The Art of Keeping Talent: Strategies for Retaining Your Best Employees (feat. Mike Harbour)

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Hi, I'm Susan Drumm and welcome to the Enlightened Executive, where your personal evolution sparks your leadership evolution. Each episode we feature groundbreaking techniques and strategies to help you get the edge in personal and leadership effectiveness. This episode is brought to you by Meritage Leadership. At Meritage, we strengthen leaders and empower teams to achieve high performance. Go to meritageleadership.com to learn more. Joining me today is Mike Harbour to talk about talent retention. Mike is a United States army veteran who served as both an enlisted soldier and a medical services officer. He has almost 30 years of leadership experience in the healthcare industry as a leader in hospital operations, leadership training, development, sales and executive search. He's the author of three books including Power Principles, Quit Losing Talent and co author of Breaking Average. Thank you for being here, Mike.

Yeah, Susan, thanks so much for having me on the show. I'm excited to talk with you today.

Yeah, so this is such an important topic of talent retention and I'm excited that you wrote a book about it. But as we were chatting a little bit prior to recording this, I found your journey really fascinating. And so I would love for you to share a bit about where you were as a leader and where you've grown. Because, as you know, on this show we talk about walking the path of enlightened leadership and what that means. And I think sharing your story would be really valuable for our listeners.

Yeah, thanks so much for the opportunity to do that. You know, I love leading people. I often ask CEOs that I work with first, do you want to be the CEO? Do you want to be the leader of people? Because if you don't love leading people, you're not going to make a very good leader. And, and so I love leading people, but when I started out, I just wanted to be in charge, right? I wanted to be in charge of my own destiny. And that meant being in charge of people. And the reason was, you know, Susan, I grew up in a very violent home. Grow, you know, as a kid, up until I was, you know, 15 years old, my parents fought just on a daily basis. And I often say, you know, my parents weren't like oil and water, they were like fire and gasoline. It was combustible every day. There was lots of physical abuse in my home, lots of alcohol abuse, lots of emotional and mental abuse. And, you know, myself and my two sisters, we live through that now. I'm, you know, luckily, you know, I'm a, I'm a positive statistic. I got out of that environment and, and made, made something better of Myself, I have a thriving home and family now and, and, but it wasn't an easy journey for me, Right. I had to go to work on really transforming myself kind of in alignment with your mission as well. And it was hard work, but really where that began to change. SUSAN I joined the military when I was 22 years old, as you mentioned. I'm. And luckily for me, you know, the military gets a some bad rap when it comes to leadership sometimes, but for me it gave me a chance to really lead. But I was surrounded by great leaders in the military who challenged me not to just be who I was, but to develop into the leader that could actually lead other people. Now in the military, I had a rank on my shoulder. I could yell, scream, tell people what to do, and they had to follow, right? But I had some leaders who said, mike, you've got a ton of potential, but you're going to have to develop that. I had a leader who started giving me books, often mentioned that Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is the first book I ever read. I was 23 years old at the time. I was a high school graduate. I had gone to college for four years without graduating, but spent four years at college, never read a book. Finally I found like, here's my love. I love learning like this. Personal growth and leadership and self development. I was introduced to John Maxwell at that time and I've been a student of John since I was 23, so almost 30 years now. But that's kind of the journey that began at transformation. I finally found something I love to do and I'm like, wow, I can do this, this. And then I learned values based leadership from John. I don't, you know, people aren't just people to be told what to do. They're people to be loved, people to be cared for, people to be nurtured, to help them become something better. And I often say that because the leader who saw something in me began to nurture that potential in me. I would, I can honestly say I wouldn't be standing here today with that first leader. That one leader hadn't said, mike, you got potential, but you got to learn how to harness it. You got to learn how to develop it. And so, you know, I began that 30 years ago. And over time I've read hundreds of books. I've been, you know, blessed to write a couple of books, co author another, and learn from great people like John Maxwell and others along the way.

Well, what you really highlight, and it's something that I write about in my book, the Leaders playlist, which is how our childhood wounds show up in our leadership.

Right.

So you had some real challenges growing up and you need to learn some really important survival techniques. And tell me a little bit about initially how those showed up in the way or your mindset of how you needed to lead. And then we'll talk about what shifted and how you shifted it.

I love it. We're going to go deep. But I love this because look, when you grow up in a home where you're beat up on a regular basis, you, you leave home with a lot of anger issues. And, and so when I left home with anger issues, you know, in my mind, like subconsciously I didn't go out like saying this, but subconsciously no one's gon beat me up outside of my house. Right. Whether it's verbally or physically. You know, Susan, I was in a lot of fistfights as a kid because I wasn't going to get beat up outside of my home. But how it showed up in leadership, if, if someone didn't do what I asked them to do and I'm the leader, I could become not like physically violent but verbally loud. Right. I would wound people with my words. I couldn't put my hands on them. But I'm loud. As you can tell, I've got a pretty deep voice and I can, I can go pretty high, can go from a 1 to a 10 in a pretty quick way. And, and when you do that with people, you lead, you create fear, you break trust. And I learned, there's some research that I've done, you know, on kind of the psychology of leadership. And you know, I learned that, you know, when we speak to people, we either create a fight or flight response or an approach response. And I was always creating this get the heck away from Mike response. Right. And then I look up and I've got no one to lead. Yet here I am. The, and I'm not blaming my parents. I'm grateful for who I am today because it's some of those challenges that forced me to go deep and search for new ways to do things. But it's that childhood that I grew up in that those self protection subconscious things that when things aren't going our way as elite in a, in leadership, you know, we're, they're going to show up. For me it was being loud, maybe trying to grab control. Like my home was out of control. So like over controlling, over micromanaging, everything. I'm not going to say I don't do those things today, but Rarely do they happen today because I'm so self aware, you know, I just went deep in this, developing the self awareness and mindset for leadership that it's totally transformed my life.

Yeah, that's amazing, amazing story. So it sounds like the old mindset was I need to be strong or I'm not going to be able to be a leader. And the way I'm strong is I either am verbally, you know, strong or to the point of abusive or loud or. And in your mind, because that was your modeling, right? That was leadership, you didn't know anything different because that was what was modeled.

Yeah, I mean you, you learn those things and, and for me it was about more control than everything, anything, right. I mean, there was no control in my home and I was the mediator between my parents. You know, I didn't know if they were going to kill each other, so I was trying to keep them from killing each other. And so I developed a skill to take control of situations and calm them down. I have a very stoic personality today. Now, you know, I'm passionate when I get to talking about these things, right. But most of the time I'm a fairly stoic individual. But one thing, I was hiking and just a couple of weeks ago, me and my brother in law, we were hiking and we were coming down this hill and this, we passed this girl and she was about 20 or 30ft, you know, yards behind us. And then I hear this loud snap like a gunshot. And then I hear her scream. I knew immediately I was a medic in the army. I knew immediately she broke her leg. And I looked at my brother, I took control immediately, right? I said, Call 911, someone, we're gonna have to help her. I got her calmed down. I played medic. And I hadn't done that in 30 years, but I played medic for a little bit until the par. The real paramedics got there. But you know, just that instinct came right back, right? I mean that control, control the situation, calm it down, help this girl, tell people what to do. You call 91 1, you get her leg propped up because there's a few of us around there, right? I mean I immediately went into that. So it's still there, Susan, but it's more of a controlled nature today.

Now you have a space between your reaction and, and response, right? Are you familiar with the Enneagram, by the way?

I am. I'm an eight.

Yes, for sure, for sure. Everything you describe. Active controller or powerful challenger? Without a doubt. And we can see why that sort of, that, that leadership style. And with that, though, eights are so wonderful because they will take charge in a circumstance like that. And there's something about that strength to lead. What they saw in you is all those building blocks. Your, your mentors. Right, the building blocks and amazing steps forward. So now what had you go from that old style to the new style? You talked about reading the books and really getting to learn a bit more about leadership fundamentally, is there a different mindset that shifted for you that made all the difference?

Yeah, I mean, there's probably a couple things, I think. One, wanting to be married to one woman the whole. My whole life I've been married 30 years. We just celebrated our 30th year in September of 2022. I didn't want to end up like my parents. So that's one. You know, I knew that I had to, I had to make a change in order to be the kind of husband she needed to be. But also having kids, right? I have two kids. I have a 22 year old son and a 17 year old daughter now. And I didn't want to be the tyrant dad that did damage to them. You know, I tell my kids all the time, I said, you know, one thing about you guys, if y' all screw up now, it's your fault, not mine. You know, because we've, my wife and I have built a great foundation for them from a spiritual, physical, mental, you know, loving standpoint. So we haven't done everything right, but certainly, you know, they're going to leave home with skills that my wife and I did not leave home with. But it was really that shift to, okay, I want to provide something for my home, my family that I didn't have. And that's when I really got. And I was 31. You know, I said I started reading when I was 23, but I was really, I was 31 before my son was born. And so it was still a little bit later in life before I really started making that transformation. Right. I mean, so it's been just a little over 20 years now that you.

Got connected to a meaningful mission outside yourself. Right. And that was wanting to be married, wanting to build a family and create a solid foundation for others. So I love it.

Let me just add to that. That's the real essence of leadership. Right. It became more about developing others than climbing the ladder myself.

Yes.

And when you can make that transformation as a leader, it's life changing. Like for. Because, you know, early in life, it's all about climbing the ladder. But when you, when you really realize that leadership is about helping others climb the ladder, developing others, so they, you're going to climb the ladder because they're going to push you up as a, as a leader.

Right.

But it was having kids that really made that mind shift happen for me.

Absolutely. It's the difference in adult stage development between a reactive state of mind and, and an outcome creating state of mind which is being led by a mission that isn't about protecting identity, ego and self image. So excited about that now. One of your books talks about talent retention. Love to hear from your perspective what leaders maybe get wrong when it comes to talent retention and what do they need to do to shift it?

So in my book, Quit Losing Talent, I write, I write about four strategies, okay. And one of them is, is retention people. And really we spend in America or you know, across the globe even, we spend billions of dollars replacing people with, with other people when we could have spent a third of that and kept the people we had. Right? And so one of the things from a mindset standpoint as leaders, we have to make that shift from seeing people as, as dispensable and see them as having value and potential that needs to be developed. Okay? So when it comes to, you have to make development of people a priority. They're not just there to come to work, fill the 8 hour, 10 hour shift or whatever that may be. You know, what we know and all the research telling us that and the research from this book is the number one reason that people decide to leave or stay with a company is do they feel valued? And part of that value, feeling of value is does the organization care about me? Does my leader care about me enough to help me become something better? And so I think one of the things, and look, I do a ton of work in the healthcare space. Hospitals and healthcare companies are notorious for investing millions of dollars in new buildings and new equipment. And then they put the same people that they haven't developed into those new buildings and they think, okay, this will be better, right? But they've not developed the insides of that organization. I liken it to eating right. If you, you can have a nice body on the outside if you go lift and do some things, but if all you do is eat fried food and French FR fries and junk all the time, your insides eventually are going to catch up to you from a health perspective. So it's no different in leadership if we don't take care of what is on the inside of our organizations by developing them and helping them become Something a better person. And. And by the way, Susan, we talked about my life growing up. Every person has a story, and they need. They need some tools today to deal with those stories because those stories are creating problems in their marriages and their relationship with their kids and their co workers. These are new things that we need to be thinking about as leaders and organizations that really help us retain people. We could talk about that all day, but that's just maybe some things to think about that are different than some of your listeners have heard today.

Yes, yes. Well, one of the things you also mentioned was systematizing development. So, yes, leaders might say, well, yeah, I know it's important to develop people, and they think they're doing it, but when I talk to the actual people getting supposedly developed, they don't feel it. And when we talk about retention, that is one of the. I think it's number two on the list for why people really leave is they don't feel like they had good development opportunities. So what's the disconnect there with leaders thinking, oh, yeah, I'm developing them, and the actual person thinking, no, not so much.

Yeah. Oh, wow. Great question. You know, here's. Here's one of the major issues. A lot of leaders, I mentioned this earlier that, you know, they're so focused on climbing the ladder. They may focus on developing themselves and reading some books and going to some extra classes, getting their master's degree, and. And they just think that everybody should do that. Right. So now they're in a leadership role. They've got 50 or 100 employees underneath them. Why doesn't everybody else go get their masters on their own? Why don't they pay for it out of their pocket like I did? Well, that just doesn't happen because the reality is 80% of people aren't motivated enough to develop themselves. They need a push. They need a leader that will do that. And then the other mistake that organizations make is they think, well, I'll just send Susan to that seminar, you know, once a year or once every two years. And they think, okay, I'll put Susan in the microwave and heat her up, and that'll motivate her to. To grow. Right. Well, development is something that is ongoing. I'll come back to my fitness analogy. If you only go to the gym once a year or once a quarter, you will not see any benefit out of it. Right. In order for me to have the fitness level I want to have, I need to be in the gym multiple times a week. And so if we want to develop Leaders and people want to be developed. You just mentioned that if we want to develop leaders or people just in general, we need to put a process, a program and look that can be a 15 minute podcast. I have a podcast as well called the Lead Up Podcast. And I recommend to the companies I work with use my podcast as a lunch and learn and pull up a podcast every week, listen to it with your team and then have roundtable discussion or grab a book like Quit Losing Talent or the Enlightened Leader that, that Susan has and grab a book and do a book study every week or a couple times a week. Make it a regular process where we're challenging people's thinking and then their habits of the way they do things. And then over time we'll begin to see the fruit from that. So you have to as a leader. So let's talk about the systematizing piece. Right. As a leader, I'm very type A. But what I recommend leaders do is you have to make those things calendar items. Because if you just think, well, I'll do it when I have time. Yeah, never have time, right? So part of the systematizing is creating the framework, which is what I help organizations do is create the framework to do it. But then it has to be a calendar item where we make it a regular effort, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and not just send somebody to a one hour seminar. Because all that really does is frustrates people. Especially when I come in, Susan and I start talking about what leadership should be doing and the employees are sitting around saying, yeah, they should be doing that, but they're not. And I just really frustrate employees more than I do. I mean, I'm helping them, but they get more frustrated for the, at the companies they work with when they bring me in for a one, one time.

Like why should they, they be doing that? Well, let's talk a little bit about what we should be doing in those meetings. Right. So okay. I've decided to put on, you know, a monthly basis. I'm having a more development conversation with my direct report. In your mind. What would you like to see?

Yeah, great question. So you know, we provide tools to, to have those one on one, I call them soar meetings. How do, how do I help? You know, my people soar. There should be some component of organizational growth, like what are they doing to help the organization move forward from a growth standpoint, right. There should be some component of values development. So if the company has, and every company has values, but have they really defined what those values are and the behaviors. And so every meeting I would be talking with you about how either modeling or falling out of alignment with the values and behaviors that we expect as an organization. And I use that not to beat you over the head, but to give you tools. Maybe I suggest a book that you read or maybe I suggest a podcast that you listen to really develop your ability to be a more trusting teammate or a better communicator with the team members that you're working with. So I start with kind of those two components.

I love what you're suggesting, though, with the values, because so many times I think companies create these values, but they never live in action. And what you've just outlined is a great way to actually make them come alive by talking about how are they showing up in those values and where places where they may feel like, you know they're not. And are they willing to have that level of vulnerability, which is a good sign you have a deep relationship.

Yeah. I believe, Susan, we should be holding people accountable to the behaviors of our values more than the results that they deliver. Deliver. Because if we hold people accountable to the behaviors of our values, they will deliver the results that we're after.

Yes.

I mean, that's. There's plenty of research that would back that up, but I preach that everywhere I go is. And so if we, as an organization or as a leader, if we haven't defined our values, that's. That's where we need to start. And then, and then you're having those regular conversations and what you're trying to do is just move them one more rung up the. Hey, trust is very important on this team. Let's talk about where you're needing some development in trusting others. Let's talk about where you're struggling with trusting others on your team. Where does that come up from? And I use trust as a. As an example, Susan. I said at the top of the show, I believe I couldn't trust the two people I should have been able to trust most of my life. My mom and dad. Right. So my definition of trust may be different than yours because you grew up in a trusting home.

Yeah.

So I need to be able to have these conversations with my team members about what is trust? What does that look like for you? How do you define it when someone breaks trust? How do you respond to that? And so I. To develop them around those values. Okay. The third component to a one on one meeting would be some sort of personal growth goal for them. Like, what do you want to do in life, Susan? Hey, you're a nurse here. Do you want to go get your master's in nursing? Do you want to become a nurse practitioner? Do you want to become a doctor? Do you want to do something else in life? Yeah, that's right. And so now I'm getting to know that person at a heart level. So I'm. Organizational metrics, behaviors and values, modeling and personal growth and development are kind of the three components I think every leader should be having in those one on one conversations. We get to know people when we do that, when somebody gets to know. When you get to know one of your people say, say they have a goal to learn how to play the guitar, what are you doing to do it? Have you signed up for any lessons yet? Have you got a book? Maybe I could buy them a guitar playing book for. As a gift for their birthday. Whatever. It helps me be more personal. Right. And those aren't natural things.

It's not just about. Yeah, that's what I hate when people just sort of an ends to a means to an end. Like, oh, you're just here to get this job done and you leave. Well, you're not going to retain talent that way. What's the person's hopes and dreams outside of work too? And there's a place to actually have that conversation. So I love it. So tell me, what is one thing that you would suggest a leader start doing tomorrow that could make a massive shift in how they lead?

You know, I think the number one thing, and I'll just speak from personal experience, the number one thing I've done and that I help a lot of leaders do to begin with is begin to work on your mindset. Like what, what do you think about leadership? What do you think about people? See, there's an old quote, and I don't know who said it, but you know, I think it's a funny quote. You know, 5% of people think, 10% of people think they think, and 85%, 85% of people wish they didn't have to think at all. And here's the reality. Most of us don't think. We just get up and do the same thing every day. We're frustrated, people are overwhelmed, feel like they're overworked today. And you know, I don't want to, when I say feel like they're overworked, I don't want to, I don't want to say they're not because some people are. But really it's a, it's a mindset. We've allowed things to creep into our mind today that are destroying our ability to be great teammates. We allow ego and pride to get in the way. So I think for a leader, the first step would just be to spend some time. Some. I don't prescribe to journaling or meditation because I'm not good at it. I think it's good for people, but I'm not good at it. But I do think for me, I like to go hike. I like to go walk in the woods. And I do a lot of thinking in those moments, right? Like, what am I really thinking about the people? Do I lead? Do I even want to lead people? Because leading people is not fun. Let's just be honest. It's really hard work. But I think mindset's number one. And then two, you have to. You take in new stuff. Susan, studies tell us that about 75% of people, once they finish their formal education, they never read another book. And so if we're in a leadership role, we should be studying and reading and taking in new ideas today. It's so easy because we have podcasts like we're on now. We have Audible. I listen to audio books every single day. And am I taking in new ideas so that I can get new results from people, or am I trying to get new results with old thinking? I think that those are kind of my biggest two pieces of advice I would give.

Well, thank you so much. This has been super insightful. Where can people learn more about you and your work?

You know, I'm on LinkedIn. Mike harbor on LinkedIn. H A R B as in boy O U R. You can find me on my website, harborresources.com that's. That's the best place to find me. You can find all the other other resources, books, podcasts we talked about on there as well.

Well, thank you. I love this conversation. It's always great to talk to another leadership development practitioner. And our missions are so aligned, and I admire the journey and the path that you've walked. And so thanks for sharing more about that. And I know if you are type 8, vulnerability isn't always easy, but I can tell that you've had some tremendous growth in your ability to share this.

That it's been a developed skill. But thank you so much for. For noticing that, Susan. This was a great time. I hope I added a ton of value to your listeners.

Absolutely. All right, well, thanks so much. And if you like this episode, you're not going to want to miss my interview with Nima George, who shares the importance of creating a workforce and culture that prioritizes inclusion, belonging, and a space for people to thrive. Live. Let's lead the way. Hope you enjoyed today's episode, and I'd like to point you to the next important step. Hit the subscribe button to get notified when we release new content. I'll see you on the next episode of the Enlightened Executive.

Sam.