Workers are quitting their jobs at the highest rate in 20 years, with nearly 65% of employees looking for a new job. Morale is at an all-time low, employees are burned out. Leaders right now are all talking about what is being called The Great Resignation. Employees and future leaders are looking to leave, to change the channel, to go somewhere else where they might be happier. It has become essential for leaders to think about how to retain talent in this competitive hiring market.
As a Sports Agent, it was the Great Resignation Every Day
As a former sports agent for 15+ years, I can’t help but think about how as an agent, every day was the day of, the hour of, the moment of The Great Resignation. The sports agent business is incredibly competitive. In fact, there are more agents than athletes to represent, and because of that there are agents constantly trying to pick off your players. Other agents are on the fences at baseball games; they are at hotel lobbies, waiting when the players come home from the park. They are everywhere.
As an agent, you can get athletes out of high school or college, but often, you’re signing players by pulling them from another agent or agency. Once you won over a new client you can’t stop working. You must keep delivering to retain them. In fact, you must consistently over-deliver. My strategy to retain top talent as an agent was to consistently over-deliver and find ways to pour into my athletes. That way my clients could focus on their performance and wouldn’t begin to think about taking a meeting with someone else.
Pour into Your Team So They Can Focus on Performance
Right now, our teams are exhausted. They’re drained. They’re burned out. They’ve been burning the candle at both ends and have been for a long time now. I challenge you to look for ways to over-deliver for your team, to pour into them so they can focus on what matters.
I had a client who is a friend, call me two days ago. She said, “Molly, I did something really cool with my team.” She said, “I had them do your energy audit.” Through the energy audit, her team identified things personally and professionally that give them energy, and then they wrote down all the things personally and professionally that drain their energy. Then she sat down with each of her eight direct reports one-on-one and reviewed their audits. She was able to work together with her team to identify what gave them energy and help ensure that those things are on their calendar every day. They discussed how she could support them and help protect those energy maximizers. After all, we can’t pour from an empty cup.
Once they worked through the energy maximizers, they discussed the energy drainers. There were some circumstances where they were able to delegate a drainer of one person to somebody that loved that or minimize it to do it less. After the audit, my friend told me she saw improvement in performance, engagement, and communication. She said it was an overnight thing where people were aligning the things that gave them energy and the things that drained their energy with their calendars so that they could show up and perform better.
Support Your Team’s Energy
Performing an energy audit with your team is a great first step to help empower and retain your talent. It’s so important to try to understand, what are the things that give your people energy? How can you support them in protecting those things in their calendar? What are the things that drain their energy? How can you support them in minimizing, delegating, tightening those up? How can they manage their energy more than their time?
Our role as leaders is to pour into our teams and right now, energy management is more essential than ever. Because if we don’t have enough energy, we can’t solve problems, we can’t communicate, and we can’t be empathetic. We need energy to sell, to lead, to solve, to serve. As leaders, our role is to help our people with their energy. The audit was one of the ways that a friend and client of mine did that.
Athletes have a short window of time to make an impact in their sport and make significant money. It is the agents’ role to over-deliver and manage their client’s energy so that they can focus on their performance. I see so many parallels in this to the business world. The Great Resignation is our unique window of time to make an impact. How can we, as leaders, ensure, and help our people to thrive, not survive. It’s our job as leaders to help our people do just that.
More Resources For Leaders
Looking for more resources to help you and your team manage their energy? I encourage you to leverage my free energy audit here to do an energy audit with your own team.
Schedule a Free Strategy Call
Looking for more resources to help your team break free of burnout? Schedule a free call with our team to learn more about what our The Energized Leader™ training can do for you and your team. Through the training, you’ll discover how to align your energy with the important so that you can achieve freedom, flow, and break free from burnout.
The Molly Fletcher Company inspires leaders, teams, and organizations to kick-start growth. A keynote speaker and author, Molly draws on her decades of experiences working as a sports agent. The Energized Leader Training helps you and your team align your energy with the important and avoid costly burnout. Game Changer Negotiation Training workshops teach business people the framework for successful negotiating so that you can close more deals while building stronger relationships. Her Leadership Huddles are a monthly group coaching community to guide you towards your full potential. Sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter and subscribe to the Game Changers with Molly Fletcher podcast on iTunes.
