Inspire tech employees

The parable of “[…] give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he will eat for a lifetime,” is not a new biblical allegory. If a person is teachable, he or she becomes better equipped for glitches that will inevitably happen; and therefore, be a more valuable part of the team – and that includes C-level managers. An entrepreneur starting out in the tech realm may have limited management skills but inspiring loyalty and creativity from employees may be as easy as following an age old fable.

If a leader, whether CTO, CEO or even storefront owner, isn’t equipped for some degree of “failure”, the world will perpetually seem a very difficult, disappointing place. A champion of mentorship will pave a more direct road to greater long-term achievement within a company. Developing an open teaching culture within your industry will ultimately produce better ideas, improve business transparency and maintain happier employees – as recent Gallup study will corroborate:

“Managerial actions and practices can impact employee work conditions and employee perceptions of these conditions, thereby improving key outcomes at the organizational level. Perceptions of specific work conditions that engage employees in their work provide practical guidance in how best to manage people to obtain desired results.”

Some teaching and engagement approaches that can align your employees with your company’s mission include 8 key practices:

Ask employees for their ideas
Inspire company camaraderie with team projects in and out of work
Enable employees to make mistakes
Welcome employee feedback on culture with monthly “All Hands On Deck” Discussions
Offer continuing education reimbursement
Fund industry conferences
Give specific praise
Make yourself available

When translating the ‘instructive fishing’ analogy into a tech startup’s development, it is important to note what agile means by definition. In dev allocution, it should describe the agility to turn miscalculations into opportunities, to execute better the next time around and to cut down the recidivism of similar blunders happening again. Agility at its best will promote adaptive strategies, evolutionary development and encourages rapid, flexible responses to an ever-changing technologies landscape.