"Engage Your Top Performers with Impactful Projects"
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This is a priority for every agency leadership team.
Finding the talent is difficult, training the new hire is achievable and then the challenge is ongoing – growing and retaining your agency’s team members.
The most important employee retention step is to have ongoing conversations. For example, when was the last time you asked the following questions:
• What do you consider your strengths at work?
• What is the favorite part of your role?
• What else would you like to be doing?
As the leader, ask yourself:
• How can I contribute to helping my team members grow – individually and with the company?
• What are some responsibilities that I can delegate?
• What training and further skill advancement do they need?
There might be a variety of ways to expand your team member’s skills, knowledge and capabilities:
• Manage more challenging accounts.
• Run and analyze reports along with forecasting and making recommendations based on the data.
• Take charge of an important project and implement a plan.
Aim to “stretch” and advance the individual’s skills by assigning a meaningful project. Delegate a project that has substance and creates impact on the team member’s capabilities and the agency’s strategy or operation. The project experience is a tremendous learning opportunity.
Have no fear – coach them to success with the assigned project.
At NLP, our business is about managing projects every day, week, month, etc. We designed an infographic tool to help when teaching a team member project management skills. Check it out, and please use it, too: https://files.acrobat.com/a/preview/d13c86d6-ab1a-46fe-a30f-e24107157a41
Coming in fall 2017, we will be adding to your State Association’s Business Skills Curriculum – “Managing Projects Successfully” – and will be a new offering of three courses: “SUCCESSful Project Management Steps,” “Leading Meetings for Effective Results” and “Influencing Stakeholder Buy-in.”
