Do I Value the Person?
Steve Maloney

My recent blogs have explored two key questions of Value-Added Leadership: Do I have value to add? and Do I value what I do? When you connect your experiences and personal story to the purpose behind your team’s work, you create a powerful opportunity to influence and engage employees.

In this post, we’ll explore the third question of Value-Added Leadership: Do I value the person?

Ask yourself: Have I considered what’s best for each team member? Do I know what they need to succeed in their role? Do I know what goals they’ve set for themselves, both personally and professionally?

Valuing the person is a conscious choice to support and develop your team members. Recognizing that helping them grow and succeed is one of your most important responsibilities as a leader.

As leaders, it’s easy to focus on what we need from our people. We need them to meet the deadline. We need them to hit the numbers. We need them to solve the problem. We need them to perform at a higher level. We need them to satisfy our customers.

These needs are important. However, have we considered that valuing a team member is more than an end goal in itself? When we focus on their needs, we increase the likelihood of achieving the expectations listed above.

Value-Added Leadership challenges us to look beyond what we need from people and ask what we can do for people. This positively influences employee engagement and support for meeting your objectives and company goals.

Here are some great questions to ask yourself about your employees if you’d like to demonstrate this third pillar of Value-Added Leadership:

• Do I know what is important to them?
• Do I understand their strengths and their potential?
• Am I helping them develop, even when their development may eventually take them somewhere beyond my team?
• Do I provide the feedback, encouragement, and opportunities they need to grow?
• And perhaps most importantly, do I genuinely care about their success?

The third question is both interesting and challenging. Recently, while facilitating a Supervisory Leadership class, one participant shared that they’ve observed others intentionally holding back employees by limiting training and development opportunities. Their concern was that employees might outperform them or leave the department, or even the organization, in pursuit of greater opportunities.

We need to recognize that leadership isn’t transactional; it’s transformational, and developing our team members – even if we need to sacrifice our self-interests – is critical for the transformation.

There’s an important difference between valuing someone’s contribution and valuing the person. If I only value an employee because of what they produce, I’m valuing their output. If their performance changes, my perception of their value may change with it. But when I value the person, I recognize that their worth is greater than their current performance.

That doesn’t mean lowering expectations or avoiding accountability. In fact, it’s the opposite.

When I value someone, I want them to become better. I’m willing to have difficult conversations because I care enough to help them improve. I hold them accountable because I believe they are capable of more. I give them opportunities because I see potential they may not yet see in themselves.

Think about the people you lead. How well do you know them? Not just their job responsibilities, but their goals, strengths, frustrations, and aspirations. When was the last time you asked yourself, “What does this person need from me to be successful?”

The goal isn’t simply to get more out of people. The goal is to add value to people. And when leaders consistently add value to people, something powerful happens. People begin to trust them. They become more engaged. They’re more willing to accept feedback, take risks, learn, and contribute.

Ultimately, people will remember many things about the organizations they worked for, but they’ll especially remember the leaders who believed in them, invested in them, challenged them, and cared about them.

This is Value-Added Leadership.