3 Things All Great Leaders Know How to Be

87% of millennials rate "professional or career growth and development opportunities" as important to them in a job (Gallup).

Are you providing that career growth and development opportunities to your employees?

If you want to elevate individual growth, focus on the value of personal relationships. Get to know and connect with your team. Really listen to who they are and their personal and professional goals. Building trust allows you to coach and mentor more effectively.

Knowing what inspires and engages your team members will give you better insight when assigning projects and job responsibilities. When you have an employee that is feeling bored in his current role and would like to try something new, go with it. When team members are encouraged to use their own creativity and expertise to produce the desired results, they feel inspired to give their best effort.

Employees want to be challenged. Smart managers encourage an environment of continuous idea exchange and readily acknowledge that new and better approaches can and should be discovered.

Here are some simple principles that you can use to invite sincere, authentic dialogue and idea exchange among your team. Encourage them to:

Be Bold. If you want new (and better) solutions, try new things. Mike Markkula,an American entrepreneur and former CEO of Apple Computers said, “The overall quality of work improves when you give people a chance to fail.”

Be Open. Encourage your team to share any and all ideas, no matter how crazy they sound. Make it safe for others to experiment and possibly fail; make the people you lead feel confident and secure so they will be willing to venture out into new territory.

Be Forgiving. Failure is an option. We don’t always figure out what works until we figure out what doesn’t. Encourage your team to be forgiving to themselves and others.

When you build an environment where employees feel supported, listened to, and encouraged to try new things, without the fear of judgment, it will pay off. When your team feels safe, they will be open about what’s working, where they are getting stuck, and what they could do differently. Let your employees know they are trusted and valued, and they will give their very best.