Are Your Employees Feeling Heard?

Welcome back friend!

This week I would like to share something that helped me grow as a person, elevate my leadership skills, and empower my employees.

One leadership skill I wish that I was stronger at in the beginning was listening. It is not that I wouldn’t listen to my employees, but how and what I was listening for was the issue.

As I reflect, I always thought if an employee wanted to talk with me, they needed me to solve a problem. Here’s an example of what I am talking about…

One day during an employee’s break time, she approached me and said, “the kids keep running in the classroom!” I quickly responded; “you need to rearrange your classroom.” Once the children were no longer in the classroom, I started to rearrange the classroom to solve the teacher’s problem.

What I did not do was allow the teacher to talk. I just quickly jumped into solving her problem because I have experienced the same situation as a teacher. If I had continued to listen, I may have heard how she wanted to solve this problem-which may have empowered her growth as a teacher and gave her ownership to her classroom.

Over the past 20+ years I have learned that how you listen is very important to employee retention.

When having conversations with employees, remember these 3 things:

🐘Am I listening with intention?

👂Am I Validating what I heard?

🐭Am I being judgmental with my response?

You may be thinking why is my skill of listening beneficial to staff retention?

• They will feel that their voice is valued! Employees need to see that you have taken some action on what you have heard in a timely matter.

• You may hear of opportunities for career development, whether they are big or small. As you listen you might find out about a skill they have that allows you to delegate a task, meanwhile empowering them to use a skill to further career growth.

• This all fosters a sense of belonging! You are validating that they are important to the success of the center. You can do this by asking for their opinion when planning a center family event and incorporating their idea or allowing them to take the lead with it.

I want to end with a quote from one of my favorite speakers & author:

“Listening is not understanding the words of the question asked, listening is understanding why the question was asked in the first place” – Simon Sinek

Till next time, 

Jen

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