Five Proven Ways To Attract and Retain Great Leaders

Provide mentoringand professional development5

Define your onboardingand training process4

Define your recruiting process3

Imagine your ideal candidate2

Start with the boss1

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Leadership is a difficult quality to measure, but it’s also one of the most important aspects of any business. Employee engagement and retention depend on the strength of a given leadership team. The leaders in that team can affect the business for generations to come.

Attracting and retaining great leaders is key to any organization’s success. If you want the best talent, it’s not enough to foster an enjoyable work environment or cultivate a culture where great leaders want to stay. High-performing companies also need systems and processes in place so they can find, recruit, and retain more of these high performers.

Luckily, there are proven ways to attract and retain great leaders, which we will cover in this ebook. We’ll start by defining your role, what your company is looking for in new hires, and how you intend to find them. Then we’ll talk about how you can welcome these new employees into your company with training programs and mentorships that will lead them down a clear career path. Finally, we’ll talk about some of the best ways to keep employees engaged on that path.

Introduction

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Start with the bossIf you want to attract and retain great leaders on your team, the best place to start is with yourself. Take ownership of hiring and put a system in place that will allow you to find, recruit, and retain your best people. You need consistency—this consistency will help you define what kind of people you need for your organization to have long-term success.

When it comes to recruiting, take ownership and make it a priority. With the right process in place, you can avoid doing the searching yourself, but you still need to do your part in understanding how the process works and what makes a good candidate.

If people aren’t your biggest priority, then what is? Are you putting other elements of your business ahead of building the best team for your future? By taking ownership, you demonstrate to yourself and others how important the hiring process is. It’s all about defining what makes a strong candidate and team and then building that commitment within your company so that you can recruit the right people into your organization.

If you don’t focus on hiring the right people, what will your business be? If it’s not a priority to find and keep the best of the best, how can you expect anything more than mediocrity from your team? Your tone around this process is vital—set a vision early so that whoever is doing the recruiting can find you exactly who you want.

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Once you have ownership of hiring and an understanding of what kind of people you want in your company, the next step is understanding what kind of candidate will be a good fit for your company and position.

Before you can delegate responsibility for recruiting, make sure there is a compelling vision of who you need to hire and what talents they need to fulfill the role. Some things to consider are personality type, interests, and skills. You may also want to ask yourself about the company culture and how this person will fit into it. The more you know about your perfect candidate, the better you can advertise to find a fit. The more you can tailor your job description to fit that person, the more likely they’ll be interested in filling it.

Imagine your ideal candidate

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Unfortunately, many hiring managers don’t take the time to complete this task before hiring. They see a resume and decide to bring the person in for an interview. They often want someone who is “proven” and will be able to start immediately. That concept is false because while it may seem optimal to get someone who is “proven”, they are not necessarily the best fit. Taking time to identify your ideal candidate will allow you to get someone who is both experienced and right for the job.

Here are some questions to think about when creating your ideal candidate avatar:

1. How would you describe the person you’re seeking?

2. What are the skills this person needs to have?

3. Do they have a proven track record of performance?

4.What is the ideal culture fit for our company?

5. In what geographical area do you want them to live?

6. What experience does your ideal candidate have that will be useful here?

7. Is the ideal candidate within your salary and benefits range? Do you need to adjust?

8. Are there any other areas that should matter, like being bilingual, tech-savvy, etc.?

9. How will you know that this person will be a good fit?

10.How much time do you need to invest in this person to make sure they’ll deliver?

As you define your ideal candidate, someone who checks all of the steps above would be a double bullseye. As they start having fewer of the preferred qualities but still have the must-haves, they venture further from the center. That candidate could still be a good hire because the other skills could develop. The point is to know your “double bullseye” along with your “must-haves” and “preferreds” in advance, so you and your team know who you are looking for exactly.

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Recruiting is a critical function for any company. Every business needs good people to stay competitive and successful, but it can be challenging to choose who will be the best fit for your organization. That’s why it’s essential to have a recruiting process in place that you follow every time you hire someone.

Your company’s recruiting process should be a well-defined, documented system that links meaningfully to the other talent management systems you have in place. From interviews and background checks, all the way through hiring approval and onboarding processes, there are many steps involved in recruitment—and they’re all important.

Here are some key questions to keep in mind when designing your system: What steps define our recruiting process? How many interviews? Who has veto power for candidates? Who gets involved with initial screenings, what roles do they play, and how does this role change at later stages of the recruitment cycle? Does legal approval need to happen before making hiring decisions or after all the vetting process steps are completed? How vital is qualification assessment? What is the feedback loop?

These are just a few of many questions to consider when designing your recruitment process. Your process should be specific to your organization, your hiring needs, and the development phase that you are in at any given time. Without a well-defined recruiting system to help guide you and keep things on track, your recruiting cycle is likely to be choppy—or worse, chaotic. It’s also worth noting that an exact, defined recruitment process can help you develop talent in-house as well as attract new hires—so this is a crucial element of your organization’s systems.

Define your recruiting process

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Define your onboarding and training processAfter your recruiting process achieves its goal, it is essential to have a clear and well-defined onboarding process for new hires. The company should provide policies with an overview of how things are done here, including expectations, requirements, and the type of training required. A signoff on those policies by both managers and employees should seal the deal.

Each employee at a company is unique, which means that each will react differently to training and onboarding. Some people are very hands-on learners, while others prefer a more passive approach to learning. The onboarding process’s goal should be to help employees understand their roles clearly to perform optimally from day one.

One of the most important things to understand about onboarding and training is that it isn’t like a cake where you follow a recipe. What works for one business might not work for another, even if they are in the same industry or have many similarities. You need to use your creativity, experience, judgment, and knowledge when creating your process.

There needs to be some orientation: videos and hands-on demonstrations are common ways to teach what you will expect from them at work. Employees need time to acclimate themselves to their new culture before being thrown in to sink or swim situations where they don’t know what they’re doing or why they are doing it. Having a guided process will help keep everyone happy because you’ll see when you start and finish—this is a must and will bring everyone together into a thriving learning environment.

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To retain leaders, you must provide a supportive environment that facilitates mentoring and professional development. Many companies focus on time management and process improvement, but neglect the opportunity to help their employees grow and develop. We’ve seen many companies where workers are frustrated with the company because they aren't challenged enough or pushed to perform at a higher level. Great leaders set themselves up for success by making sure that their employees are challenged and pushed to reach their full potential.

Working with someone who has already been in the role is integral to success because the mentor already understands the challenges and potential pitfalls—their experience and expertise can be invaluable. Good leaders are motivated by giving back to their organization and its members and look for internal and external leadership roles that offer unique opportunities.

Provide mentoring and professional development

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■ Moderate to High Competence ■ Variable Committment

■ Low to Some Competence■ Low Committment

High Competence ■High Committment ■

Low Competence ■ High Committment ■

EnthusiasticBeginner

DisillusionedLearner

ReluctantContributor

PeakPerformer

Clear performance reviews should be provided annually at a minimum with progress check-ins and feedback monthly. Honest feedback will help them grow as they learn what works well and what doesn’t work so well. Clear expectations both within your role and those around you will build mutual trust, essential for every leader. Trust between peers is important because this allows leaders to focus on their strengths while their peers take care of the weaker areas while still feeling like they’re a part of the team.

Providing opportunities for professional development allows leaders to keep up with changing leadership roles and challenges. Everybody needs to know what’s expected, where they stand, and what they need to do to get to the next level. It’s always great to have a model for what a person might be going through with their work. The Situational Leadership® model is a concept developed by Ken Blanchard and Paul Hersey in the ’60s. The model focuses on leadership styles based on different situations that might occur throughout an employee’s career and describes four development levels:

“Everybody needs to know what’s expected, where they stand, and what they need to do to get to the next level.” T

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The first level is Enthusiastic Beginner, which can show you’re eager to learn new things and you like the challenge of trying something new. You may then become a Disillusioned Learner as you notice how tough it can be in certain aspects of your job. Next comes Reluctant Contributor, and finally Peak Performer. The Situational Leadership® model emphasizes the importance of matching leadership styles to individual followers’ levels of motivation, ability, knowledge, and the situation itself. It allows leaders and managers to understand better how their employees work best, improving communication between them.

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