Let’s face it—leadership is a whole lot easier when you have outstanding employees and a strong followership. Top talent can make your job seem effortless and boost your team and overall organization’s ability to reach its objectives. Superstars on your team perform at a high level, and they seamlessly integrate personal and company directives into their daily workflow. They operate with enthusiasm and serve as role models for other team members. They also treat the organization as if it were theirs, making sound decisions and making you look good as a result.

Unfortunately, sometimes the challenge with great employees is that they are hard to retain and will leave you and the company.

It's been said, time and time again, that people don't leave their jobs, they leave their bosses. This is true based on my experience, and the data agrees. In a recent poll of 7,200 American workers, Gallup learned that about half of respondents left a job to escape a manager they didn’t like.

Bad bosses can make their people feel like useless cogs in an uncaring machine, and uninspiring leadership is one of the top reasons why talented employees start dreaming of greener pastures. But what if you’re not a bad boss? What if you have worked hard on your self-awareness, emotional intelligence and communication skillsin an effort to increase employee engagement and people are still leaving?

The truth is that even the best leaders lose great people but that doesn’t mean keeping star employees is out of your control. In fact, there are several strategies you can employ to enhance your already impactful leadership and keep your top people around, if that is in alignment with their goals and career path. So, let’s get started by exploring this from an employee’s perspective.

3 Reasons Why Employees Leave Their Jobs

From your perspective as a leader, you may be mystified as to why anyone would want to leave your organization. You're offering excellent pay and benefits, and you've learned all the latest employee-engagement best practices. You've worked hard to become the kind of boss people love working for, and yet you still see people exiting the organization.

Why is this happening?

#1 — Employee Confidence Is Extremely High Today

The job market in North America has been bleak in recent years, but the landscape is changing rapidly. According to research and advisory firm Gartner, employee confidence in business conditions reached its highest point in seven years during the fourth quarter of 2017. Today’s typical employee is no longer content with just having a steady job; these days, employees demand the best jobs, especially if they are outstanding at what they do. Therefore, perhaps issues and challenges that employees would have tolerated a few years ago are now reasons for them to seek better work conditions elsewhere.

What Leaders Can Do

Once you have a star employee on your team, part of your job is to continuously work to keep them engaged, inspired, and challenged. The best employees have high expectations of the organizations for which they work, and if competing organizations are working harder to meet those expectations, it's only a matter of time before you have to replace your best people. Maybe you're an excellent boss, but that doesn't matter when an employee can find an equally fantastic boss and more engaging work elsewhere.

What you need to do is think about how you can focus on creating roles that are tailored to your star employee’s strengths. Instead of working to get your best people to conform to rigid job descriptions and roles, transform their job descriptions and roles to match their strengths and abilities. Watch an already high performing employee soar to levels beyond expectations!

#2 — Team Chemistry Is Missing

Another factor impacting the rationale around why people choose to leave is that the relationships among coworkers might be suffering within your team and organization. We all know that terrible bosses can cause people to leave, and rewarding relationships with coworkers can cause people to stay. Work relationships are an incredibly important factor for most of us, and many leaders underestimate this fact. Research from Gallupindicates that job happiness is strongly related to having a best friend at work. If work relationships leave the best employees with a feeling of wanting more or of being unfulfilled, it shouldn’t be a surprise to see them walk out the door.

What Leaders Can Do

I often talk about the power of emotional intelligence when dealing with individual employees and understanding what drives them. But you should also use your emotional intelligence to gauge how teams work together. Don’t just put people together on teams because they have complementary professional traits; assemble teams based on personalities, interests and factors that don’t necessarily relate directly to the work being done. Pay attention to your people as individuals. Take an interest in what drives them outside of work. You will be able to find “kindred spirits” within your organization this way, and this knowledge will influence the way you build and nurture relationships among your employees.

#3 — Great Leadership Empowers Employees

This is a tough nut to crack as sometimes outstanding leadership is precisely what drives an employee to leave an organization. Yes, lousy leadership can cause good people to go, but great leadership doesn't always keep people from moving on. In fact, a study performed at the University of Illinois found that employees leave both bad and good bosses at roughly the same rates. Furthermore, researchers concluded that managers who are supportive by empowering their employees with greater challenges and more significant responsibilities, tend to transform them into stronger candidates for external jobs.

What Leaders Can Do

Being a good boss matters, even if it means losing your best people to opportunities that you’ve unwittingly groomed them for. Don’t stop excelling at leadership just because you’re afraid you may be preparing someone for a better opportunity outside of your organization. Instead, focus on how you can continue to provide excellent opportunities and make your workplace fun, stimulating and challenging for all employees. Provide everyone equally with the chance to advance their careers, continue hiring talented people, focus on working hard at dealing with “toxic” employees, and you will reduce the impact that losing great employees has on a team and business. Succession planning is critical to business success, and it is your responsibility as a leader to work with your team on establishing a healthy pipeline of talent for your organization.

What Do You Think?

How have you handled the loss of your best people? What is causing your people to jump ship? I’d like to hear your thoughts on this topic, so please send me an email at joanne.trotta@leadersedgeinc.ca or call me at 855-871-3374. I would love to chat with you in greater detail.

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