G.R.I.T. - Give, Recognize, Implement, Time®

How can we help our employees grow?

Do we provide training courses, bring a speaker in, have a workshop, engage in coaching, or leave employees to their own devices? Many companies, managers, and HR leaders have asked this very question. Have you?

How does your organization help their employees grow? Do they guess at what employees want or truly understand their employees’ needs and fulfill them? Hint: the latter is much more successful!

To truly help our employees grow, we must first know what that growth looks like for them and how they want that fulfilled. And, this doesn’t just mean training and coaching, it also means career development and advancement. Are career paths and what’s needed to progress clear for our employees? Often it isn’t…

Join me as I deep dive on the above and the keys to successfully helping our employees grow.

Attrition rates amidst the great resignation have sky rocketed from the typical 18% to 30% and even 40%. What a jump! Can we afford to lose this many employees? Not just from a work standpoint and the cascading waterfall it creates by further burdening our all-ready overworked employees with even more for them to do, but also from a financial aspect. It’s estimated that losing an employee costs approximately 33% of that employee’s annual salary.

Understanding the above unfortunately isn’t enough to stop losing our employees. We must truly understand what is causing them to leave. For example: people quit people. People also quit organizational cultures. And, people quit because they aren’t afforded growth and development opportunities. This is what we are going to dive into today.

So, how do we prevent our employees from leaving because of a lack of growth and development opportunities? Hint: the answer starts with them! Join me as I break this down.

“How do I advance my career?”

“How do I have better work/life balance?”

“How do I overcome me weaknesses?”

All of these questions revolve around our personal development – a broad looming topic that means something a bit different to each of us. So, what does personal development mean then? Great question!

Personal development simply refers to anything we want to grow in, be better at, and improve about ourselves. Typically (even in organizations), we characterize our personal development from a negative “What’s wrong with me” perspective. When we do this, we, more often than not, are harder on ourselves than needed and, we make it hard to achieve the growth we want!

We can, however, flip the above script and not only set ourselves up for success in achieving what we want, but also clearly outline what we want to achieve and carve out an easier path to achieving it! Join me as I break down what personal development truly is and how we can easily accomplish it.

“How do I advance my career?”

“How do I have better work/life balance?”

“How do I overcome me weaknesses?”

All of these questions revolve around our personal development – a broad looming topic that means something a bit different to each of us. So, what does personal development mean then? Great question!

Personal development simply refers to anything we want to grow in, be better at, and improve about ourselves. Typically (even in organizations), we characterize our personal development from a negative “What’s wrong with me” perspective. When we do this, we, more often than not, are harder on ourselves than needed and, we make it hard to achieve the growth we want!

We can, however, flip the above script and not only set ourselves up for success in achieving what we want, but also clearly outline what we want to achieve and carve out an easier path to achieving it! Join me as I break down what personal development truly is and how we can easily accomplish it.

“I have to be perfect! There’s no other choice!”

“I can’t screw up! People will think less of me!”

“If I’m not perfect, I’ve failed!”

Perfection is highly sought after, held as the ultimate standard, and comes with a steep price! What happens though when we aren’t perfect? We call ourselves names, we beat ourselves up, and we are harder on ourselves than ever before! The need to be perfect comes at a cost!

“But Steven, that’s how I’ve been successful – holding myself to excellence and being perfect!”

I hear you, and I don’t disagree! However, there is a way to do this AND alleviate all of the stress, negativity, and issues that arise when we fall short of perfection. This is the key difference between pursuing perfection and the need to be perfect; the pursuit of perfection comes with excellence AND the acceptance of our fallibility as human beings. When we make this shift, we not only can continue to execute at a high level, we also get better because we learn how to leverage our “failures” as growth opportunities to miss the mark less.

Join me as I break down how to embrace the pursuit of perfection and overcome the detrimental impact of the need to be perfect.

Difficult people are irritating!

Difficult people are frustrating!

Difficult people are tiring!!!

How the heck do I deal with them???

Those we characterize as difficult can absolutely drain us…if we let them! While difficult people impact us, we CAN choose how to let that impact affect us! That is and will always be in our control. So, what does this mean in terms of how to deal with difficult people? Good question! It means, it starts with us!

We always can choose how we feel, think, and act. While something, or in this case someone, may bring out non-serving reactions within us, we don’t have to let that consume us! This is just one of the pieces to the puzzle to dealing with difficult people – negating the detrimental impact they have on us! Learn how we can do this AND other key components to dealing with difficult people in this episode!

How do I find a job I’m passionate about? A question that many of us have asked in our lifetime, more likely than not on many occasions. Numbers, such as 70%, have been thrown around as the percentage of Americans who do not like their job. Are you within this percentage? If you are, you are definitely NOT alone!!!

Finding what we are passionate about is a hard thing to do for many of us; however, there is a WAY to find the answer you are seeking. We CAN know what we are passionate about AND find a job that fulfills that passion within us! It IS possible!!

Knowing it is possible is foundational because it frees us from the “I don’t know trap” we often fall victim to –

“I don’t know! I can’t figure this out!”

“I don’t even know how to get started.”

“This is too much to think about! I don’t know how I’ll ever figure it out!”

And so on and so on. The “I don’t know” trap can paralyze us and prevent us from taking action because we’ve already convinced ourselves it’s not possible.

Join me as I share that it is not only possible, but also there are clearcut ways to determine what we are truly passionate about!

Wanting to advance our careers but seeing no positions available at the next level in our organizations can be extremely frustrating! Rightfully so! We want our careers to progress AND know there is the ability to do so. Having the ability to advance upwards is absolutely critical to this!

So, how do we handle when we don’t see options at the next level? It’s a very common question, and one that actually has many answers to it! Join me as I explore how we can advance our careers even when we don’t see that next level being readily available in our organization.

In addition to asking where we want our careers to go, we also commonly ask how do we successfully advance our careers? Many of us have asked this question and, many of us have answered it as well - successfully advancing our careers to where want them to go.

One of the easiest clearcut ways to know how to advance our careers comes from Harvey Coleman, author of Empowering Yourself: The Organizational Game Revealed.  He outlines the P.I.E. model which dives into how our performance, image, and exposure come into play regarding career advancement.

Spoiler alert! The largest factor we commonly believe plays a role in our advancement isn’t the most important by far. Join me as I dive into this model and share easy actionable steps to start advancing your career today!

Knowing what we want to do is one of the hardest questions to answer.

“What do I want to do for a living?”

“What am I passionate about?”

“Where do I want my career to go?”

These are all common questions we ask when trying to figure out what to do, especially when we feel compelled to continually advance our careers year after year. And, we often get stuck in perpetuity trying to answer these questions.

Get stuck no more! In this episode, we’re going to share some tried and true guidance to start answering the question of where we want our careers to go.