Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit--Patrick Lencioni

How To Lose Your Best People--

I'm excited to be here and I'm excited to give this particular talk--my favorite.  I need to confess this book and this talk are really simple.  It's just a reminder.  When you're a leader you're a CRO Chief Reminder Officer.

When I was 8 or 9 years old my dad (a salesman) would come home from work and complain every night and I felt bad for him.  I was sad to think about getting a job and wished I could do something about this.

I later went to college and I studied hard so I could get a good job.  When I graduated I interviewed at a place ranked #1 and before I accepted we were wined and dined and I accepted the job.  Two days into that job I felt I was going to be miserable.

I like the show "Dirty Jobs" because they have dirty jobs but seem to be happy in them.  I think of all the CEOs who are miserable.  Then I realized it's about getting a job that's fulfilling or miserable.

3 things that cause job misery--

1)  Anonymity--people you work for don't know you, don't care to.  You are just a commodity.  Professional football teams--went to training camp and found many professional athletes are miserable because they have no connections.   If your manager doesn't care about you, then you aren't happy.  When you take the time to get to know someone, it's a huge factor.  Good people don't leave jobs where they're known.   So why don't we do this?  When we don't stop to take an interest in people's lives it's like throwing money out of our pockets.  Sometimes we are busy, sometimes we're embarrassed because we haven't done it in the past (do it anyway).  We are called to love the people who work for us.

2)  Irrelevance--If you don't think your job matters, you cannot love your work. If you have a job with no value you can't love your work.   Even the most menial job can be seen as bringing joy to others.   All people want to be needed and it's our job as managers to help them realize the relevance in their work.  The happiest professional athletes are those who get involved in other things.  If you're just scoring touchdowns you feel like you're going to implode.  The hardest people to help find relevance is administrative assistants because we don't want to admit that their purpose is to make our jobs easier.  Thank them for it and tell them how they make your life different.

3)  Immeasurement--Everyone needs the ability to assess if they're doing a good job.  We need to be able to self-evaluate.  The more we have a sense of intrinsic success the better we like our jobs.  It's not always a number.  We have a desire to have something in place that lets us know if we're doing a good job.  Sometimes we don't encourage this as leaders because when we give up control we lose our power.

These are the reasons people leave our organizations.  These things are free and easy and can be a game changer.  Implementing these things can be a life changer.  Management is ultimately a ministry.