Top Takeaways from the TeamStrength Leadership Workshop 2022

  • People stay based on how much they trust their boss.
  • Leaders drive retention by creating one-on-one trust with their employees.
  • Managers/bosses are on the menu every night. What are your employees going home and talking about at the dinner table?
  • Create an environment in which our employees choose to stay.
  • No co-complaining. Commiserate and you become their peers.
  • It’s hard to hit a target you can’t see.
  • Trust outweighs benefits when it comes to retention.
  • Retention efforts cannot be one-size-fits-all. Leaders need to build one-on-one trust.
  • Based on Dick’s data, we need more staff.
  • Vulnerability is courageous and courage is contagious.
  • Use self-accountability circle to solve specific problems. Each person only speaks to own contribution – action and inaction. What did you do to prevent a solution to the problem? Discuss contributions, not blame or excuses.
  • Use 5 Stay Interview questions to create annual goals and objectives.
  • Stay Interviews must be done by direct supervisor/manager.
  • Dive deeper and probe with Stay Interview questions. Ask open ended questions and listen. Make sure you don’t minimize issues with a quick fix.
  • Probing is taking 5 questions to 25 questions.
  • If you lose an employee, you should know why.
  • We don’t fire enough people.
  • The easiest way to breakdown trust is to minimize a complicated issue.
  • Do Stay Interviews at day 5 and day 30. Focus on keeping them early to win long-term.
  • Implement Stay Interview Seminar and teach our teams how to get ahead of turnover and improve retention through understanding how to perform them.
  • Start the no-blame and self-accountability with me as a leader. As leaders, we have the opportunity to go before everyone with accountability and start by holding ourselves accountable to the standard we expect.
  • Start with myself, being vulnerable leads to others opening up about different choices they could have made without blame.
  • If you don’t have a solution to a problem, you may subconsciously decide it’s not a problem.
  • Focus on building trust between the manager and employee.
  • Retention increasing job offers – do you see yourself here one year from now? Set realistic job descriptions & job previews.
  • We will never make it perfect, but we will make it better.
  • We make choices we don’t even know we’re making (subconsciously). Be aware of payoffs.
  • Every choice has a payoff. What benefit am I getting from my negative behavior?
  • We are all 100% accountable. Eliminate blame culture and implement positive accountability.
  • I directly impact the retention of my team – build & maintain trust.
  • Communicate early and often – create more check-ins for employees. Especially new ones.
  • Employees want better work processes. Focus on this.
  • The power of visioning exercise – spend intentional focus on visioning. Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right.
  • Share first, be the change.
  • Understanding accountability – what it looks like internally & how others view it. And how it correlates to trust.
  • We all need to hold each other more accountable.
  • The things we deal with, our employees, aren’t such a big deal if the loved ones we have are safe and healthy.
  • Life is short. Take care of your people in a time of crisis. Lead through adversity.
  • Don’t should on myself, use could.
  • Reflected experience is the best teacher.
  • Learning is our only strategic advantage.
  • Top performers out-perform average performers four to one.
  • We are not afraid of what will happen, we are afraid of being able to cope with it.
  • Hire employees, don’t adopt them.
  • Do a per-location culture assessment.
  • Have supervisors forecast how long people will stay – red, yellow, green.
  • Use the cost of turnover calculator on Dick’s website and assign cost to turnover – number and percent of revenue or payroll dollars.
  • Pay recruiting bounty all upfront. Our job is to keep the person.
  • Bring Stay Interviews and Accountability Circles back to the store level.
  • Being accountable and making improvements requires (1) being conscious of a choice existing and (2) becoming self-accepting (removing judgement of ourselves & blame).
  • Speak up. Be accountable for solutions I can bring and reflect on what I can improve on.
  • Communication & accountability are key at the executive level so we are all humble and can collectively have a plan to get over hurdles.
  • Self-accountability – lead no matter what is going on.
  • Lead with love, not fear.