Build an Amazing People-Magnet Machine: Know and Invest in Your People

This is the last in a series of three blogs about what it takes to build what my Growth Whis­per­ers pod­cast part­ner Brad Giles and I call an amaz­ing peo­ple-mag­net machine, and to make sure you have a con­stant flow of amaz­ing peo­ple who want to work for you.

If you missed parts 1 and 2, here are the links:

• Part 1: Estab­lish­ing Your Brand as an Employer
• Part 2: Proac­tive Recruitment

Now on to part 3: I’ve said before that the secret sauce of grow­ing a suc­cess­ful com­pa­ny is to have strong peo­ple on your team. Hir­ing the right peo­ple is just the begin­ning. If you want to strength­en and retain, you have to invest in your peo­ple. You need to know them and you have to invest in their growth and development.

Know your people

Know what they want, where they are, their work­load, their chal­lenges in life, their aspirations.

If you know your peo­ple well, it’s eas­i­er to fig­ure out what you can do to help them to grow.

(I picked this up from Mark Cuban when we talked to him, pregame, years ago.)

Under­stand where they want to be in three-to-five years and work with them to get there.

As a man­ag­er, even if you aren’t sure if some­one has the abil­i­ty to get there, it’s in everyone’s best inter­ests to give them appro­pri­ate oppor­tu­ni­ties to stretch and try, in real time.

This is the dif­fer­ence between buy­ing some­thing you see in a win­dow and going in to try it on to see if it fits properly.

For exam­ple, two exec­u­tives said they want­ed to even­tu­al­ly be a CEO, so were giv­en oppor­tu­ni­ties to prove — to them­selves and the com­pa­ny — their appetite for, and abil­i­ty to do the job. After a year, one of the can­di­dates found they loved the work and the oth­er didn’t.

As a man­ag­er, it’s your respon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­vide coach­ing and train­ing and lots of tan­gi­ble feed­back about what’s work­ing and not, along the way – and in post­mortems from project teams. The per­son should also report on their own progress and reflect on how they can do bet­ter next time.

Invest in the growth of your exist­ing good and great people

Your best peo­ple are like your flag­ship prod­uct or store. You’re very proud of them, they do great work and are exam­ples to oth­ers. But when we get busy and don’t put enough ener­gy into these great assets, we miss the oppor­tu­ni­ty to keep them engaged and hap­py, as they devel­op and grow – and for them to train and devel­op the peo­ple under­neath them.

Pro­vide train­ing or coach­ing. The best invest­ment you can make in peo­ple is to accel­er­ate their career pro­gres­sion with addi­tion­al knowl­edge or capa­bil­i­ty. This approach is also a great exam­ple of what’s pos­si­ble for oth­ers in your company.

• Many great uni­ver­si­ties offer three-day pro­grams or train­ing courses.
• Involve them in your projects to con­tribute some­thing beyond their day job.
• Give them a chal­leng­ing project to do on their own. Some peo­ple learn and thrive when they are thrown into the deep end of the pool.
• Give them new lead­er­ship respon­si­bil­i­ties. If some­one wants to be a man­ag­er, ask them to men­tor oth­ers to start work­ing on their man­age­ment skills.
• Invest in a coach to help accel­er­ate their growth. And, if you do, make sure you use the Coach­ing Tri­ad (chap­ter 14, Your Oxy­gen Mask First) so that you stay in sync with them and their coach about what’s work­ing, what’s not and what they should focus on.

In sum­ma­ry of this series, to turn up the pow­er of your amaz­ing peo­ple mag­net machine:

1. Have a great peo­ple strategy
2. Rein­force what makes your com­pa­ny an amaz­ing place to work with evi­dence back it up
3. Ask your peo­ple to proac­tive­ly recruit candidates
4. Con­tin­u­ous­ly devel­op peo­ple, and get them engaged to increase their capabilities
5. Let them shine as exam­ples of what’s pos­si­ble at your company.

The Chal­lenge

• What do you need to do to get to know your peo­ple better?
• What can you do to invest in their growth?
• Who are you going to get to work on this, with you, to make it happen?

For more on this top­ic, check out Episode 37 of The Growth Whis­per­ers podcast.