(3 min read)
Advocated by Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and Simon Synek when he speaks about how great leaders lead, employees are more apt to perform better and enjoy what they do for work when their values resonate with the workplace values and their personal needs are being met by the company they work for and their leaders are proactive advocates for their dreams.
In Maslow’s theory, it is integral that leadership acknowledges and supports the dreams of their employees and invests in the training and development of its hiring leaders to be capable of discovering which motivates their candidates. A leader who can succeed in doing this, before the candidate is hired, is 92% more likely to see a high performing retained workforce.
For employee engagement, happiness, and success to be achieved, a keen awareness of Maslow’s hierarchy must flow through the organization and be actively implemented.
It’s the People, both currently employed and future hires, who form the backbone of a company and are the essential key to success, prosperity, and positive revenue streams.. If this is not the mindset of leadership, breakdown, and quite possibly failure, is assured.
Most companies fail to study the model as an indicator of success or failure. As a result, they fail to grasp the long-term benefits compared to the negative consequences of ignoring the practical application of the theory from the start. Most firms go about the hiring and retention process as the generations before them — no plan, hoping it succeeds.
No matter what stage of the company’s lifecycle, this is a very risky move most can’t afford to make.
To support you, here are some keys to getting this right:
Make People your #1 investment: The core of company is its people. What you invest (or not), you will get back 10x. Invest wisely.
Culture Strategy: Crafting a culture strategy that merges with an articulate hiring plan ensures that each interviewer walks out of the discussion understanding what drives that candidate. The interviewer needs to be acutely aware of what’s important to the candidate in life. This includes the ability to evaluate if the company can offer them what they need. Candidates strive for personal self-actualization — the golden ticket to retaining a powerful employee.
Ubias Bias: One of the biggest pitfalls involves misguided assumptions or bias in the hiring process. Leadership must invest in deliberate, unbiased evaluation and team building to ensure an effective talent acquisition strategy.
Create Balance: Balance is critical for creating a strong core in the hiring process, and crafting that culture is possible at almost any stage. From my personal experience, the companies that instill Maslow’s theory as a mantra into their culture from the earliest stages end up the most successful. And they don’t spend their time on fruitless activities.
Candidate Culture: Understanding the culture of every candidate is key. It examines whether your identity is a fit for the candidate, first, not the other way around. Understanding the candidate’s needs ensures that you are intimately aware of what will keep them happy and who you need to be as a leader to support them.
The clients who have proactively ensured that every new hire is self-actualized by building a bulletproof hiring process with capable hiring leaders, have seen higher performing employees out the gate and and higher retention rates than the ones who didn’t.
Ignoring a candidate’s dreams and drivers is one of the most detrimental and old model mistakes companies make.
The key to being a great leader in this day and age is to put your future employees needs first, before they become an employee. When a leader can understand how to support self-actualization, they will be capable of building their WE Culture.
What kind of leader are you? What kind of leader do you want to be? No matter where you or your team is, you can shift to being powerful leaders.
Written by Alana Fulvio, Pendulum Founder.
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