Author Recap: Career Growth Experts Discuss Employee Engagement, Psychological Safety, and Retention

Well, Ches, you know, an important topic here, career development, and we have two of the, really, the world's experts in helping managers be more real thought, really thoughtful about career development. I love this idea. Look, engagement jumps up when we engage in career development. It's that simple, isn't it? Yeah, the intentionality, that was the word I really circled you know that you've really got to be intentional about it And you know it reminds me of our wonderful spot a sponsor magic mind You've got to be intentional about your mental health, and you got to be intentional about taking it I love the power of their ingredients that they're all natural you get a 40 48 percent discount when you go to their website magic mind comm forward slash Gossip again Elton that's and a and D not the ampersand. Gossigan, Elton 20. You know, it's really interesting that when you use natural ingredients, you're really intentional about where you source all your ingredients, that you get a natural and very nice up. I love they talk about you're in the zone, you know, you're in the flow for seven hours with MagicMind. And you have to be intentional about it. You know, I use it every Monday morning, for example. Back to our wonderful guests in, you know, watch them grow or watch them go. I thought it was really interesting that they start off by saying, you've got to have a trusting environment. You've got to have psychological safety. And we talk about that a lot, don't we? It's as, you know, we've been hearing this a little lately, it's table stakes, right? That you've got to create this psychologically safe place. Unfortunately, we're doing a lot of things that are throwing that off right now. And I'm not saying you can't, you know, we have to stop this, but return to work, when we've let up loud people to have this flexibility, layoffs are happening, job security is reduced, et cetera. We could go on for a long time that there's a lot of things that are adding to uncertainty right now for your employees. Well, as an individual manager, you have no control over those things. What you can control is how you develop your people. Absolutely. The thing that they keep coming back to, which I thought was really interesting, was can I tell my manager the truth? And as a manager, are you open to people actually telling you the truth? And what do you do with that? That, again, that trusting environment. Now, we mentioned what if you don't have a manager like that? And of course, the idea is that you say, well, find somebody in the organization, which I thought was a great takeaway, where you can get honest and open feedback, somebody that you do trust to talk about where you are in your growth path, that maybe you're in the wrong spot, and how do you correct that, right? Yeah. Yeah. We did some work with, quite a bit of work with Michigan Medicine, and their most popular program they ever put together was like an hour-long mentoring session, where you could just choose a leader from anywhere in the organization and this person would give you an hour of their time just to mentor. And it's really terrific. And what they're saying with this all is, look, career development discussions don't need to be two hours and you plan for, a lot of it is just, I loved what Bev said, why the smile, why the frown? That's a way to start a conversation. That's a great question. Doesn't need to be daunting, doesn't need to be all this thing, but you're looking, a savvy manager, as Julie says, is looking for pauses. They're looking for, you know, boy, you were really connected on this last project, but this time you're seeming a little disconnected. What's going on? You're looking for cues. Yeah, they're good questions, and they said all throughout the book, there are a lot of good questions. The one I liked was, what got you excited about this project? You know, what was it that really lit a fire underneath you that got you that smile as opposed to that frown? I really appreciated at the end when they talked about their practices on tamping down their anxiety, when they said, take two minutes for yourself. We don't take enough time for ourselves to just sit and think and reflect. Where do I want to go? What am I going to do? What's the next chapter? And then bring really good people into the conversation. That was my last really big takeaway. But I love their attitude around workplaces of trust and engagement, that AI can be a real help to that. There's nothing better though than sitting down person to person, eye to eye. Yeah, yeah. And we use an actual person to produce this podcast, not AI. A lot of people are pushing us that way and we say, no, no, no. We're gonna stick with our producer Brent Klein who is a real human so is Christy Lawrence our booking manager they she helps us find amazing guests we want to thank them we want to thank all of you have listened in if you like the podcast please share it we'd also love you to visit the culture works.com for free resources to help you and your team thrive yeah and we love speaking whether it's in person or virtual. We speak all over the world to audiences, literally in every industry. And we'd love to come and visit you and talk about topics of culture, teamwork, resilience. Give us a call, we'd love to talk to you about your event. And of course, lots of resources on, as Adrian mentioned, on thecultureworks.com. You can find our books at Audible, on lit video books, on Amazon. Please pick up a copy, and if you like it, share with a friend. As always, Adrian, I would like to give you the last word. Well, from a rainy Park City, Utah, we're going to sign off here. Thank you everybody for joining us today. Until next time, we wish you the best of mental health. ♪♪