How to inspire your top talent and make them stay?

Few things in business are as costly and disruptive as top talent departures. What do inspirational leaders do to keep them? We asked some inspirational leaders en these were their responses:

Unleash Their Passions: Smart leaders align employee passions with corporate vision. Human nature makes it very difficult to walk away from areas of passion. If we can connect individual and corporate passion, engagement rises to the top.

Challenge Their Intellect: Talented people don’t like to live in a dimly lit world of boredom. If you don’t challenge people’s minds, they’ll leave you for someone/someplace that will. Ambitous goals are helpful to challenge talented people.

Engage Their Creativity: Great talent is wired to improve, enhance, and add value. They are built to change and innovate. They need to contribute by putting their fingerprints on design. Give them the possibilities for that.

Develop Their Skills: No matter how smart or talented a person is, there’s always room for growth, development, and continued maturation. Mastery and growth are important factors to keep people interested in your organization.

Give Them A Voice: Talented people have bright thoughts, ideas, insights, and observations. And the need to express them in order to sharpen their ideas and put them into practice. If you don’t listen to them, someone else will.

Care: Many studies show the paycheck is not the most important reason people come to work. Recognition and flexibility are factores often mentioned as motivations to stay in the company.

Lead: The best testament to the value of leadership is what happens in its absence – very little. If you fail to lead, your talent will seek leadership elsewhere. An important element in leadership is the level of trust and fairness perceived by employees.

Recognize Their Contributions: The best leaders don’t take credit – they give it. Recognition is still one of the most important motivators for people to be satisfied with their boss.

Increase Their Responsibility: People will gladly accept a huge workload as long as an increase in responsibility comes along with the performance and execution of said workload.

Keep Your Commitments: Promises made are worthless, but promises kept are invaluable.

There is an old saying that goes; “Employees don’t quit working for companies, they quit working for their bosses.” Don’t let this happen to you make sure you inspire your people!

(Based on an article by Olivier Soumah-Mis)