Reducing Turnover in the Services Sector

In my coaching business, I work with a number of assessments, leadership theories that have stood the test of time and are considered classics. I also work with new leadership models that are continually refining the craft of successfully leading others. My coaching clients find much success in one such new model that is ideal for our security industry. It identifies • how much leadership potential you have developed up to a point in time, • what’s getting in the way of a potentially continuing the upward trend in leadership skills that would make you even more successful, • how to identify any impediments and explore where they came from and why they interfere with personal success, and • how to reframe and redirect the resultant wasted negative energy to positive energy that can transform one into not just a good leader but a great leader. I call this model the New Leadership. It is a hybrid of theories and practices I have taught in my thirty-plus years in the security industry and new practices that have impressed me with their efficacy. A key component of this new model is a questionnaire that measures leadership potential on seven levels under normal operating conditions and on the same seven levels under stressful conditions. This assessment was developed by psychologist, Dr. Bruce Schneider, founder of the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching, where I received much of my formal training in coaching once I retired from the industry and became a leadership coach as my encore career. The questionnaire is called the Energy Leadership Index™, or ELI. Without getting too technical, the ELI measures what percentage of energy a person is investing in each of the levels at the time the person completes the assessment. Once the leader knows this, he or she can use it as a roadmap to further develop positive leadership skills and work on eliminating negative-fueled forces that work against those skills. Some of my clients measure their improvement progress by taking the assessment periodically. Given my lengthy experience in working with security supervisors and managers in the security industry, I find the ELI particularly useful for leaders in this industry. I explain the complicated reasons for this in other chapters, but basically, we need immediate feedback, and this model satisfies that need. We are not time wasters. Before we plunge into the waters of systematically using this tool to hone your leadership skills, it’s important that you know why we are doing it and how it relates to turnover. We are doing it because I find it to be the best and fastest leadership training tool I have encountered over more than thirty years of training folks in the security industry; that’s saying a lot. Add to that the fact that I taught management on the college level for a number of those years. In short, I know what I’m talking about; I’ve walked the walk. The relationship of this assessment to turnover is that the more effective you are a being a direct supervisor or manager, the less likely it will be that good people will choose to leave your team. They’ll like you more, and they’ll want to follow your lead. It’s that simple. I use the ELI assessment with other leadership models I have used over the years. Here’s why. • It is a new way of producing leadership skills training for real-time results, making the security leader largely the architect of his or her own success. • I see it work every day; people get excited about it and want to apply it. • It’s perfect for security-leader development because it complements all learning styles of security leaders at the same time, not just the learning style of the majority population. (A learning style is one’s preferred way to learn; more on that later.) • It can be learned and taught by certified trainers or applied by the individual. In my years of teaching management and organizational behavior on the college level, I have found nothing as effective as this model in terms of immediate learning and applying new leadership approaches that frankly are very effective and feel good. And given the security industry’s penchant for immediate application of learned skills—which I identify as closure—it meets our needs perfectly. It would be fantastic if every leader in the industry did take the ELI at least once, but it has to be purchased and debriefed, which may not be possible for everyone. Technically, though, if you carefully read this chapter, you can put the concepts to work without taking the assessment—though I will offer a discounted price through my website to security industry personnel. The New Leadership, then, is a hybrid model of personnel management that incorporates management theory and practice from various models relevant to the security industry. The key one is the iPEC model that focuses mainly in one’s attitudes that influence leadership actions. The beauty of the model is that if first line supervisors find that their individual leadership preferences are not working for them, they can change their styles over time with work and commitment. It is important that the reader understand with respect to the Energy Leadership Index and any reference to iPEC or iPEC materials that what I am presenting in this book in my interpretation of the iPEC model as it relates to the security industry. The same can be said of any other models cited herein. If you want to take a deeper dive into any learning model I cite in the text, your best friend is Google. The report produced by the assessment demonstrates and explains the following: • the leader’s current default leadership approaches that have evolved over time • the supervisor’s current potential for highly effective leadership, which is there but not necessarily fully developed • certain identifiable blocks that may be stopping leaders from realizing and using their full leadership potential • how a path to progressive improvement as a leader can be charted and followed individually or as part of a group • how retaking the assessment over time can confirm progress and pinpoint further higher-level leadership skills to be developed • how this journey to self-development aided by proven theories and practices from past management research will help the first-line boss fully actualize his or her role in being the pivotal and most immediate factor in lowering turnover.