to be focused on making others successful throughout your entire your organization.  Ensuring your culture is healthy and actually aligns with your values and leadership expectations can help provide fuel and inspiration for accomplishing great and audacious things you did not think were possible.

One way we can ‘sow’ into and impact the leaders within our businesses, organizations and the marketplace is to incorporate a way to help discover some of the intricacies of how they are naturally wired.   From a culture perspective, this helps to reinforce your care about each person individually, their contributions and as to how they fit on the team.  This is one way to view the Predictive Index (PI).

The PI helps in the discovery process of getting to know your people and your teams, starting with your leaders, in a deeper way.  It will help identify the things that drive, motivate and just as importantly, may be de-motivating them.    We give fuel to our leaders and teams by investing time encouraging each of them individually and the impact will be positively reaped within our businesses collectively.

The PI helps us discover things that may be hidden from view and possibly never shared by our leaders and team members.  Consider that generally speaking, people will tell us as leaders what they believe we want to hear and do what they believe we are expecting of them.  This may or may not align with how they are actually wired and motivated.  This is especially true at the hiring stage.  If someone wants to come work for you and your organization, they will likely do and say all they can to convince you they are the right person for the job.  What if in reality, these things do not actually align with how they are truly wired.   In the hiring and on-boarding process, we call this the 90 day rule, which means that the actual person you hired will be discovered in about 90 days.   A mis-hire can negatively impact your company significantly not just in the actual costs related to the hiring process, but also in the soft cost of having to re-hire, such as lost training and efficiency across your team and organization.

Although we have the ability as leaders to ask things of our teams, having an under the hood look at what truly motivates them across all the various stages and dynamics of our business will give us tremendous insights.  The PI is one tool that has a proven track record to provide significant value in this leader discovery process.  Utilizing the things discovered by the PI can help you add fuel to the tanks of your leaders, maximizing their individual and collective value, both internally and within the marketplace .

Randy Earnst-Talent Optimization Advisor