Send to KindleLeadership and Vision: Employees Helping the Business Grow
Leadership is my area of expertise. Marketing is not. I enjoy helping leaders grow. I don’t enjoy marketing much so I belong to a marketing group that helps me understand the ins and outs of marketing my business. This week I heard a comment that I’ve found to be a common refrain: employees don’t care about marketing. This comment always comes during a discussion of employee’s lack of interest in growing the business. It doesn’t have to be that way!
Employees care about their paychecks. That’s absolutely true; they have to live. It’s also true that most employees don’t have the same entrepreneurial spirit as many business owners. But that doesn’t mean that they can’t care about growing the business.
In fact, when employees understand why the business exists, what it does, and how it does that, they have taken the first step to helping the business grow. When employees understand how they fit in that equation and why they are important to the business’ success, they’ll begin to be part of that success.
People have a need to be part of something. That doesn’t just mean they show up to the same place five days a week, but that they are a real contributing, important part. Too often, the workplace doesn’t provide that sense of belonging, instead treating employees as just another cog in the gears of production. If that’s how you see your workers, how can you possibly expect them to do anything but the minimum requirements?
A business leader should have a vision for the company, that inspiring view of where the business is going or what it can do. People tend to want to follow others who have such a vision, but many leaders see employees following their vision just to ride the coattails of success.
There’s a better approach. When business leaders make their employees part of realizing that vision great things can happen. It isn’t hard, but it does require a little effort on the leader’s part. Employees must first understand the leader’s vision, then clearly see themselves as a key part of the drive toward that vision. They must know how they can help make the vision a reality.
Just as important, leaders must treat employees as a valuable part of the success equation and not a liability. Then, and only then, will employees care about the growth of the business.
