Help Them Say Why They Stay

You don’t have to cling desperately to your talent. You can keep them pumped up and excited about coming to work for you every day. Find out what will keep them engaged and on your team.

If you’re not yet holding stay interviews, you are guessing at what your talented people really want—from you, from the team, from their work. You could be guessing wrong. Stay interviews are just one of many strategies in a successful manager’s playbook. But they are absolutely foundational to engaging, motivating, recognizing, and retaining talent.

It seems so simple—just ask! Yet most managers will admit they are not conducting stay interviews (and their bosses are not conducting them, either). Why? Often it’s because they’re afraid of the answers.

They ask, “What if I ask my talented people what will keep them and they all say money or a promotion?” Good point. So the fear of being unable to deliver on someone’s request gets in the way of having the most crucial dialogue of all. Is that true for you? This book offers you an easy four-step process you can use when an employee tosses you a tough-to-deliver-on request. It works like magic.

If you manage even one person, we’re betting you’ve conducted at least one stay interview. You probably didn’t call it that or think of it exactly in those terms. But your intention was no doubt twofold:

1. to let your talented employee know how much you value him, and

2. to find out what will keep her engaged and on your team.

That’s a stay interview! It’s not complex. It’s simply talking to your employees about what matters most and then working together to make that happen.

You might wonder, If it’s that simple, why would you write a whole book about it? Good question. The short answer is: because managers asked us for it. Many leaders first learned about the concept in our book Love ’Em or Lose ’Em: Getting Good People to Stay. For several years they’ve asked us to dive in to this topic to help them:

better understand how stay interviews really work;

quickly and easily prepare for these important conversations;

effectively deal with tough requests coming their way;

have these conversations in different cultures; and

really enjoy these ongoing dialogues with the talented people on their teams.

We purposefully designed this to be a playbook. We wanted it to be user friendly, a quick reference tool, and something you’ll turn to often. We designed it for managers with heavy schedules and ongoing pressure to deliver results. It’s also useful to recruiters—the professionals with whom managers partner to seek talent and then to screen, interview, and select a match that will last.

We invite you to take the time to conduct stay interviews and to take action on what you learn. Conduct these conversations early and often, with everyone you hope will bring their best and stick around for a while. Your return on investment will be an increased understanding of those on your team. And what might that lead to? Increased commitment, productivity, innovation, and success for you, your team, and the organization.