“If we want to move from the great attrition to the great retention then organisations need to start to put support in place for leaders, managers, and support for individuals who have been impacted through this challenging time and trying to navigate the future during the next few years, which is uncertain and unclear.”
Jo Lyon, MD and Co-Founder Talking Talent
So what do we do?
In this week’s episode Jo Lyon, the other half of Talking Talent’s founders shares her insight on:
- How leaders need to be during this turbulent time? What are the traits that they need to show?
- What is it that might be stopping leaders from being able to really be inclusive and move forward during this period of time of change?
- What can organisations do to support leaders, managers and individuals during this time?
Or read on for the transcript
Hi, I’m Jo Lyon and I’m the co-founder of Talking Talent and I’m here today because I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the great attrition and how we enable leaders to help move that towards great retention.
So, before we do that, I’m going to start by telling you a little bit about my story over the last 18 months. I’m a parent. I’ve got three teenage, well almost teenage children. One 16-year-old, 14-year-old, and a 12-year-old, all girls and I think any of you who’ve got teenagers will know that that’s quite a challenging time, particularly during lockdown. We’ve all been working at home. We’ve been sharing Wi-Fi. We’ve been sharing the same four walls for a long period of time. Obviously, they’re all back at school now, which is fantastic, and long may that last. In addition to that, I’ve had a number of health things thrown at us as a family, allergy reactions, genetic conditions, mental health issues, parents who are vulnerable worried about COVID, and the impact of that.
On top of that, obviously as the leader of a business, it’s been really important to stay agile as their head, make sure that we’re doing the right things, we’re moving to virtual in the right way. We were lucky that we were doing 50% of our work virtually any way and so actually it wasn’t a massive leap. But there were still things that we didn’t know, and the uncertainty and our clients had a space of uncertainty and so we were having to be agile. I know the keyword during the pandemic was to pivot and I think certainly we pivoted. I think really there’s been so many challenges going on during these 18 months that I think it’s sometimes useful just to step back and reflect on that.
So, I think one of the benefits of our organization is that we do have a true purpose. We’re here to make a difference, to build a more inclusive work world. That’s what we really, truly genuinely want to do. So, in telling you the story, really the reason that I wanted to tell you the story is because I think there are a lot of people out there who’ve had their own story, and I’ve certainly over the last 18 months heard so many stories of people and their challenges or their realities, or how they’ve experienced lockdown, whether they be an introvert or they be somebody who is living overseas from their parents or somebody who’s been unable to visit people because they’ve got a partner with an autoimmune system.
So, I think the really important piece about this is to recognize that all leaders have had their own experiences and the people they’re managing have also been experiencing a number of things during this period. What does that mean then for us when we’re thinking about this great attrition? Well, I guess it’s not a surprise when people have been overwhelmed. They’ve been in periods of unprecedented change that actually at the end of that, that there is some element of what do I do now and how do I manage this? How do I cope with moving forward and moving through this, particularly when there’s more change coming along this way? So, what do we need to do, do you think as leaders who are going through change themselves? So, I know myself, there’s been a lot of emotional stuff going on in the background, and yet here I am, and I want to step up and even more so be there for the people who work in our organization. Even more so I want to create a culture which is inclusive and enables people to thrive.
The interesting bit for me is that we’ve got potentially 40% of employees reporting that they’re somewhat likely to quit in the next three to six months, according to McKinsey report. In the US they’ve already, apparently had 19 million workers leave the workforce as of April 2021 and that’s continuing. So, this is a real issue for all of us and particularly for us as leaders, who at a time where we might not feel physically and emotionally in the most brilliant place need to be creating environments of connection, belonging, community, where people really feel valued and feel a purpose in their working world. So, what I’m going to talk about today in relation to this is really about three things. One is about how do leaders need to be. What are the traits that they need to show during this time? What is it that might be as stopping leaders from being able to really be inclusive and move forward during this period of time of change and thirdly, kind of what can you do to support leaders as organizations during this period?
So, I think starting with the first thing is what do leaders really need in order to be capable and to show up during this time? I’ve sort of alluded to it in my own story and I think many leaders need to just stop, take stock, reflect on this period individually with their team as an organization and think about what they want and how are they going to really shape their experience and the experience of the people that work with them and for them going forward. So, what is this going to require from leaders? I’ve talked about this in the past, the idea of the five Cs of leadership, and these are really, I think the key criteria to being an inclusive leader. So, one of those is about care and we’ve talked a bit about this through Rob Bravo on one of the previous podcasts that he’s done.
Really when we talk about care, we’re talking not just about our own understanding of care, but actually, how do we take care of ourselves as leaders? I think there’s a real moment of pause that we can take right now as leaders. That might be actually sitting down with a coach, an executive coach, and having some sessions really around where am I at? Where do I want to get to? It could be about sitting down with your team and talking that through. So, I think there’s a piece first of all, about self-reflection. How am I taking care of myself and my well-being? We know mental health and mental wellbeing have been massive challenges and will continue to be over the next few years. So, as leaders, we need to role model, how do we look after ourselves first. We then need to really take care of those around us and be really listening and mindful about what are some of the key challenges that we know that people are facing, but also just sitting back and listening. So how do we take care of those who work for us in our teams, in our organization, and how can we be mindful of that?
The next one is really around courage. So, I think as I’ve said already, this has been a period of unprecedented change and I think with that, we’re asking people to step up. We’re asking people to navigate a difficult time. We’re asking people to navigate through a period where they don’t really know exactly how it’s going to be on the other side. We’re asking people also during this time to be courageous in terms of maybe taking some risks. When I talk about taking risks, when we’re trying to be inclusive leaders, potentially we need to do things a bit differently. So, we know during this period we’ve had not only Brexit we’ve had the pandemic, we’ve had Black Lives Matters. We’ve had a number of environmental issues and challenges that have hit and impacted everybody.
So, as we think about this idea of courage, it’s really about us as leaders being prepared to be vulnerable, to show up, to be ourselves. I have to say over the last 18 months, I’ve had to behave and be different, and sometimes it’s quite a leap of faith to share your own vulnerabilities and what’s going on for you. It can feel quite scary at first and so I think a lot of leaders in stepping up and trying to be courageous and do things differently, might be uncomfortable. I think there’s a big piece around actually we have to learn to be uncomfortable and we have to learn to comfortable being uncomfortable. That’s a bit of a mouthful, but that, I think is where we need to get to. It’s not always going to be comfortable. We also know for people in underrepresented groups or in diverse talent that sometimes actually they feel uncomfortable quite regularly. I think it’s time we as leaders stop and start to understand and listen to the experience that those around us are having.
So, the other C is really about coaching, and having coached now for over 20 years, I know the real value in this, the benefit of sitting, observing, listening, reflecting, helping people to understand and navigate their own experiences. I think this is even more important now as we’re having more diverse teams, as we’re working in environments where we’ve got different perspectives. This is absolutely fantastic and so exciting, but it brings with it also a level of need to understand the differences of different people. It’s really important for us to sit down sometimes before we even have a meeting, if there are lots of different people in the room to sit and talk about actually how do we want this meeting to be? How do we want to show up in this meeting?
I think individuals also are wanting different things and if we want to stop the great attrition, if we want to move to the great retention, we need to start understanding individually what motivates the people that work for us and with us. Through doing that we can start to make sure that we’re actually addressing their needs and the needs of the organization and the system. So, I think this piece about coaching is going to be absolutely critical. Learning how to be vulnerable, how to be coached but also learning how to coach others and how to support them.
The fourth C that I want to talk about is creativity. We know if we can be more inclusive, that we have people who are different, that we can come up with more creative ideas. So, a key part, I think of success during the pandemic has been the ability to be agile and to pivot. Part of that is also about being creative. So, we need to continue to be creative as there is more change and more uncertainty going forward. We need to make the most of having a variety of people around us, in organizations. So, creativity is going to be key.
The final piece is I think around clarity. People want a sense of purpose now, and we know the next generation wants to feel that they’re making a difference. They want to feel they belong. They want to feel that they work in organizations that are having a positive impact in the world. So, we, as leaders need to help create that sense of clarity, and particularly in a time, which may be for many it doesn’t feel very clear, and maybe even for us as leaders don’t feel very clear. So, we need to create a sense of what are we working towards, what are we moving towards and what might that look like? I think part of this is about increasing our own emotional intelligence and our own self-awareness. Through that we can understand other people and how they’re impacted and what is important to them. We know that those with more emotional intelligence are often more resilient. So, this is a really important quality that we need to develop and grow within organizations, but also within ourselves over the next few years.
So, I’ve just touched a bit on what are some of the qualities that we need as great leaders during this turbulent time. I think what I want to touch on now is actually what might stop us from getting there? What might be one of the key things that are going to really trip leaders up? If we really are honest about this, a lot of what trips leaders up is about fear. To understand fear more, we need to understand our relationship with risk. That might sound like a strange thing, but if we don’t understand what we’re fearful of and what we’re worried about, and what are the risks that we’re taking, then it’s going to be difficult for us to be great leaders because we won’t understand what are the barriers. What are the unconscious things that are stopping us from behaving or acting in different ways?
So, let’s talk a little bit about risk because risk, I think is often what stops us from change. If you have a think for a minute about what your appetite for risk is. What might that be like for you? When we think about appetite for risk, and we think about change, how does that show up for us? So, we know before the pandemic, there was a real resistance for people working from home, and having sat in board rooms with senior partners I know one of the key things that were actually stopping people from allowing more flexibility, more agility was the risk of whether it would be successful. Would we still be able to manage our businesses successfully if we were doing it in a different way?
For many of us, myself included who came from an era where we worked hard, worked long hours, we were present and that was what success looked like. We’re now in an era where people have started working from home very flexibly. They’re not in the office and that’s bringing a whole load of new learning for us and learning about what is possible. Actually, for some that risk has really been fantastic because it’s made them realize that it is possible and that we can work in different ways and still be successful. I think for others, it’s been a challenging time. So, hybrid working still feels like a challenge for some people and we need to understand how do we feel about the changes that are going on? What’s our experience been. Have we really missed the office because often we make judgments and decisions as leaders based on our own experience and our own feelings and thoughts? So, the more we can understand ourselves the better that is.
The second thing I want to talk about a bit around fear is around aping different. Not so long ago, surprisingly, I had dinner at somebody’s house and one of their guests said to me, I don’t really want a lot of women sitting around our board table because it’s uncomfortable, because we’re not able to have the same banter. We’re not able to say the same things and we’ll have to be different. I think it’s a really useful reflection that that still is a commonly held belief in this day and age. That actually that kind of banter that isn’t possible with women is preferable. So, we know that we’ve got still got somewhere to go on this. And we know that it’s really important for leaders to sit back and think about what are they worried about? What are they fearful of? If there were more women in the boardroom, what would that really be like? What are the real risks of that?
Some of that even goes down to stereotyping, I would say. So, the people that we’ve seen in senior positions have most often been white, male, middle-class men. So, we look at the boardroom and we still see that, and we get a new candidate, and it seems less risky because we’ve seen many of those people before be successful. But if we suddenly wanted to take on a woman who might be from an ethnic, diverse background then we might start thinking about, well, how’s that going to show up? What impact is that going to have on the dynamic? Are they going to work long hours like we might expect from people in those positions? So, there’s still quite a long way to go I think for leaders to be genuinely inclusive and to think about diversity in a really fantastic way. So, we might need during this period as leaders to be bold and as I’ve said, courageous, and take some risks. We might need to, even though it might not seem like the easiest decision might need to make the decision to take somebody different onboard, to try a different stereotype, a different type of person. We know during this time women, ethnic minorities have really had the biggest challenge and because of COVID and because of the implications of that, and that’s come up in the McKinsey reports that have been done recently.
So, we really need to make sure that we’re paying attention and then we’re thinking about how do we help people with that sense of belonging? How do we help create an environment where everybody can be valued? So, as I said at the beginning, Talking Talent is really absolutely focused on this, and we work with our clients to think about some of those things. A lot of our clients are doing some really wonderful and innovative things to be more inclusive, running programs for their senior teams, team coaching for their senior teams, working with their senior leaders around what are the behaviors that are and aren’t appropriate. How can they be more inclusive? Helping them to understand themselves more sometimes encouraging them and creating sponsorship programs to enable them to do more in this space. I think there’s a huge value in coaching individuals, leaders being coached to understand themselves better so that they can serve others more effectively.
In addition to that, I think there is real importance around supporting some of these groups that have really struggled during the pandemic. So, we know working parents have, this is the time to really ramp up for them. We definitely do a lot of support in terms of coaching support for women going through maternity, new dads, or new parents going through the transition so that they can show up and be fully themselves when they come back as working parents. We know more than ever being able to be inclusive and incorporate everybody in that space is really important, but also for line managers, leaders to be on board and supportive of individuals who are taking time off for their families. So, that’s one thing that you can do. Another is really about working with women. So, supporting women but also ethnically diverse talent as we know that they’ve also struggled during this period.
Of course, there is the intersection. So, we’ll have ethnically diverse women. We’ll have people from the LGBTQ community who might also be male or female. So, we’re going to have a number of different individuals who during this period we can really help to support through coaching, through development, through trying to shift the system by sharing lived experiences. We’re running a number of dialogues in a number of different organizations to help people to understand some of the challenges these individuals are facing. Most importantly, I think there is also importance about supporting the managers and leaders to understand themselves better so that they can be more supportive. We know that’s going to be even more important with wellbeing and mental health issues evolving and developing during this period.
So, if we want to move from the great attrition or the great resignation as some people call it toward what we at Talking Talent call the great retention, then I think we need to start to put in place support for leaders, support for managers, and support for individuals who have been impacted through this challenging time and trying to navigate the future during the next few years, which is uncertain and unclear.
So, I know a lot of you are doing so many fantastic things and it is amazing some of the activities and commitment that many of our clients have to this, so we’re really excited about continuing to do more in this space and continuing to make a difference. So, thank you all and good luck.
