The Center for Workforce Excellence focuses on providing individuals and organizations with strategies and solutions to bring out their best performance and effect positive change.

Boomers are preparing for retirement and generation Y is entering the workforce. What is the recipe to create the decisive "people advantage" under such circumstances ?

Companies have to redefine their leadership expectation to make sure that they will be able to cope with the new generation. I am encouraging the organizations to look at their leadership tellers. What are they calling out and expecting from their leaders ? Usually organizations will say that they want leaders in this organization to be capable of being visionary, being responsible, being customer centric. They call out things like that. According to me, nowadays you have to call out the ability to manage across differences, and establish that as a required leadership competency.
Moreover, companies have to  develop the capabilities to create a learning environment where all the generations can learn from each other. It is about alignment and also about being able to connect, collaborate and communicate … across differences.

How can managers and human resources leaders get the full commitment of all employees nowadays ?

- “You have to manage to the power of one”:  which means that individuals have their own needs, their own expectations, their own desires, their own fears, that have to be taken into account by managers.
- Today leaders have to have a blend of style. In my book “The hybrid leader” I look up what historically has been associated with the male style of leadership which is to  shut up and  do not ask question. Mostly the men were raised in an era where the leadership style was commanding control. Now women are more than 50% of the workforce and they bring a different style. Neither style is good or bad. Most of the leaders are very left brain: they are corporate thinkers. In todays'environment people will not feel that they care.  Care is a right brain activity. And it is more easily  demonstrated by female.
- Today, you can develop a style that allows you to be strategic but intuitive, to be direct  but willing to "bend", to be competitive and cooperative. It does not have to be one or the other.
My hope is that todays’ leaders can demonstrate  compassion without being called “weak”. If you want to see people perform better you need to get close to them and that requires both man and woman to learn a new style

How to manage to the power of one ?

- HR has to sit down one to one with each of the leaders: that is where to start. How many managers really know what motivates the employees that work for them: 2 or 3 people might raise their hands. Most leaders do not know, they have no clue, they have never turned to someone to ask: “what do you want, what really motivates you?”. So companies have got to ask, they have to listen and then they have to honor it.
- HR really has to support the development of leaders now, like never before. Indeed, most leaders, who  are in place right now, are there because they did good individual work. They were really good individually but, no one has really taught them how to lead people; to connect with one person at a time and to find out what motivates those people.  Most of the managers grew up in a commanding control model of leadership. That model was “you do what I say and do not question me”. That is not going to work nowadays. Therefore, human resources have to support the education and  development of leaders and  then leaders have to understand that there is no cooky cutter approach to managing todays workforce, be sincere and authentic about understanding what motivates each individual and create an opportunity and an environment where each individual ‘s motivation can be tapped into.

What is mandatory to achieve workforce excellence ?

People have to get back into a learning mode. The changing landscape has changed so dramatically that what we knew no longer works now. On the one hand, we have to be willing, to  make the choice to dedicate ourselves to excellence, (because it is a choice). On the other hand, we have to accept  that we have to build  new skills, capabilities and approaches in order to  create the kind of output that will make someone says that something is really excellent.
Lot of organizations would have such opportunity for improvement if they could raise their employees’ engagement and get people excited again about  who they work for.  Most people wake up and they do not want to go to work. How much excellence do you think you will get from somebody who says “Oh my God I have to go back to that crazy place again” ?
Excellence is way above that :  it is not the minimum.  It gets you into that all world where you get tap into the emotional intelligence where people give you discretionary time and discretionary brain space. That is where you get to excellence, it is not showing up and doing your job.

How to strengthen a workforce for which generation Y will be the dominant demographic?

I think you should use them for the answers. When  I am helping companies, what I tell them upfront is that the answers to the problem are inside the house. Then they are able to  gain a better appreciation because they start tapping into these groups and asking them the question. if I ran a company, I would have an employee resource group for the younger generations and I would use them as an internal consulting group and sit down with them and ask them specific questions about what they need to experience success and then I would step back and look to see what that means for my policy,  for the way that I go to market. As an example, as baby bommers, we have been all over retirement plans, gen. Y person is not thinking about retirement plan : it is not working. Therefore, I think  we should go ask them and listen very carefully.

What would you advise in today‘s economic turmoil ?

There is the temptation to say that there is no need to focus on developping people  because the resources are required everywhere except for developping people.  For those who think so and do so, it will be a strategic mistake.
I will just remind people that there is an extreme sense of urgency because this economy will turn around. What we have to be clear  about is whether we want to be positionned to sustain our succes or if we are not careful, this time, it will pull us down.

Post a comment on redaction@latoiledesrecruteurs.com