Leadership Evolution: Adapt or Die!

by Dov Baron

I think you’d agree: The greatest leaders are those who are most adaptive. Maybe you, in fact, are a leader and understand that to be the best, you must keep adapting and growing. As such, your organization must do the same. If you carry these beliefs, it’s likely you’ve been a leader for a long time, and your organization has what appears to be an established culture.

Has your culture adapted, however, so that it’s ready for the largest worker influx in history, the Millennials? Do you have a culture that actually does — and will continue to — generate fierce loyalty? To answer these questions, we will have to take a step back and look at what it takes to generate fierce loyalty in your people — and, more specifically, what drives people and keeps them engaged. As I specifically outline in my upcoming book, “Fiercely Loyal: How High Performance Companies Develop and Retain Top Talent,” the Millennial workforce is motivated by very different factors than the previous generations.

If you want to generate fierce loyalty in your team, you will need to ensure certain things are active parts of your culture and development, especially these three primary motivating forces:

1. Your people know that they have a genuine sense of autonomy.
2. Your people have training and development available to them that facilitates them being able to develop mastery.
3. Your people have certainty that they are engaged in meaningful work in a purpose-driven organization.

When a company culture has these three things at its very backbone, it is able to build fierce loyalty in its employees. If your corporate culture has any sign off, like “That’s not the way we do things around here,” or in any way demeans any one of the areas just outlined, I’m sorry to say that your culture is not one that will generate fiercely loyal talent over the long haul.

Simply put, for these kind of organizations, the writing is on the wall. You as a leader of your organization, and the organization itself, must adapt or risk dying off  — or, at the very least, fading off into irrelevant oblivion.

One of the most powerful elements of Dov’s new book is the little-known three sentences leading CEOs and HR use to keep their top talent. They are yours as a gift here: FMLoyalty.com.

Dov Baron speaks internationally and is a leading expert on The Power of Authentic Leadership for Creating a Corporate Culture of Fiercely Loyal Talent. To bring Dov in to speak to your group or organization, please contact Authentic Paragon Alliance at +1 778 397 7717. Find Dov online at FullMontyLeadership.com and follow him on Twitter @DovBaron.