As A Leader, Do you Fulfill Dreams or Create Nightmares?

Have you ever read a book or heard a speech and the idea that was presented made you kick yourself and think, why did I not think of that?  Well that is how I felt after reading The Dream Manager by Matthew Kelly a few months ago.

The book is written as a business fable.  For those that have not discovered business fables they are  a great format for helping one to visualize a methodology and how it will play out in an organization.  They also are pretty easy reads between the more monotonous reads that business books can sometimes be.

Anyways, the book follows a fictional janitorial service company.  The company has horrible turnover and horrible employee engagement.  I will not spoil it for you, but the book goes through a simplistic yet powerful method that simply deals with helping others fulfill their dreams.

The reason why I kicked myself is because this is something I already do with colleagues and friends.  I have given referrals and testimonials, made connections and helped colleagues in a wide range of areas to help them fulfill their dreams, but never thought of doing this for my employees.  I felt pretty stupid.

So let’s think about this.  Say you have an employee, let’s call him John.  Through some discussions you learn that John has always wanted to take his family to Walt Disney World.  To John, this seems like an impossible feet of which he will never have the time nor the money to bring his dream to fruition. 

So you dig into your contacts and realize you have a colleague in Orlando.  You call him up and through the conversation you come to find he has a guest house.  You tell your colleague of what you are doing and he tells you that the guest house is his for 2 weeks if he comes during the off-season.

You then figure out with John what his expenses will be and you use your financial skills to teach him about budgeting, and you plan out a savings plan for the next year to get the money needed.  You help him find deals online and as the time draws near you make sure that his duties are taken care of at work and home and you send him off.

It did not cost you a dime, other than your time.  How grateful do you think John will be?  Also, before I go too far, do not think that you can replace proper compensation with helping employees fulfill their dreams.  Properly compensating staff is a given.

Let’s say you have another employee that has always wanted to own a home.  To them the idea of owning a home is something that they will never see.  You once again dive into your contacts and find a realtor that specializes in low-income housing.  This realtor puts you in contact with a mortgage broker that specializes in such situations.  You work with this employee and put them in touch with your financial advisor who helps them to budget and get a savings plan together.

As their savings grows and they see you truly care about them, what do you think happens with their engagement?

The ideas are endless, I think as leaders we naturally are problem solvers.  But we are so busy solving problems for our company, that we do nothing to solve problems for our staff.  Yet if we actually showed them we cared, the financial benefits to our organizations are unlimited.  Our employees are the ones on the front-line.  They see things we do not always see.  If you think about them and help them, they will generally think about us and will help to make sure our organizations are successful.

We all have dreams we want out of life.  Some of them are big and some are small.  I think we all have some of both.  As leaders I think we naturally have the knowledge and network to make things happen, but I think to the disengaged employee that thinks you do not care about them, their dreams are just that.    We have the knowledge and resources to coach and help our staff fulfill dreams that we may take for granted.

In the book, What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There, by Marshall Goldsmith, he states: “In the past, the key to wealth may have been control of land, material, plants, and tools.  In that environment, the worker needed the company more than the company needed the worker.  Today, the key to wealth is knowledge.  As a result, the company needs the knowledge worker far more than the knowledge worker needs them.  To make matters worse, they know this!  They see themselves as fungible assets – no longer at the mercy of the company whim – rather than dispensable commodities.  The difference is real: As a fungible asset, the free agent sees himself as always getting a better job somewhere else; if he were merely a commodity, anyone could replace him (which we know is not true anymore).”

I read What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There, after The Dream Manager and that paragraph hit me hard. Leaders that see their employees as fungible assets will find themselves leading mediocre organizations and will have problems with employee engagement, low morale and possibly turn-over.  While leaders that understand and value their employees to the extent of helping them fulfill their dreams, will find employees that are engaged, happy and willing to help the organization succeed.

This concept of The Dream Manager does not diminish the value of accountability and execution, but it may help you realize why those items might not be as high as they should b.  I challenge you to look back at your career and think about how The Dream Manager concept could have been helpful for you and then, become a dream manager yourself.

Please comment and let me know your thoughts.