When I work with leaders, a topic that often comes up is the talent shortage. They tell me, "Cy, it's so hard to find great talent." We talk about hiring accountable talent that's engaged, that drives for results and strives to maintain and low drama workplace.
They ask me, "How do you find those good people in this environment where there's so few people who are actually up for hire?" In Reality-Based Leadership, I usually work to interrupt a leader's thinking and reveal a bit of a different truth.
When we talk about talent shortage, we often talk about it on the macro or industry level, but in daily reality, your role is to staff your team. Staffing your team is working on the micro level. When leaders fall victim to thinking "there is no talent out there," it's because they're allowing the industry-wide trends to create an excuse for why they can't staff their teams.
The I and the Tiger
I like to use an example to illustrate a new way of thinking to finding great talent in the candidate chase. If you and I were being chased by a tiger (the talent shortage), I wouldn't need to outrun the tiger, I would just need to outrun you (the competitors to my talent). And if I use the right strategies to outrun you, then the tiger of a talent shortage becomes your problem. I as a leader don't need to solve the talent shortage, I just need to beat you in the search for the best candidates.
What I believe is that there isn't as much a shortage of talent for leaders to worry about, instead there's a shortage of great places to work for high accountable talent. The new learning for leaders is that your job is not to cure the talent shortage. A leader's role is to create a place that is so attractive to your high-accountables that you're a talent magnet. This requires a lot of courage, because the same behavior will not please a low-accountable and a high-accountable at the same time. You will always be upsetting an employee group, and I recommend that you upset the right group (the low accountables).
For example, I was a leader in a healthcare system, and we had some openings in our CEO positions throughout our regional hospitals, and some of these hospitals were really struggling. I went out to a very small hospital in the Midwest and was serving there as an interim leader to move their climate into a place that was more sustainable as we recruited for a new CEO. One of the main issues I was sent there to solve was the struggle to staff all their nursing shifts. They relied heavily on partnering with organizations that would provide temporary nurses to cover our shifts. While many of these nurses were amazing, it's not a sustainable solution because it's very expensive and it's hard to build teams when we're not always working together with some of the same folks.
My opportunity was to solve how we could get more people hired so that we would have full-time employee nursing teams. My "aha" came at an unlikely place - the grocery store. As the employee was bagging my groceries, she asked me, "Are you here with the hospital?" I said, "Yeah, I'm here for a short time." This woman who was bagging my groceries, she said, "You know, I used to work at that hospital." I said, "Oh, my gosh, you did? What was your position?" She told me she was an RN. I was shocked. And I admit I was quietly thinking, "What did she do to get fired? Was it poor performance?" She said, "I left. I didn't like the culture. There was a lot of back-biting and gossiping, so my husband and I bought this grocery store. I've been so happy ever since."
Another opportunity arrived a couple of nights later when I went to a cocktail reception and I met another woman who was a nurse who lived in that town. I asked her why she didn't work at the local hospital, and she said she preferred to work in a regional health center because she didn't love the environment at the hospital. She drove an hour-and-a-half one way to work her shift in a large city. A total of three hours of her day spent commuting!
That's when it struck me: I didn't have to solve the nursing shortage, I simply had to beat a three-hour commute and a job sacking groceries in order to attract nurses to my hospital. See, it wasn't that there was a nursing shortage. There were plenty of nurses living right in that community. It was that we hadn't created an atmosphere that the high accountables were attracted to.
Changing Climates
I worked hard on changing the climate in that nursing group to one that pleased high-accountables, and I'm glad to tell you that after a year of our work together we had a waiting list of people who lived in the area that would love to come work for us if we ever had an opening. Here's two of my best tips that helped us solve our nursing shortage:
1. Start listening to the right people: Once you acknowledge that not all employees' opinions have equal value, you're on your way to engaging the right people. Tuning into the value of high-accountable employees and turning down the volume on low-accountable employees' opinions, you can see where your efforts need to be focused. You want to support those who are accountable, and find ways to coach the others up or let them go. Zeroing in on accountability will either help low accountables step up, or make it clear their drama won't fly in the organization. The voice of the victims has far less value than the vote of the high accountables.
2. Work with the willing: Without apology, invest the bulk of your time and energy in your best and brightest and those who are willing to do what it takes to achieve your team's goals. It also sends a message to the organization about who is getting the attention – the high accountables. Focus on the people who are driving the business forward. Listen to them. Reward them. It will either inspire others to play at a higher level or make it clear they're not a good fit in your organization.
Stop trying to create a perfect workplace. Change, conflict, challenges, disagreements, discomfort and frustration are all part of the price for the privilege of workplace participation. And that's good news! Your high accountables will value the opportunity to thrive in daily challenges. You don't need to solve the talent shortage; a leader can start by solving their own climate issues so that they're an attractive magnet to highly accountable talent.
Cy Wakeman is a dynamic international keynote speaker, leadership expert and New York Times bestselling author who has spent over 20 years cultivating a revolutionary approach to leadership and work that reveals the truth, interrupts thinking and settles the mind. Her Reality-Based Philosophy helps leaders and their teams ditch the drama, turn excuses into results, and find opportunities in every challenge they face. Contact her at info@cywakeman.com, or visit RealityBasedLeadership.com.
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