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by Dr. Jim Anderson
I’ve got a quick question for you: how is your team doing? Do you have all of the staff that you need in order to accomplish everything that the company is asking you to do? Has anyone left lately? Do you have any funding for positions that you just have not been able to find the right person for? I’m willing to bet that you just answered yes to one or more of these questions. Don’t worry about it, despite our manager skills we’re all in the same boat: not enough of the right people are currently available!
How To Find The Right People To Join Your Team
Can you remember back not that long ago when the unemployment rate was up close to 10%? Back then all a manager had to do was to tell the HR department that they had an opening on their team and the next day you’d have a pile of high quality resumes to work through. Well, unemployment is way down and the baby boomers have started to retire. It has gotten a lot harder to find the talent that you’ll need and none of us have the training that we need to solve this problem.
One of the things that managers need to start to consider is traveling to where the potential team members are currently living. This can happen in a number of different ways. The first is to attend industry trade shows. It’s easy to reserve a private room where you can interview talent that might be looking to make a switch.
Finding the right staff to add to your team is not necessarily a job that you should try to do all by yourself. Sometimes, this is when a staffing firm can step in and lend a helping hand. In order for this type of company to be successful, you are going to have to do your part. This means that you are going to have to provide them with a very clear description of the types of skills and experience that you are going to be looking for in candidates.
How To Keep People From Leaving Your Team
As a manager it is your responsibility to both staff and maintain a team that will be able to perform the work that the company needs you to do. Yes, one part of this task is to get new people to join the firm as a part of your team. However, the other side of the same coin is that you need to find ways to do team building and keep the existing members of your team from leaving.
Making your team a place that talented professionals want to remain is a constant challenge for managers. It requires an understanding of what the members of your team really want in addition to understanding what you can provide them with. We do not have access to unlimited funds or promotion opportunities. Instead, what we do have access to is the opportunity to present the members of our team with challenging objectives that will allow them to stretch and grow.
One of the reasons that members of a team give when they are asked why they are leaving is that they didn’t get any feedback on how they were doing. As managers it can be all too easy for us to get caught up in trying to do our job well that we forget to take the time to communicate with our team. What this means is that we need to regularly find the time to provide members of our team with both feedback and validation of the work that they are performing. By doing this we’ll be sharing with them what their career growth potential is
What All Of This Means For You
Between baby-boomers starting to retire and millennials not staying at any one job for very long, managers have a real staffing problem on their hands. The two challenges that they are looking at include trying to find the right people to join their team and at the same time coming up with ways to keep the current members of their team from leaving.
In order to find candidates to join your team, you may have to travel to where they are. Trade shows and military bases can be good places to find professionals with the skills that you are looking for. Search firms can help you find the right candidate if you can describe the characteristics that you are looking for. In order to keep your current team together, you’re going to need to present your team with challenging objectives and constant feedback. Consider how you can help them to grow their careers.
As a manager you need to realize that you will only be as successful as the team that you have backing you. This can be a real issue if your team has open positions on it or if current members of your team are considering leaving. The one thing that you don’t want to do is to ignore this problem. You need to take steps to both build your team and make it stronger while at the same time keeping the team that you have together.
About the author
Dr. Jim Anderson
“America’s #1 Unforgettable Business Communication Skills Coach”
