Lumen Impact Group
Lumen Impact Group

If you Want Your Organization to Thrive, Spend Time with Your People

Published: September 9, 2024
picture of women meeting together

By Lisa Diaz, Founder

One of the things that I’ve learned over the years is the power of investing in the people on your team. While professional development opportunities and training for team members are certainly investments, that’s not the type of investment I mean. I mean a time investment.

As a leader, you’re busy. You’re managing people, budgets, projects, and the flow of your organization which means it is hard to carve out time for one-on-one time with the people on your team–especially when that time is not directly tied to one of the to-do’s on your long list.

But the time spent investing in your employees will have an immeasurable return.

When you bring a new staff member onto your team, elevate someone into a leadership role, or assign other new responsibilities or work, investing in their growth early on is key. It may look like weekly meetings with a staff member, scheduling extra time to help them work through a process, or just taking the time to talk about what they’re learning as they start their new position or work. What I’ve found is that taking the time to walk side by side with team members builds capacity and confidence in those individuals to be more efficient and effective as a result.

Spending time with team members is not just for new staff or someone elevated into a new role; it can and will benefit even your most seasoned and exceptional team members. The one-on-one time I spend with our team not only heightens my relational capacity with individual team members but also allows me to continue to invest in their growth and allows team members to invest in my leadership growth as well.

Making time for one-on-ones leads to individual team members’ success, and our organization is more successful in the long run– even if it takes reprioritizing time, which I know is not easy, but the impact is worth it!

What might this look like for you in your leadership day to day? Is it starting with setting aside a couple of hours once a week? Or asking your team to find a spot on your calendar once a month? How will you carve out time to invest more in the people that move the work forward?

Testimonials

"“They don’t tell you what you want to hear. They tell you what you need to hear. That makes a huge difference. We needed to understand our weaknesses in order to make the organization work right, and I was overwhelmed by how they really got it and they helped us to get it too. They were able to do it in a way that really made me want to understand the goals we needed to focus on. I believe Lumen was absolutely the best we could have found.”"
Barbara Sellinger
Cresthaven Academy
"“I’ve been in nonprofits for 30+ years and have used the services of many consultants, but I have never been so comfortable with their commitment to helping us. It was as if the Lumen team shared our need to have a successful outcome and they were committed to the notion that they would indeed bring value to what we were doing.“ "
Caroline Novak
Alabama School Readiness Alliance
"“The Lumen team did a really good job sharing the hard truths with us. Their findings were different from what we were expecting, but they used the information to push us farther than we originally planned. They were candid and didn’t hide anything from us. We’re now on the path to developing products that are very different from what we’ve done before but are hopefully much more useful for the people we serve.” "
Drew Jacobs
National Alliance of Public Charter Schools
"“The management of a federal CSP grant is a really niche area that requires a tremendous depth of expertise and technical know-how. You need to have a microscopic attention to detail when it comes to compliance and reporting timeliness. The Lumen team is excellent at all of the above." "
Tyler Barnett
New Schools for Alabama
"“In my coaching, we make really strong, specific plans for next steps and then we follow up on them in our next conversation. We try to keep those next steps really manageable. When I’m busy, I can’t layer a ton of personal growth on top of my other responsibilities, so we make plans for growth that are baked into the work I’m already doing. That has been really helpful for me.” "
Kristen Forbriger
City Fund