Are you committed to your own organization?

Employees look to leaders for guidance on how to see their roles in the organization

Are you committed to your own organization?
We all want our employees to be committed to our organizations. First, the employees who are loyal are stable. We don't have to constantly retrain people and spend all of our time and energy getting people started. It's hard to make progress when you have to keep starting from scratch. More importantly, though, committed employees are more engaged with their work. They care more, so they try harder.

How committed are the employees in your organization? This is the first question to ask, and the second is this: for the employees in your organization who aren't committed, why aren't they committed? As leaders, this can be a difficult question to ask, because it forces us to face ourselves. More often than not, employees mirror their leaders. They look to us for guidance on how to see their roles in the organization. So, we must finally ask ourselves: how committed are we to our own organizations?

I've met a handful of leaders over the years who are apathetic about their own organizations. They don't really care about the success of the company; it's just a means to an end. It's their meal ticket, and they only care about it being successful just long enough for them to get onto the next thing. In my experience, this strategy doesn't work. If you want your employees to believe in what they're doing, you have to believe in what you're doing too. Leadership is a mirror--what do your people see when they look into it?