Hey, this is Chris with Hacking Your Leadership. On today's discussion on employee engagement. I want to talk about the importance of making sure that people who want to move
up with it an organization feel like they can. And in a lot of organizations that's harder to do because of the number of spots that are available or how quickly things move, and it can make some employees you know, kind of get dejected about this process, and some of them go as far as leading organizations because they feel
like there isn't a path. There are a lot of things that leaders can do to kind of reimagine traditional leadership hierarchies because they want to help employees grow, help you know, be more flexible or collaborative in the business. There are a lot of benefits to doing things like this, but the biggest one is what it does for the employee experience and the engagement of people who genuinely want
to promote and move up within an organization. And you may not have as much control over you know, how quickly that can happen because of the spots available or the budget or the you know, people you know getting promoted and leaving roles. You know, it can happen at varying speeds depending on the organization you're at.
Yeah, yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I think in the context of thinking about career progression and opportunities, a lot of times what I see is is, uh, we get stuck with thinking about how certain roles have to hold on to certain authority in decision making or strategy building, and we say like, oh, well, now that you're a this, you know, a manager, now you're more responsible for executing strategies. Or now that you're this and you're leading other managers,
now you're responsible for building the strategies. And like we we we tie these types of tasks and responsibilities to a title versus maybe the person versus maybe being creative, and how we get all of that work done. There's absolutely a level of responsibility that moves with people as you move in your career progression for titles. So like, you now have this job, here's the responsibilities of this job,
and you need to do these things. It doesn't mean that only you have to do all of these things, and it doesn't mean that you don't have to bring others along or create spaces of collaboration when it comes
to some of these things that you're working on. So I think that a part of it, when you are reimagining kind of the different hierarchies of leadership, A big chunk of that is where can we involve others for both their ideas, their insights, but also to provide them with you know, opportunities to learn and exposure and experience and these types of things, like where do those spaces exist? Where are those decisions where they have to be made
by the person who hasn't response in the role. Then where can these decisions be made maybe more collectively and and and even if that person has to make the decision, how can that how can that person create a space where they can you know, collaborate and open up some of that decision to others before they make it. So I think that a lot of that has to be done, you know, for to reimagine some of the like the more traditional things that have always happened over the years.
We've got to get better and knowing that maybe the leader has the responsibility and the ownership of the decision, but getting to that decision, who they include, how they create space for it, how they how they provide others the opportunity to idate in those spaces I think is going to be critical.
Yeah, I think you're spot on with that. A person a leader can absolutely be ultimately the person who is accountable to a specific outcome or a process or the execution of a strategy, while still delegating the work itself to other people in a way that that gives them,
that makes them a part of it, the leadership hierarchy. Uh, even if it's just temporary or you know, for for a project or a role, without it being a permanent thing, as long as the person you know knows what's going on and they they understand the score when it comes to what their what their role is, you know, sometimes it can be the only way to let a person have the experience they need to be able to find out if they want to move into a leadership role
or you know, what they want their you know, future with the organization to be. So I want to go over a few things that leaders can do to do this the right way without, you know, without promising too much to an employee that they don't have the ability to follow up on. Also without making making it seem like it's window dressing, and that and that what they're doing actually, you know, has has positive outcomes from a standpoint of career growth and development. But first, I want
to get up toward to one of our sponsors. Right If you're a leader of people and you're trying to figure out the right way to give people the experience and the work that they need in order to ensure that they have what it takes to continue to move up within the organization, even if there isn't necessarily a spot available right now. It's important to keep in mind
two things when it comes to the work that you're choosing. One, you need to level set with the employee on what their goals are so that when you are assigning work or delegating work that might be outside their normal scope, that that work will help bring the learnings and the experience and the skills that they would need to go into that next step or that next role that they
that they want to do. It does no help for the employee at all if the things you're delegating are not related to what that next step is that they want in their career. If this is what they've kind of raised their hand and said, I want to move up, you know, giving them kind of busy work is not development. That's just you know, kind of putting things off of
your plate on theirs. And then the second thing is you have to make sure that when the employee is doing this role, even if it's temporary, that the employee truly feels like they are in this role. So if it's a a mentorship spot or if it's a temporary, you know, position on the leadership team to kind of grow and develop there, it can't be kind of leadership light. It can't be Okay, well, they're remember the leadership team, but we're not going to do these things or these
things with them. It's they can be involved in this thing, but not that thing. It's like, no, if you want them to truly take the most out of it, they need to feel the weight of that position on their shoulders, and they won't feel the weight of that position on their shoulders if they don't feel like they're being treated
as that role at every turn. That's the only way to truly prepare them for that role if they want to go into it eventually, and it's the only way to make it make them not kind of feel patronized or like that you're kind of throwing a bone to them for the moment, because you want them to stop complaining about trying to get promoted. No, you truly believe this is some thing they could do if they wanted to.
They want to do it. Now, let's see if the if the skills are there, or if the skills need to be developed before a permanent role can be can be kind of offered.
Yeah, I love that you kind of talked through about, like the the totality of you know, the whether it's the delegation or the empowerment to someone, like if you're going to do something that that's created for somebody to have an experience and to actually feel, to your point, the weight of the responsibility they have to have that. You know, you can't just say I'm gonna you know, I'm gonna ask you to make these decisions, Chris, Like you're you're in charge of make a decision here. Also,
if it goes bad, don't worry about it. If it goes good, I'll take all the credit, you know what I'm saying, Like, that's not how this is gonna work.
Right now.
You've got to feel the weight of that. If you're truly going to create a space that's about like learning and development and providing something that is breaking the hierarchy of what's typically there. It has to be done with intention, and it has to be done kind of like all in on whatever that's going to be as much as you can within the control, you know. I mean, there are going to be things that as a leader only you can do, and decisions that only you can make.
But there is a lot of space to play typically in getting to that point. And that's where you can bring people along and start to start to give some of that authority away from a decision making standpoint, and that provides the opportunity for people to build their own confidence in the decisions they're making and preparing them for what's next as they elevate their own career.
Right. And the last thing I'll say about this I think it's important is it will come with failures. Meaning I don't mean person as a whole fails. I mean the person will have individual failures based on decisions they make, or interactions they have, or relationships that need to improve that they didn't improve on. You know, those little failures are necessary for a person to feel the weight of the position. The weight of the position isn't felt through
the good times. It's not felt through the you know, Oh, I have the authority and I can tell you what to do, and I'm doing these projects and i'm I'm I feel like i'm you know, unleashing myself to you know, go to that next level. That's not where the weight of the position is felt. The weight is felt in making decisions that have real implications on relationships with people, and how you navigate those decisions in a way that shows what your values are and that maintains the relationship
without sacrificing your values. That's what the leadership opportunity is for that person, and so it will come with failures if they've ever been in a role like that before, and it's important to allow them to have those failures so that they can fix them on their own, on their own terms. If you're not doing that, then they're going to feel like there's a big safety that underneath them and they won't get as much out of the position.
Thank you for joining us in this episode about employe engagement. I will see you next Thursday for the next one. You have a great day,