For the Best Companies, it's about the employees

"Make your employees the stars"

Leadership is never about you. You purpose is to make sure the company is running smoothly. There's no place ego, insecurities, or neurotic tendencies.

You are there to create the right infrastructure and to make sure the people who work for you are engaged and enjoying their work.

I've found that people who are engaged in their work and allowed to participate in decisions about how their job is done are happier and more productive. Think about your company as Formula One race car. Every part of the car is perfectly engineered to interact with all the other parts. The company operates at peak efficiency when all the parts are working together and doing their jobs well.

That's your mission, to engineer an efficient company and let it operate.

For the last twenty years, I've worked in a very people intensive business. In most cases, the main difference between the best companies and the worst companies is the difference in the quality of their employees.

It makes sense that you want to have the best and brightest employees. Once you've hired them, you need to retain them.

Some companies hire good people, but can't seem to retain them. Those companies have poor leadership. As a result, the top-level employees were able to find greener grass.

The secret to successful business leadership is to put the focus on the employees. You want people to have a voice in how their job is done. The less control someone has over a situation, the greater stress it puts on them. It doesn't matter whether it's at work, home, or in traffic. If you don't have options and don't have control, you're going to be stressed.

Stressed employees are not efficient. That's why you should strive to make their workplace as stress-free as possible. Most jobs are stressful enough on their own. Your employees shouldn't have to deal with extra stress from the company, their peers, or management.

It's your job to make sure this doesn't happen. You want employees to enjoy their work, their co-workers, and the people they work for. If they enjoy it, they're more likely to stay and they'll be more productive. Think about yourself for a moment. When you like what you're doing, you'll do it for as long as you enjoy it. Employees are no different from you.

You're most concerned about the good employees, the ones you can't afford to lose. Your top employees are very marketable; they can leave your company and quickly find employment elsewhere. They're generally smarter and less likely to tolerate poor leadership or an unsatisfactory job.

Your goal is to make sure your company is below the average industry turnover of key employees. If you do better in this arena, your company will out-perform others in the long-run.

I always try to make sure my employees look forward to coming to work. The last thing I want is for them to dread coming to work. They have enough stress in their lives before they show up. They might have had to take their kids to school, sit it traffic, and look for a parking spot. Day to day life is already a chore, so try to make work as enriching as possible.

When people enjoy their job, their co-workers, and the people they work for, they're going to be significantly more productive on a daily basis. Your company will be more profitable and more efficient. Turn-over is expensive: you have to hire people, train them, fire them, hire again and so forth. You do this several times until you find the right person for the job. During that time you've spent time and money on recruitment and lost productivity.

More importantly, you're expending effort which detracts from the time you should be spending on building and growing your company. Turnover has a huge negative impact on long-term sustainable growth.

To minimize turn-over, you need to look first at yourself. You're the one responsible for minimizing it. You're either hiring wrong or doing something wrong that chases the good employees away.

Once again, your mind must be in the right place. It's not about you; don't make the mistake of letting your feelings, ego or insecurities get in the way. Think about each employee as an individual. Given the job they have, what can you do to make it more rewarding for them?

Some jobs will never be rewarding to certain people. Your employees can only get out of a job what they're willing to put into it. However, you have a big hand in making your employees feel valued and satisfied.

You should be proactive. Remove all the obstructions to peak performance. Let your horses run. Your job is not to tell people how to do their job, but to make sure the highway they drive on is paved and leads straight to the destination.

Your leadership and business success depend on your employees. What can you do to help them be more efficient? Sometimes technology will provide the boost, but that costs money. Instead, start by looking the changes you can make that don't cost money. And remember, the first thing to get right is your attitude. It costs the company nothing and probably has the biggest impact on an organizations performance.

It's not about you; it's about your employees.