I regular advise leaders to regularly play “T.A.G.” with your staff. You need to take time to hear from them and ascertain “Their Aspirations and Goals”. You need to know them, their strengths, their weaknesses, how they like to contribute, etc. Once you know those things, you should find opportunities (as possible) in your business to leverage what they’ve shared with you. If you do this enough, sit back and watch both the business and your employee(s) flourish.
All of this, of course, should be scalable. If you have a large team (you define the size), perhaps your T.A.G. focus should be on your business leaders and equip them to T.A.G. across the entire team. That said, however, I will say that I’ve heard FAR TOO MANY leaders use team size as an excuse for NOT engaging their employees. To those who feel that way- stop it. Whether they are your direct reports or folks in your chain of command, as a leader you must be visible and engaged with ALL in some way. Ok…I’ll get off that soap box.
So, you schedule a T.A.G. session…what do you say? What questions do you ask?
There was a great article in a 2006 Harvard Business School Publication- “Are You Giving Your Top Performers a Reason to Stay?”. The letter lists a few questions to start a career dialogue:
1. “What assignments have you found to be the most engaging?” (These could be assignments in your business or a previous business- be open to listen)
2. “Tell me about an accomplishment in the past six months that you feel good about?”
3. “What makes for a great day at work?”
4. “If you could have anyone’s job at [INSERT YOUR COMPANY NAME], whose would it be?” (Be prepared for YOUR job to be part of the conversation. Also, ascertain the “Why?” for their selection. This is a powerful question where, in addition to understanding their aspirations, you’ll have an opportunity to describe things they may be unaware of such as the required slate of duties, required skills, and expectations that go with the position in question. This one can be fun and eye opening for both you and the employee.)
5. “What types of work do you envision yourself doing two to five years from now?” (Be sure that these are things they TRULY want to do and not something they think you want to hear. This becomes the seed corn for their career plan. If it’s full of things they are just saying because it sounds good rather than true aspirations, you’ll both fail in getting them to where they want to be.)
I’m a big believer of writing stuff down and referring to it from time to time. So, I highly suggest doing that after your T.A.G. session. Have your employee write down their answers and follow-up with you on email so you can best capture your discussion on each question. This is the beginning of career planning (I’ll discuss creating a career action plan in my next post). Documenting conversations between the two of you adds initial accountability to the eventual true plan- who will own what actions, what are the metrics, what’s the expected timeline (not set in stone), etc.?
I can attest that 1-5 above are simple questions that yield interesting conversation. They will cause folks to think and your time with them will be more profitable than you may ever know. Staff are appreciative of both the conversation and you caring enough to find out what makes them tick. Some immediate impact is that often employees become more engaged in the business and with their teams.
None of this is rocket science (and I know a few rocket scientists). Rather, it is what we should be making time to do- talking to our folks about their careers.
T.A.G. You’re it!
-Nate Copeland