An executive coaching relationship should no longer be viewed as an optional relationship for senior leaders. Back in 2005, Thomas Friedman wrote a book on how the world is flat. Today, the pressures of globalization for executives are immense. We have seen the COVID-19 pandemic create challenges for leaders that no one has ever faced. Helping executives to stay focused on personal development, so it does not get lost in the tsunami of urgent details and day-to-day activities, is an essential benefit of executive coaching. The essence of the power and effectiveness of executive coaching lies in the coach-leader relationship. This robust relationship fosters a leader’s growth through purposeful direction, reflection, feedback, and accountability. Today’s reality for a senior leader is that the marketplace is changing rapidly, and you are either ripe and rotting or green and growing. So, how is an executive to effectively stay green and growing in such a fast-paced environment? Modern peer-reviewed qualitative and quantitative research provides support for the effectiveness of the executive coach-leader relationship. In an extensive quantitative study by Stanley Black & Decker, the Sasha Corporation found that executives receiving coaching increased goal performance by 15% as compared to executives not receiving coaching. Also, some of the most admired companies in the Fortune 100 contribute to the $1 billion executive coaching industry. The coaching sector is the second-fastest-growing sector in the world at a 6.7% average yearly growth rate projected through 2022, according to marketresearch.com. The broad support for executive coaching and the effectiveness is undeniable. DIRECTION & REFLECTION Without an executive coach, a leader can lack perspective and miss the benefit of assistance with setting direction. Any road will get you where you want to go if you don’t know where you are going. Setting direction is vital to growth as a leader. Executive coaching starts with an assessment and setting direction. A coach ensures development goals are purposeful and brings perspective to the best focus area. Also, guided reflection is another critical benefit. Often leaders pressed for time move from one urgent task to another and miss the advantage of pausing to reflect. The executive coach partners with the leader to ask questions that explore learning and maximize the value of the coaching. Peer-review research on the topic of reflection has found slowing down and providing time for intentional reflection improves an individual’s performance. FEEDBACK & ACCOUNTABILITY The reality is that leaders are busy, and without accountability, miss the opportunities for learning and growth. In the executive coaching relationship, external accountability is a crucial benefit. Typically, toward the end of the current year and the beginning of the new year, we all start thinking about self-development and annual goals. Then all too soon after, a week passes, work happens and we barely remember the goal. A coach can prioritize topics most critical to advancing executive development. Executive leaders receive feedback continuously from a wide range of sources on potential areas of development, but also can struggle to make sense of the feedback. Proximity to a problem sometimes impacts the leader’s clarity on importance. Also, general feedback often is not presented in effective or constructive ways. During a recent press briefing, President Donald Trump lit into a reporter for a line of questioning and stated he was a terrible reporter. The non-verbal response of the reporter indicated he was crushed and felt attacked. The reporter received feedback, but it was not specific or constructive. Having a coach can help executives take input from different groups of people that may be emotional to the leader. A coach also can assist the leader with filtering through various points of feedback to return focus on the essential constructive aspects. Now more than ever, due to the complexity placed on senior leadership roles, executives need coaches that can support their continuous development. Falling behind in a rapidly changing marketplace will not lead to success. The coach-leader relationship is an essential tool to foster a leader’s growth through purposeful direction, reflection, feedback, and accountability.

What you need to know to get the most significant return from leadership development. We intuitively know that for leaders to be successful, we need to invest in developing our skills as leaders. The more a leader learns and effectively applies the better they become, and consequently, our organizations achieve better results. This statement is the tenet of leadership development. While there is truth to that statement, it overestimates the impact of the leader on the company and individual results, and it underestimates the impact of company culture, the leader-follower relationship and specific traits. Leaders perform within a company culture and are a part of the culture. Also, by sheer numbers alone the most substantial part of an organization is followers, not leaders. We tend to look to a leader to solve our problems rather than focusing on the reality that a company achieves most of their results through followers. By definition leaders need followers, or they are not leaders. Let's define leadership as service to others and followership as service to the leader both united in a common purpose and dependent on each other. To achieve greater success and maximize our leadership development investment performance we need to make some changes. One More Tool for the Toolbelt While the concept of followership is relatively new as compared to leadership, let’s consider a practical but fictitious leadership scenario to help us understand its meaning. You have likely heard the saying in leadership training that you are going to get another tool for your toolbelt. So, what if I gave builder “X” the best tools in their toolbelt, coached them to be their best physically, mentally and spiritually and put them in harsh working conditions and gave them a capable team that all spoke and understood different languages. Then I gave builder “Y” of same physical, mental, and spiritual well-being the same tools in their toolbelt and placed them in a good working environment with a capable team that all spoke the same language. Then I presented both builders with a challenge where they had the same amount of time and resources to build the same house. Which do you think would create the best home? Of course, the answer is obvious that a builder with better working conditions and a team that can communicate effectively can outperform a team in harsh conditions and cannot communicate effectively or efficiently. For too long companies have focused leadership development on the tools in the toolbelt of the leader, or the physical, mental, and spiritual well-being of the leader and not stopped to consider the impact of the leader-follower relationship, organizational culture, and specific traits. Before discussing what senior leaders need to understand and what they can do to maximize a company’s leadership development return on investment, let’s quickly take a step back and recognize how we got here. Globalization and Today’s Workforce Realities The business world is shrinking as large multinational companies continue to expand into new markets, and the makeup of our workforce in our companies is becoming more diverse. One of the critical issues facing most senior leaders is the lack of having ready now employees within their organization. For more than ten years we have known that as the Baby Boomers start to retire organizations would begin to struggle to find talent. Generation X is not large enough to fill the gaps created by the Baby Boomers exiting organizations. In turn, each of the past five years the war for talent has continued to intensify globally. In the past, it was a company-specific problem, but now globally countries are recognizing the challenges and looking at their policies to help expand their country’s workforce. If you listen to the news, you know our world is full of complex problems like cybersecurity, and global political uncertainty but the topic of talent management is in discussions from the boardroom to the breakroom and companies are turning to leadership development to help solve their complex challenges. The leadership development industry is booming. Likely your company is making new investments in leadership development or considering an investment. 3 Insights You Need to Understand Here are three insights to help you understand how to maximize your company’s leadership development return on investment. 1. Understanding the Leader-Follower Relationship Followership is a relatively new term in comparison to leadership with some of the earliest research literature originating out of the 1960s. Today followership is often seen as common sense, or passive activity; however, conversely effective followership is active and courageous. We are not talking about effective followership being a “yes man” but of speaking truth to leadership and daring to disagree. Buildings and equipment do not achieve results without employees in organizations. Every organizational result is the direct contribution of, at some point, someone doing something, and by sheer numbers in organizations it often comes down to followers. Additionally, even leaders in organizations are followers. The CEO of a publicly traded company will be a leader for the company and a follower to the board of directors. It is common to think of the value of the follower in the leader-follower relationship as a minimum of being half of the total value of the relationship, but it is likely more accurate to think of the value of working on the leader-follower relationship as a multiplier. The follower can improve the results of the leader, and the leader can enhance the outcomes of the follower. Globally organizations sub-optimize leadership development investments when focusing only on the leader. Healthy leader-follower relationships require a supportive organizational culture, specific traits, and development to enhance corporate results from leadership development investments. 2. Cultural Context for the Leader-Follower Relationship Culture is one of those words that if you ask ten employees to define it, you will get ten different responses. Contemporary definitions recognize culture as far more than only what employees do at work, and culture impacts social relationships like the leader-follower relationship. The globalization of the workforce within companies creates an increasingly complex and diverse workplace with a variety of beliefs, values and behavioral norms represented. You may notice these cultural differences by hearing employees talking about how it feels different in this office as opposed to another office, observing leader performance shifts when they take on new but similar responsibility for leading different workgroups, or when there are diverse perspectives on an identified successor. To focus solely on leader development and exclude the culture in which the leader-follower relationship exists limits the effectiveness of the investment in the leader. Cultural beliefs, values, and norms also need to be understood and aligned to support the leader-follower relationship. Research exists for how cultural values support leadership such as, The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business by Erin Meyer, but there is limited work on understanding how cultural values support followership. It is crucial for organizations to have a culture where the leader-follower relationship can thrive. Globalization and the increasing diversification of the workforce will continue to increase the significance of company culture on leader-follower relationships and organizational results. 3. Follower and Leader Traits The research on an ideal follower and an ideal leader is similar in that there is a lack of agreement on a standard definition for both. However, the volume of research on followership lags leadership research. A quick search of Google for the word “leadership” returns 2.0 billion hits, and the word “followership” returns 0.001 billion hits (as of September 20, 2018). The expanding use of technology that allows information within a company to flow more quickly and freely is also enabling independent decision making by followers. One of the essential traits for a follower is the willingness to disagree and let the leader know the truth even when it is difficult to deliver. Inversely a critical characteristic for a leader is active listening. Leaders need to be able to listen not only to what is said but the feelings also being shared. Recently there has been an increase in focus from senior leaders on understanding the success traits of leaders for use in selection, competency models for development, performance management, and succession planning. Once a company defines the attributes of effective leader-follower relationships they can be used to create similar models for selection, development, and performance. Senior leaders can then use these talent management processes to measure performance and provide meaningful feedback and recognition to employees. 4 Steps You Can Take Now The following is a simple four-step approach to help you get started improving your leadership development investment. Step 1. Setting the Stage A good start for introducing the concept and attributes of effective leader-follower relationships is to conduct a workshop with the company’s senior leadership team on the topic of understanding the meaning of the word’s followership and leadership. The purpose of this discussion is to reinforce the importance of the leader-follower relationship, surface cultural differences that likely exist in a diverse workforce, and start building alignment toward a company definition for both leadership and followership. After discussing definitions, you can use the research that exists on leadership and followership to define the traits identified for effective leader-follower relationships in company-specific language. An example would be to take the followership trait of speaking truth to leadership and leadership trait of active listening and discuss behavioral examples of what each would look like put into action within the company. Enlisting the help of the senior leadership team in identifying and describing the attributes is to help ensure buy-in for company standards when incorporating these into the various talent management processes. Step 2. Creating a Movement Next, engage intact work teams in workshops set up similarly as in the prior step with the senior leadership team. It is essential to use this workshop to discover cultural differences that exist across the organization and work toward alignment. Senior leaders choosing to engage the workforce in this discussion need to recognize the relationship between time, cost and quality. Each of these variables impacts the next. Companies that only invest a minimal amount of time and funding will have limited quality and vice-versa. Step 3. Building Reinforcement At this point, it is important to update the appropriate company competency development models, performance management processes, and job descriptions if they exist to include the ideal leader-follower relationship traits identified in steps 1 and 2. Updating these documents and processes provides clear and explicit expectations and feedback for leaders and followers. Step 4. Creating Sustainability It will also be essential to consider long-term sustainability so incorporating this development into the orientation and onboarding will assist with assimilating new employees into the culture and company. Development of employees in the concept and attributes of the leader-follower relationship will maximize the value in leadership development investments. The intent of this article is not to present that multinational companies facing increased globalization should focus on the leader-follower relationship instead of leadership development, but rather on these critical insights for greater company success and improved leadership development investment performance.

Why it Matters: Employee Retention = Customer Retention Ask any MBA graduate or newly promoted supervisor, What’s the company's greatest resource? Moreover, you will likely hear it is our people. It is widely accepted that behind every organizational outcome is an employee's actions. Employee retention is a measure of organizational health and can be a leading indicator of future company performance. I have observed key customer engagement metrics having strong statistical relationships (R Squared 0.736 to 0.833 and p<0.001) with employee retention metrics. One caution though is that just like with our temperature where 98.6 is considered healthy, 101 or 95 is not regarded as healthy (for most people) and the same is valid for employee retention. The symptoms companies and teams can experience are similar across industries and companies, but different types of issues exist when employee retention rates are both too low or too high. And unfortunately, unlike our temperature, there is not a single standard across all functions and industries that is considered ideal or “healthy.” In fact, I have read some to suggest a benchmark, but I would suggest only for general guidance because many other factors play into your company's specific “healthy” target. Culture eats strategy for breakfast. ~ Peter Drucker One of the most significant negative impacts of low employee retention rates is how it impacts company culture. An organization's culture exists within shared experiences and learnings of its employees. As employee retention decreases the ability of the organization to pass on learnings increases significantly due to lack of experience, fractured relationships and limited employee time due to a lesser skilled workforce. As retention rates drop considerably below healthy levels, the negative impacts are amplified, and companies can find themselves in a retention death spiral. In light of record low unemployment, a shrinking labor force participation rate, and growing economy in the US, there is a perfect storm forming for traditionally high retention companies. In these companies, often culture has and continues to be the single most important competitive advantage for the company, and the impact of this storm can be significant because they have not had to think about these issues before. And unlike with most storm warnings the very last thing these leaders need to do is take shelter. One of the often silent but deadly negative impacts of high employee retention rates is the existence of organizational blockers. Organizational blockers are employees that hold a position that another qualified individual in the organization could fill as a part of their career path. While having good to high performing employees in the same roles on your team for many years may sound like an excellent thing it comes with some of its own serious drawbacks. Most notably is keeping an "up and coming" high performer in another position from gaining the critical experiences needed or preventing someone who could do the job better from getting a chance. In today's world of constant change and need for innovation, organizations must continually be developing and growing their employees and evolving their businesses to stay relevant. A Perfect Storm is Making Landfall in the US - Environmental Factors Many different environmental factors such as, population shifts, societal and generational changes in views on work, and technology are aligning to create the perfect storm for employee retention challenges in the US. One of these environmental factors is today's emerging gig economy: gig e·con·o·my noun 1. a labor market characterized by the prevalence of short-term contracts or freelance work as opposed to permanent jobs. The 2017 Freelancing in America study by the Freelancers Union and Upwork estimated that nearly 57.3 million Americans – or 36 percent of the nation's workforce – are now freelancing, most of whom do so by choice (63 percent). This makes retaining a growing part of the economy a challenging proposition. Another one of these environmental factors is that baby boomers are exiting organizations at a faster rate with a smaller population of generation x to fill the gaps. If you have not already, you will want to check out the TedTalk by Rainer Strack: The surprising workforce crisis of 2030 — and how to start solving it now. Another environmental factor is that unemployment has remained at 4.1% for the past 5 months the lowest since late 2000 and is projected to remain under 5% through 2020 according to the Wall Street Journal. The new normal low unemployment is leading to increased opportunities for US employees. Another environmental factor is that American workers with jobs or looking for work has stood at 62.7% for the past year. In context, ten years ago in December 2007, the job participation rate was 66% (Bureau of Labor Statistics). While retiring baby boomers account for much of the weakness in participation, millions of working-age Americans are choosing to not participate in the workforce. Lastly, artificial intelligence and machine learning will create significant churn in the marketplace that is bound to increase turnover as employees reskill for the new jobs created. In a recent white paper from PWC titled Workforce of the Future: The competing forces shaping 2030 it’s predicted that employees will have to become more comfortable learning new skills and making career transitions. "Typical" careers, in which a person advances through the ranks of a particular field, will increasingly "cease to exist" as artificial intelligence and robots replace more human workers over the next few decades. Humans, it says, will have to become more comfortable learning new skills and making career transitions. Measuring Employee Retention Value and not just Cost Many measures should be tracked to help you understand the cost of employee retention. In addition to most visible replacement costs, there are others, such as productivity loss, workplace safety issues, and morale issues. Josh Bersin of Deloitte builds on this understanding and explains that employees are appreciating assets that produce more and more value to the organization over time, which helps to explain why losing them can be so costly. Employee Retention Now a Big Issue: Why the Tide has Turned In support of the point Josh was making, I want to highlight one addition less common but important measure you need to add to your list to calculate which is the “Cost of Vacancy.” This measure attempts to account for the lost value of not having an employee you need. At a minimum the simple way to calculate the direct impact is outlined below:​ Step 1: Find Annual Revenue Generated per Employee = Annual Company Revenue / Number of Revenue Generating Employees Step 2: Calculate Daily Revenue per Employee = Annual Revenue Generated by Employee / 365 days (or total number of days per year spend generating revenue) Step 3: Determine Revenue Lost per Turnover = Daily Revenue per Employee X Average Days Positions are Unfilled Step 4: Find Total Revenue Lost for All Vacant Jobs = Revenue Lost per Vacancy Job X Number of Vacant Jobs If you want to look even more closely and fully capture the impacts of lower retention, you should look into In Dr. John Sullivan’s article on the Cost of Vacancy Formulas for Recruiting and Retention Managers . Then working with Finance and senior leadership establishes actual costs and/or an acceptable rough estimate based on experience and intuition. The following is a list of the additional factors suggested by Dr. John Sullivan: Product Development and Productivity, Team Impacts, Individual Employee Impacts, Increased Management Time and Effort, Customer Impacts, Competitive Advantage, Your Company Image and Recruiting, and Out of Pocket Costs. Product Development and Productivity Team Impacts Individual Employee Impacts Increased Management Time and Effort Customer Impacts Competitive Advantage Your Company Image and Recruiting Out of Pocket Costs How to Have Immediate Positive Impact on Employee Retention So what can you do right now that can have an immediate impact on the likelihood of one of your employees leaving? Stay Interviews a.k.a. talk to your employees with intent to learn how they are doing and what you can do to help. A stay interview can be administered by anyone, but I prefer the leader because they need to develop trust and both the act of listening and then doing something about what is learned will build trust with their team. However, if you have a leader you do not trust, then you need to change the leader and in the meantime have someone that you do trust speak with them. The following are a few of my favorite questions I include in stay interviews: Positive Aspects of Working Here Why were you initially attracted to this opportunity? Do the same reasons exist today? What recognition have you received lately that makes you feel good? What part of your job do you find rewarding? Company Culture What do you enjoy most about working with your leader and the broader company leadership? Based on your experiences and interactions how would you describe our company culture? Strengths and Opportunities? Positive Improvements If you were granted three wishes and could change your job and/or this company what would you wish to change? Looking five years into the future where everything you ever wanted has come true describe what do you see? For some additional impact and accountability print off pictures of each employee that reports to one of your leaders. Ask the leader without looking at their notes to add the name of the employee, and one fun fact they learned from their stay interviews with their employees. Predicting Voluntary Turnover You may often feel like you are looking in a rearview mirror with most of these lagging metrics that tell you what you likely already know and that is you have a problem and opportunity with employee retention. Today though through the use of organizational diagnostics you do not have to settle for being reactive and can better understand what is creating reduced employee retention. I have used one of these diagnostics to understand better the employee stressors that were hindering employee engagement. Then using this understanding focus retention efforts and help reduce employee flight risk and in return improve employee retention. I want to hear from you with your questions, comments, and employee retention experiences. Also, if you need help getting started with employee retention or would like to learn more about how you can use organizational diagnostics, I would like to help.