Episode 38 What Do Smart Bosses Do?

Employee development is important. We want our team to grow in their skills, abilities, and performance. So, what are the smart bosses doing in regard to building their employees up? 

They are encouraging mastery.  

We have discussed earlier in other blogs, the topic of motivation, and we know that highly motivated employees are beneficial. What drives that motivation? More than money, what each of us as individuals really want is to become a master of a craft— we want to be good at stuff.  

Encourage Mastery 

There are coal miners that right now, are going down mine shafts to work their shifts. They know that each breath they take, and each hour they spend working is shaving measurable time off of their life. Yet, they don’t leave or try to find alternative careers.  

Alternatively, within an office environment, there are plenty of people that know their office is an unhealthy place. They know that their boss isn’t healthy for them, but they don’t leave.  

Why don’t these people leave, or look for different work? Because they know they’re awesome at what they do. They are masters at their craft. They’ve been doing it for years, they get better at it every day, and they are comfortable in their role.  

Mastery is important, because it is directly tied to motivation.  

Seth Goden published a post on his Instagram account, that encouraged bosses to develop their workers’ talents. This could be supporting your workers to read more books or blog posts around the topics they’re passionate about or paying for them to attend industry conferences or learning seminars.  

We all know of some bosses out there that fear employee development. The thinking is that if their employees were to develop their own talents and become masters at what they do, they would leave. These bosses are so selfish. They avoid developing their workers because they’re afraid those employees would become better than them.  

I can attest that right now. I have employees that are doing tasks like originating mortgages, which is something I used to do before I took on more of a CEO role. I thought I was pretty good at doing that job, and my current staff today, are way better than I ever was— and that feeling is great! 

You cannot be scared of encouraging matters. Part of the reason our company is having so much success, is because our team is better at doing their jobs than I ever was or could be. You need people on your team that are truly great at what they do.  

This Week’s Take Away 

Find a single resource that you can forward to your team. The goal is to start encouraging mastery within your own organization. It could be this post, or the Culture Course YouTube channel or podcast. Send them one of these blogs.  

Maybe you’re going to an upcoming conference, and you message your team to invite them to come along with you. There are countless resources out there, that can add real value to your employees. So, don’t just pick something quick that you think they need— find something that you feel is valuable, and share it with your team.  

By researching what your team needs, and sharing what you yourself find valuable, you can begin to become a resource of resources for your employees.  That way, the next time someone comes up to you and asks how they can grow, you will have the answer and the agency to help them act on it to archive mastery.