A simple, powerful message
“I trust you. I believe in you. You are the right person for this job.”
When was the last time someone said this to you? Or that you said it to someone else? I’m guessing if it’s actually happened, it happens pretty rarely.
Even if unsaid, we know these statements are true when we are offered a new position or a promotion. Nobody should extend a job offer if not.
And we know these statements are true, or untrue, when we leave a job. We hear how much they’re going to miss us because of how great we are. Or we’ve just been fired, because they no longer believe we’re the right person for the job.
But why is this kind of feedback so rare in the years, or even decades, between onboarding and exit?
This isn’t about our need for external validation versus finding value in ourselves. We can and absolutely should be saying words of encouragement to ourselves on a regular basis. I’ve delivered many a coaching session on that topic, and worked through it a bunch myself as a leader and an employee. Instead, it’s about adding a strong and important voice to the chorus of feedback -- stated and unstated -- that our employees receive. It’s about giving them less of an opportunity to fill in the unsaid gaps with their own stories, as we’re all prone to do.
If you’re the leader, you are not responsible for the self-esteem of your direct reports. But you’re absolutely responsible for communicating where you stand when it comes to your relationship with them. And you must be aware of the weight of your words, or the weight of the absence of those words.
“I trust you. I believe in you. You are the right person for this job.”
I recently spoke to a client who reports to the executive level at a startup. The client is excelling in their role, receiving acclaim notice for their team and enjoying a good reputation in the company, but can’t get any performance feedback from the boss. From where I sit, the unsaid “No news is good news,” or “I’ll let you know if there’s a problem,” or “Just keep doing what you’re doing until you hear otherwise” just isn’t good enough.
In a pandemic environment, where many of us are working remotely and likely to do so for quite a while longer, in-person chats are vanishingly rare. We’re electronically mediated and scheduled to the hilt. All communications are intentional. We have inbox overload and Zoom fatigue. But all of this makes our relationships more important, not less.
As I’ve said before, a leader’s message can continue inspiring someone 25 years after the fact. We make the weather. Our words matter more than the words of others.
“I trust you. I believe in you. You are the right person for this job.”
If you don’t have a lot of time, or you’re not the sort of leader who expresses this kind of sentiment, that’s another whole set of blog posts. In the meantime, it’s 15 words. Takes less than 10 seconds to say them.
Give it a try.