Keeping the top talent in your team is critical to your success as a manager.
Your top talent are the people on your team who always deliver results, who can be relied on to perform, who can be trusted to find solutions, who are ambitious to progress further. Imagine your working life without them. It’s not so pretty.
Here are 3 quick tips for keeping your top talent.
Tip One: Have Regular Career Development Conversations With Them
You don’t have all the answers, but don’t let that stop you having career development conversations.
The best thing you can do with your top talent is engage with them regarding their career development. If you haven’t done this yet, there are 3 key questions to ask them, to start this off:
- What’s your ultimate career goal? (What position do you want to be in when you finish your career?)
- What role is the logical next step in your career, to take you to that career goal? (There may be 1 clear option or 2-3 possibilities.)
- What are your development needs, to prepare for that next role?
Return to those 3 questions once a year. Then, on a quarterly basis, meet with them to focus on their development. This quarterly meeting only needs to be 30mins, but make sure it’s a separate meeting and make sure it’s entirely focused on their development.
The agenda for this meeting is simple:
- Review your team member’s development plan
- Review the actions take in the past quarter
- Agree the actions to be taken in the next quarter
It’s a paradox. The more you demonstrate your commitment to developing their career, the longer they’ll stay with you. Remember, you don’t have to have all the answers, you do need to demonstrate your commitment to their careers.
Tip Two: Give Your Top Talent the Right Work, Not Just More Work
Top talent can be trusted to get their work done. And because of that it’s tempting to keep giving them more work, and more work, and more work!
You should resist this temptation.
Getting the best from your top talent is not about giving them more work. It’s about giving them the right work.
The right work is not routine, mundane, ‘high volume’ activity that exists within any team.
The right work is work that will challenge them. Work that prepares them for future roles. Work that inspires and motivates them and gives them purpose.
Here’s where to look for this type of work:
- Look at your work first. What work can you delegate? (It may be the work you enjoy most!)
- Look beyond your team member’s immediate role. What opportunities are there (that align with your team goals and their development needs) to offer ‘stretch’ to this individual?
- Look at how they can support the rest of the team. Can they be a Mentor to team members? Can they be given responsibility for onboarding new team members? Again, make sure it aligns with their development goals, but often there are roles that they can play within the team that will further these goals.
Tip Three: Help Your Top Talent Expand Their Network
The top talent in your team understands the value of a network. Creating opportunities for them to connect is one of the best ways of creating value for them (and it’s very quick and simple for you to do). And because they’re top talent it helps to build your reputation too!
Make sure that you create opportunities for them to network that are:
- Beyond their existing reach
- Higher up into the organization (not just at their level)
- Outside of the organization too (where appropriate).
Helping them build their network has two benefits for them: the prestige and the practical. The prestige is all about the positive emotion: that sense of being valued, recognized, appreciated for the contribution that they make. The practical is all about the development opportunities created by having the right network.
Get into the right habits and this becomes second nature. Here are just a few examples:
- If you’re emailing them to recognize their performance, make sure you CC your manager too
- If they’re starting a new and challenging project, consider who across the organization could provide some Mentoring support
- If they’re travelling, write in advance to introduce them to appropriate colleagues at their destinations
To Wrap Up
Commit to developing their career. Remember, it’s a paradox. The more you demonstrate your commitment to developing their career, the longer they’ll stay with you.
Give them the right work. Give them work that will challenge them. Work that prepares them for future roles. Work that inspires and motivates them. (Don’t just give them more mundane work!)
Create opportunities for them to network. This is one of the best ways of creating value for them. Get into the right habits and this becomes very quick and simple for you to do.
Underpinning all of this must be a genuine desire to do the right thing for your top talent. This includes helping them move on when the time is right.
If you’ve done your job well they’ll move on within your organization and your reputation will grow too!
