Goes around, comes around…
Effective communication is not a “soft” skill, but an absolute must in all areas of business. From pitching our product or service to potential customers, to working with centres of influence, to building a referral network, hiring staff and being a recognized leader. Communication is imperative to ensure everyone understand the process of what they are expected to do to the best of their ability. This in turn allows leaders and managers to engage and motivate everyone to work toward the same vision, achieving organizational goals.
Leadership coach and colleague Lissa Daub, Certified Exit Planning Advisor works with business owners and executives on being a better boss. This would of course hone their communication skills to ensure they can motivate the message.
“Build relationships, make decisions, and influence others.”
Resistance to training up
Why is it then that so many in upper management or executive positions hold onto their years of experience and wisdom gained as a shield against the up-and-coming generation?
I’ve encountered employees in key positions, perhaps having been at the company for many years are assigned a “back-up” to their post, or perhaps getting ready to retire, are assigned their protégé and instead of taking the time, seeing the opportunity, using a leadership method to transfer all they know, a couple of things seems to happen:
· The seasoned employee sets the “replacement” up for failure as a job security.
“They’ll really miss me when I am gone.” or
“No one can do this without me.”
· Combined with a trainee thinking everything in the past is history and therefore irrelevant and so dis-engage from the process.
“What do they know” or
“That’s old school thinking.”
Is the legacy then that the business will die without certain key employees?
No, of course not.
Recent posts from my colleague Dawn Henwood, from Clarity Studio has me considering how are working toward to ensure the next generation will use the knowledge we gained from our experience and are we effectively transferring that knowledge building for future success. In one of her articles, she asks, “How to use history to sell Innovation”?
“innovation depends on a web of previous wonders”
Through her example, my takeaway question is, is anything new “original”. No of course not. Therefore, there is no such thing as “old school” thinking, but more of an “okay, this is how it was done, what were the learnings and takeaways that I can apply in our new environment?”
The path to future success
Being part of the building blocks of success, we do not see our younger colleagues as “competition” but instead the path to the future successes of our clients. Yes, we are all unique as a snowflake and our approach, our value propositions differ but consider how many snowflakes melt without anyone ever experiencing their individuality. For those reasons and so many more, we have launched our training and benefit mentorship program in an effort to share what we have gained over more than two-decades in the employee benefit space.
If you are interested in having a conversation on this or any other topic as it applies to employee group benefits, we would be pleased to engage.
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