How to retain your unsung hero team members before they walk out the door

Lia Garvin [00:00:00]: Welcome back to the show. So, a few weeks ago, I was interviewed for the Wall Street Journal for an article that a journalist was doing about folks that are that workhorse in a company and fall into this effort versus impact trap, where they’re doing a lot. They’re looked at as indispensable, but they can’t break through and be seen as strategic. And the journalist came to me because this is something I talk about in my first book, unstuck quite a bit of not getting stuck as this fixer role where everyone is leaning on you for anything.

But when you raise your hand for a more strategic opportunity, people look at you like, really? You? Are you sure? And this is something I’m really, really passionate about because it’s something that I got stuck in in my early career, and I have coached so many folks and mentored folks around how to break out of that. But the reason I wanted to talk about it on the show today is there was a lot we could do as employers, as managers, as business owners to make sure that that person that’s really, really crushing it and delivering it doesn’t get stuck in that trap.

And I will link to the article in the show notes, but if you want to check it out, it’s called why the reliable office workhorse rarely gets ahead. Womp, womp. Lia Garvin [00:01:09]: It’s a bummer, but it is a turnaround story. Okay, so you definitely want to check it out. And again, this is something that I really want us to be mindful of as leaders, because we can inadvertently penalize someone that is. Is going above and beyond, and we don’t even realize we’re doing it.

And this is how I think we can feel blindsided by people leaving. I know I left a number of jobs in my early career because this was happening to me, and I was like, what do I have to do to be recognized? I guess I have to leave. And as a really high performer, a ten xer, it was. It was a loss on the team, but I. Lia Garvin [00:01:48]: They hadn’t recognized the warning signs even when I felt like I was pretty clear.

Okay, so just like in the episode I did around employee turnover, I think 42% or whatever can be prevented. This is another one of those things. I think we really wanna elevate and amplify that workhorse, for lack of a better word. And I wanna talk about how to do that. But before I do that, I wanna say, if you are liking this show, please leave a review. I know I have mentioned it a few times. It is so helpful to get the word out about the show to help on my mission of making managing easier because dealing with people is hard enough.

Lia Garvin [00:02:22]: So if you can take 20 seconds, pause this, scroll down, add our view, this helps bring it to more people and just help make managing easier across the board. So why not? All right, back to business. So I think when we are managing a team and we see someone always kind of bringing, you know, I think one of the traps we fall into, let me, let me back up and say, when we’re managing a team and we have a team member that’s always showing up early and delivering a bunch of stuff and they’re crushing it, we can actually start to get used to that as the baseline and what that person is doing their ten x or going 150% because they’re always doing it, we start to just see that as the expectation.

Now, when I coach people on breaking free of this trap, I tell them the same thing that, well, you’re creating your baseline to be, you know, I’m on emails at 09:00 p.m. i respond within five minutes. Right. You’re creating expectation. You’re training people of how to work with you. Lia Garvin [00:03:20]: Right. And so I think as the leader, we start to see that we want to really make sure that we’re mindful of not taking that for granted and not taking advantage of it.

And I had a manager once that she knew I would be on email in the evening. She knew I would be, you know, checking in when I was on vacation. She’d reach out, but she didn’t take advantage of it. She’d always say, hey, I don’t want to bother you. This is okay for Monday, but I know you’re also going to be on, so, like, let me know if you want to work through this. I felt like that was extremely helpful so that I could set a boundary or an, or say, like, no, I actually kind of want to get this stuff done.

Lia Garvin [00:03:59]: Let’s. Let’s crank it out. Right. And so there was a level of respect there. And so I was, she didn’t just say, oh, I know Leah will do it because she’s always on emails. She said, hey, I want to be respectful. And I also, I’ve come to know you and your work style. Like, is this okay? And this person also advocated for me. Lia Garvin [00:04:17]: They didn’t, like, start to pile more stuff on because they knew that I would just do it.

Right. And so I think first and foremost, we want to be attuned to, are we feeding into someone that’s kind of working around the clock without noticing it, or are we allowing them to set a boundary? And if that’s their style, then whatever, that’s fine, right? I think there can be an over indexing on, I’m not going to bother you after 05:00 p.m. or, you know, whatever. And if you are a workaholic, for lack of a better word, you know, you kind of maybe want to say, I actually do want to know what’s happening with my projects when I’m, you know, in the evening.

I don’t want to be like, censored out of this. Right. So that comes through conversation. Lia Garvin [00:05:01]: So if you have a team member that’s really on it and isn’t really setting that clear boundary of, like, don’t email me after this or this, like, have a conversation of, hey, I really want to proactively give you space and set boundaries. What works for you? Check in continually. This is not a forever thing. And at any moment in our lives we might have different responsibilities, we might have to be caretaking, we might take on some new hobbies or different things outside of work, and we don’t want to be as available.

So checking in with your team member around availability is a really big place to show respect, to allow that to be fluid. And if someone, one of your team members is someone that’s like always on emails, not to penalize them for that and have them feel like, well, if they want to get something done that pace, and this might be totally biased. Cause that was me. I was like, I’m okay. Lia Garvin [00:05:51]: Like, I want to get stuff done right now, then let that be okay.

But then the next part, right, the article, why the workhorse rarely gets ahead, what we don’t want to do is to start to think of, well, if I don’t have this person in this role who’s going to do it, okay. And I think what can happen is we have someone who starts to become overqualified for the current role because they’re doing it second nature, right. It’s easy for them. They can do it in their sleep and that’s awesome for you to have, right.

But when they ask for more responsibilities, you get scared and you’re like, well, God, like, if I don’t have them, do I have to do it? Am I going to hire someone? I have to train them up and there might not be as competent. So this is where you reach a fork in the road. And what I didn’t see in many moments in my career, and I wish I had, was that someone asked me to train a replacement for me because, yes, I can take on more.

Lia Garvin [00:06:48]: They want me when they see that, like, yeah, if I can do this, great, of course I can do this thing I’m asking for and have that same belief in me that I had myself. So I really want you to think about your team members right now. And if there’s been folks that have been asking to take on more responsibilities or shift a bit into a more strategic role or become a leader in some capacity, if that person’s doing a great job and you feel like, okay, this person has self awareness and you have a hesitation because you really don’t want to lose them on the thing that they were doing well to figure out, well, how are you going to, you know, get that other work coverage so that you can help this person reach their next thing?

Because, you know what if they ask you for that strategic role a few times and you say no, thinking, well, I need them in this. They’re going to leave your team anyway. You’re not going to have them in either roles. That’s the reality. That’s the short sightedness. I think a lot of us miss that. Lia Garvin [00:07:45]: If we keep denying an awesome team member of advancement, they’re not going to. Generally, sometimes, but not always, there will be moments when you think, I need them in this role, and they’re like, well, I don’t need to be here because I don’t feel appreciated.

I’m not being utilized to my full potential. Okay, so that’s the risk you’re running. So a better option, in my opinion, would be, okay, yes. Can we do this part of this? Can you train someone up? You have such skill in this area. Like, can you help translate that secret sauce? Wow. Now I feel loyal to this company. Lia Garvin [00:08:19]: I see they’re trying to grow me. I see they’re trying to develop me. They see the value I bring.

It is the exact opposite of the situation I’m describing of feeling stuck. Now, the third thing I really wanna be mindful of, because I heard this a lot in the corporate world, especially around performance reviews, there was a conversation around effort versus impact. Yeah, this person does a lot. They get a lot done. They’re very busy. Lia Garvin [00:08:43]: Okay. But is there impact in the work? Is it important? Did it matter? It’s like, it crushes my soul to hear that because I think so many employees don’t realize how to articulate the impact and they get stuck in this, and it’s like they’re just seen as doing busy work for the sake of it.

And just so you know, I coach people on this and have for years on how to articulate the impact of your work and really shape your career narrative. So your team members do have a really big role in this, and they need to be taking responsibility for saying why their work matters and showing that to you. Okay, it’s not all on you. And okay, it’s both. It’s on both of us. I think we can also help our team members, especially when they’re newer to the company or newer to a role or kind of struggling to find their footing.

Lia Garvin [00:09:35]: We can show them, like, hey, here’s what I see. The kind of the value in this. Like, let’s talk through this. Now, this is also mitigated by having clear priorities. And this is what I talk about in my ops playbook program I set up for companies. And what we also set up in the team whisperer consulting, sprint, which is, how are we connecting the company or team priorities to each person’s individual role? Because that also helps us express the impact we’re bringing.

Like, hey, I contributed to our revenue goal or our profitability goal, or the number of users using our product, whatever it is, in this way, this is how my role fits into that. This automatically kind of defines this career, this narrative of your job, because you see how you fit into that bigger picture, and that part is our responsibility. Lia Garvin [00:10:23]: Okay? So as the leader, really having that North Star, making it clear what the priorities are, making sure that you, as that manager, or you’re communicating, if you’re managing managers, like, how do we translate that for each team?

How do we translate that for every single role? Now we’ve connected those dots. Now it’s on our team members to say, okay, you know, like, based on this work, this impact happened, right? I led this thing, and this was the result. Okay? There’s a lot there they need to show up for doing, but we first have to anchor them that every single role has something to do with us hitting this priority of this goal. Right? We’re all connected.

No one has a job that doesn’t have anything to do with this. Otherwise they. That job isn’t needed. Right? We’ve got to connect everything. Lia Garvin [00:11:09]: And if you look around, you think there’s a job that isn’t needed. You know, think about the example I know is shared in many leadership books and different situations of in the sixties when, you know, NASA was trying to land the first man on the moon, everybody at NASA, including the janitors, said, what is your job?

I am going to send the first man to the moon janitors said that people that worked in the cafeteria, every single role, they didn’t say, oh, the astronaut, they’re going to the moon. But we’re just kind of chilling. They got it. They felt it so deeply that every single person felt that way. That is the same thing you want to have with your priority, with the mission of your company. We are all here to deliver that experience.

We are all here to transform our clients in some way. Lia Garvin [00:11:59]: We’re all here to help improve XYZ. Every role has to do with that. And then we say, well, how? Okay, well, as the janitor in NASA, by making sure that we have a clean space, all of the people that are here can focus on doing their work and figuring out all the different things that have become for that. Or we create a space that’s welcoming and inviting.

Right. I talk about this with clients that run gyms or med spas or hair salons. Hey, the person that cleans up everything after that person is like laying the foundation for great reviews for repeat customers. Right. Lia Garvin [00:12:37]: Because if we walk into a space and it’s messy, we don’t want to come back. It’s like, I don’t want to be there. Right. So how do we translate that for every single person? That is our responsibility to set the stage.

And then our team members need to follow through. Okay. So when we think about, you know, how to elevate and amplify and make sure folks don’t get stuck in this. I’m the workhorse. Lia Garvin [00:13:01]: I’m stuck. I’m just going to move on. There are specific things we can do to recognize and appreciate and help proactively allow them to set boundaries and, you know, invite them, I should say, to set boundaries. Right. We recognize the work.

We make sure that we have some sort of coverage plan so they can transition into something else, and then we connect the dots between our priorities and how every job fits in with it. And so we don’t have folks that are in this. Like, we’re doing a lot, but, like, do we care? Before we ask the do we care? We say, hey, let’s figure out how to make this more strategic. Lia Garvin [00:13:36]: Let’s actually shift this awesome person onto something else, because this kind of busy work stuff, this isn’t really them in their wheelhouse.

Why not? Right. We need to be taking a more active role in making sure our team members don’t get stuck in just, like, a grind of a hamster wheel, especially when they’re high performers. But everybody. Right, but I think what’s the tragedy that I see again is that when we get stuck in this role and we feel underappreciated and no one notices, and we feel like we’re taking advantage of, we just leave. So you’re not getting, you never get that workhorse for that long.

You know, in my opinion and what I’ve seen, it’s always something that’s short lived. So we just don’t want to be doing that to people. Lia Garvin [00:14:17]: So, again, help them elevate their work, shape that narrative, get them into more strategic roles. There’s always going to be an ability to figure out people to do more of that kind of tactical work. Some people love it, and some people want to do that. But if someone is saying, I don’t want to do this forever, help them find the thing that they are meant to do.

All right, see you next time.