The landscape of people leadership is ever-evolving, and clubs must adapt to ensure that their leaders thrive. A recent leadership survey highlighted that 86% of people leaders feel that the criteria for success has shifted in the past five years, while many organizations haven’t adapted. This can result in a loss of top leadership talent.
To bridge this gap and prevent leadership burnout, here are five essential actions for you to take to help your managers thrive:
Provide a Formal Way to Measure Success: What does success look like? When a leader doesn’t have the answer to this question, they won’t be able to choose the appropriate action to take. Clear, formal frameworks for tracking leadership success are essential. Without them, leaders and organizations lack clarity on performance metrics. These frameworks should be updated regularly to reflect evolving goals and insights.
What metrics do you use to measure success, and are those metrics clearly communicated?
Clearly Define Roles: Ambiguity in roles and responsibilities leads to inefficiencies and miscommunication. Clear role definitions are necessary for building effective teams. Clubs should focus on outcome-based metrics to provide clarity.
Do your leaders have a clear understanding of their responsibilities?
Align Organizational and Team Goals: Misaligned goals lead to confusion and wasted effort. Leaders need clear direction on how their work supports broader club objectives. Visualizing progress and ensuring transparency helps teams stay aligned and motivated.
Do your leaders understand the Club’s business objectives and how their role makes an impact?
Protect Productivity by Managing Workload and Well- Being: Ensuring a healthy work-life balance is crucial for long-term productivity. Well-being must be prioritized, as burnout is a significant challenge for leaders. Clubs must create environments where leaders feel comfortable discussing workload issues.
Are you having productive conversations about workload?
“Upskill” with the Right Training: Most leaders know what they should be doing; their challenge is knowing how to do it effectively. Training must be relevant and tailored to people leaders’ actual needs. Many clubs offer insufficient or misaligned training, preventing leaders from growing. Investing in the right skills helps leaders develop their teams and boosts organizational success.
The top three topics that managers request for learning are (1) Conflict Resolution, (2) Communication Skills and (3) Emotional Intelligence.
Have you asked your leaders recently what type of training would impact their development and success?
A club’s success is directly impacted by the leadership it employs. To retain top leadership talent, clubs must adapt to modern expectations by implementing clear success metrics, role definitions, aligned goals, well-being support and relevant “upskilling” opportunities. Without these, they risk disengagement—or worse, the departure of talented leaders.
Jodie J. Cunningham, SPHR, SHRM-SCP is an HR/Talent strategies, search & consulting executive at KOPPLIN KUEBLER & WALLACE.