How to be the Leader that People will remember the most: Knowing what Moments Matter

During the past month, I got wind of an amazing concept that is swirling around the employee engagement and organizational transformation circles — “The Moments That Matter.” These are the points in an employee journey that that will make or break the relationship between you and employee. This was popularized about a year or two ago by Chip and Dan Heath in their book, “The Power of Moments.”

Now more than ever, it is quite important for you as a leader to know what might be these key areas or moments that will make the biggest impact to the employee experience.

Credit to IBM THINK Keynote + Analyst Josh Bersin

As a leader of a team or organization, these areas are very important times when memories are being built by your team. I realize that the day to day is important, but to get these times right is essential to have a good experience between you and your team.

I realize though that most people think that this types of areas is HR’s responsibility, but I think the buck stops with the leader. It is extremely important for the leader to take ownership on these key areas and let HR help build the framework but cannot create the execution of this.

While the Health Brothers and IBM focused specific on the moments that matter for employees, let me do two things, 1. generalize the moments to any other profession, and 2. have the mapping also towards an investor-investee relationship.

Mapping out the moments that matter to a general and start-up centric model

In general I would look into these key moments on creating routines, systems and special emphasis as table stakes for a leader (or investor):

1. Deciding to join the team: People will judge you as a leader on how you treat and interact with them even if there is no incentive to do so. A good example of this is in how you treat a candidate even if they are not your employee yet. Most organizations treat their candidates like trash only until they think there is something to be gained or a potential “qualified candidate.” Scaling and building this candidate experience is super important more than ever given the amount of options good people (or founders) have in the market.
2. Building the first impression (on boarding): One both of you decide to do business together, the first day or month is super important as well. Do you show your people what resources they have from you and the organization? Have you been clear on the rules of engagement? Have you instilled a sense of pride that they are part of the organization that they tell all their friends that they joined this company and how this aligned to their own personal missions?
3. Alignment between your goals and their growth: Everyone who is good is focused on growth. The key is to align your own expectations for growth as a firm with the energy and expectations for the person (or for the case of a investment, also the founders and their start-up) in the next couple of years that you will be together. In every relationship you want to be sure that you’ll become a better person more than you entered the firm.
4. Showing Empathy and Handling personal matters: Life happens to everyone — being a parent, owning a dog, getting sick, having a death in the family. How you “Show Up” for your people and what you decide to do during this time will matter so much to them and will make or break their loyalty and trust to you.
5. Celebrating Success: Show that you are proud of them and tell the world. Have you had a boss or investor who you know truly was “proud of you and your accomplishments.” How you celebrate both small and big successes are ones that you will remember even years after.
6. Parting Ways: Despite the circumstances of parting way, whether in good or bad circumstances, the important thing is how you do this. Even if its moving to go to a different place or having the final catch-up talk, your people will never forget what you said last to you.
7. Maintaining the Network: You spend time together, most likely through “Hell and Back”, its a pity that most leaders and organizations do not maintain relationships with their people. Have you every wondered why schools are so successful in building loyalty despite only going there for a few years, even just for 2 years (e.g. the MBA). This step is related to step 1, how you treat people when there is no more incentive to do so will be important, but the thing here is, you have a baseline of experience and memories together.

Leadership is hard especially with the day to day grind. Making the numbers and have something to show for this is important, but I would urge each of you reading this right now, have you showed up for your people when it mattered the most? What are you doing to make sure that you create moments that matter that they’ll remember you.