According to McKinsey, tens of millions of employees left their jobs over the past few years and are not eager to return. As a result, many organizational leaders are confused and desperately scrambling to retain their current employees and hire replacement staff. Rather than investigating for cause, organizational leaders are applying quick-fix methods to this problem, such as giving raises and offering hiring bonuses. However, the situation worsens, further threatening the supply chain, increasing economic difficulties, and putting many organizations at risk. Despite their best efforts, leaders within these organizations are overwhelmed, overmatched, and need help.
If leaders investigated, they would find research that indicates employees are leaving because they see the human aspects of work, such as purpose and shared identity, lacking in the workplace. For example, long separated from their physical workplace, many employees yearn for social and interpersonal connections with their colleagues. Grieving that loss of connection, they are demanding empathy, appreciation, and compassion from their leaders. As these human aspects of work are inalienable human needs, it’s unlikely that these employee demands will subside soon – if ever.
As leaders reimagine the way they lead others, they will likely need to prioritize the human aspects of work and acquire the human-centered skills to match. Coming to this realization, however, doesn’t make it easier for leaders to acquire these skills or put them into practice. Coaching can do just that – empowering leaders to develop and apply these human-centered skills.
Coaching is an intensive developmental process that a leader, or team of leaders, undertakes to make holistic expansions to their perceptions and modes of operation. This holistic and often transformational process can expand awareness of limiting patterns, generate broader and more useful perspectives, and expand the pool of options and actions to which a leader has access. These improvements then allow leaders to be more effective problem solvers, decision-makers, staff motivators, innovators, etc.
As a senior-level coach, I believe that every leader is engaged in their own developmental journey, whether they’re aware of it or not. Coaching allows each of us to examine our journey’s trajectory, establishing whether you have your journey or your journey has you. To better examine a leader’s developmental journey, I often incorporate established vertical development methods into coaching. This process takes an inside out approach to deepen awareness, expand thinking, and broaden a leader’s impact.
Research and experience show that coaching conversations can lead to professional and personal transformation, helping leaders expand their sensemaking capacity, tolerance for uncertainty, and adaptability. By developing these abilities, leaders also naturally increase their empathy and human-centered decision-making – qualities employees demand of their leaders.
These developments are key to meeting the challenge of the Great Attrition, as well as other complex challenges awaiting today’s leaders.