Perspective

When people feel comfortable in your organization and their basic needs are met, it’s time to think about how you can offer them perspective.

Remember: Those building blocks of motivation, trust, and perspective work together.

The first months (for some people even years) are simple. People come into your company, get onboarded, do their work, build relationships with you and their team — the normal cycle. But at a certain point, every human starts to think about the future and about what to do with their limited time on the planet.

For some this is more important than for others — but in any case, you as a manager need to have an answer if someone wants to talk about their future.

Why? Because you want them to stay in your company to deliver results for your business — and every employee who leaves the company costs money.

On the other hand, you should also have an interest in helping your employees grow — in their speciality and personality — as this helps you deliver better results for your company.

To be prepared for this question, you need to get clear about a few things:

• What paths can you offer?
• What are you able and willing to invest?

The path depends on your organization — are you a 10 people company and plan to stay that way? Then multi-level leadership hierarchies don’t seem that interesting. But is there a Co-CEO position thinkable, or a certain expert role that comes with special responsibilities?

If you think about a mid-size company (100–500 employees) you can easily offer a 2-way system for expert and leadership paths that people can go depending on their skills and plans.

The investment depends on the time, money, and effort you are willing and able to invest in people. In small companies, you can handle this on an individual basis and need. When you reach more than 10 employees, you need to create defaults for that. Otherwise, people will feel treated unfair — if one gets a training for €500 and the other for €5.000.

Independent of the size of your organization, it’s always a positive signal to include your employees in creating a perspective. They are the experts in their field, and they will clearly tell you what’s important to them and what not.

Real world examples

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