12MinuteLeadership

Episode 28: People & Profits: Why Investing in Your Team Pays Off | 12MinuteLeadership

• Elise Boggs Morales • Season 1 • Episode 28

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Stop choosing between people and profit. In this episode, we dig into why the best-performing teams are built on engagement, leadership development, and purpose—and how those three levers translate into measurable gains in productivity, retention, and customer loyalty.  The fastest route to better results runs straight through your people.

We start by dismantling the myth that attention to people pulls focus from outcomes. Engaged employees don’t just complete tasks; they take ownership, anticipate customer needs, and protect quality under pressure. You’ll hear how small habits—clear expectations, timely coaching, and meaningful recognition—turn compliance into commitment. From there, we zoom out to leadership as a force multiplier. Train one leader to communicate with clarity and manage conflict with skill, and you shift performance for dozens of others. We share a client case where a targeted development strategy lifted engagement and stabilized turnover, unlocking growth without changing core systems.

Purpose ties it all together. People want more than a paycheck—they want to see how their work matters. We explore techniques to connect day-to-day tasks with mission, the surprising power of volunteer-driven performance, and why companies like Chick-fil-A invest in leadership at every level. We also name the real barrier: fear. Fear of losing control, fear of no immediate ROI, fear of trying something new. Courageous leaders bet on relationships, growth, and trust, and the numbers follow. You’ll leave with reflection prompts and a simple next step to invest in your team this week.

If this resonated, share it with a leader who needs the nudge and subscribe so you never miss an episode. Want to go deeper? Pick Elise's book-Lead Anyone on Amazon or reach out to us at eliseboggs.com.

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Speaker:

Welcome to the 12-Minute Leadership Podcast, where in 12 minutes or less, I'll share small things that you can put into immediate practice that will make a big difference in your leadership effectiveness. I'm your host, Elise Boggs Morales, leadership professor, consultant, and coach. For the last 17 years, I have helped thousands of leaders level up their influence and achieve remarkable results. If you want to trade compliance for true commitment and create your dream team, you are in the right place. Get ready for a quick hit of practical wisdom to increase your team's engagement, inspire top performance, and retain your best talent. Ready to level up your influence and get better results? 12 minutes starts now. Hi everyone, Elise here. Welcome to episode 28. Today we're tackling a mindset that I still hear far too often: the belief that focusing on people somehow takes attention away from results. I recently led an executive retreat for a client where some of the senior leaders expressed real resistance to investing in their people. Their logic was our focus should be on the client. Our team should just do their jobs. But here's the problem with that thinking. When leaders fail to invest in their people, performance and retention always suffer. You can't get sustainable results if the people on your team are disengaged. So in today's episode, I want to reframe this conversation and share three compelling reasons why people and profit aren't competing priorities. They're connected ones. Compelling reason number one, engaged people drive better performance. Let's start with the obvious but often overlooked truth. Happy engaged employees create happy, loyal customers. Research from Gallup shows that companies with highly engaged employees are 21% more profitable and experience 59% less turnover. When people feel seen, supported, and developed, they don't just do their jobs. They take ownership. They become ambassadors for your culture and your clients. Think about your best team member, the one who goes above and beyond, anticipates clients' needs, and solves problems before they escalate. That's not compliance, that's commitment. And commitment is born from connection. Leaders who take time to invest in people through coaching, feedback, and recognition see direct business outcomes, higher productivity, greater innovation, and more consistent execution. When you lead people well, they take care of your clients. When you neglect people, they eventually neglect the clients. The key takeaway here is that people aren't a distraction from performance, they're the source of it. Compelling reason number two, leadership investment creates a competitive advantage. Investing in leadership development isn't just good for culture, it's a strategic advantage. When you look at the most respected organizations, whether it's Delta Airlines, Microsoft, or the Ritz-Carlton, they all have one thing in common. They invest in developing their leaders at every level. Why? Because leadership isn't static, it's a multiplier. When you train one leader to coach effectively, communicate clearly, and manage conflict well, that one person impacts 10 others. Those 10 then impact 50. And soon the entire organization begins to shift one conversation, one relationship at a time. And it's actually why I chose to get into leadership development work because you get a really good return on your investment. Investing in one leader can have an enormous impact on a lot of people all at once. I once worked with a company that had a really strong technical culture, but very little leadership development. Their turnover was high, burnout was common, and morale was really low. I helped them design a leadership development strategy that focused on communication, emotional intelligence, and people development. And within a year, their engagement scores improved significantly and their retention stabilized for the first time in a long time. And no surprise, business grew as well. The CEO I worked with said that it wasn't our systems that changed, it was how our leaders showed up. So the key takeaway here is when you invest in leadership, you're not taking people away from the work. You're making every hour of work more effective. You've probably heard that illustration of sharpening the axe. Leadership is leverage, it multiplies the potential of every person you lead. And here's a third compelling reason why people and profit aren't competing priorities. People don't just want a paycheck, they want purpose. When leaders connect daily work to a meaningful mission, they activate a level of engagement that money alone can't buy. But too often, leaders focus only on external results, the client, the revenue, the deliverables, and forget to connect the why behind it all. Simon Cinex says that people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. When you help your team see the impact of the work they're doing, you create alignment between personal motivation and organizational goals. I learned this firsthand when I worked for a nonprofit overseeing 300 unpaid volunteers. The more that I connected to a bigger vision and a purpose, despite not being paid, my unpaid volunteers began outperforming the paid workers. Another example is Chick-fil-A, who trains leaders at every single level. They invest heavily in leadership development, not just for managers, but even for high school students working part-time. And they coach for values, not just tasks. The result? They have some of the lowest turnover in fast food and the highest revenue per store in the industry, more than McDonald's, Starbucks, and Subway combined. And they're closed on Sundays. So the lesson here is that when you develop leaders at every level, performance multiplies at every level, and profits reflect that. So here's a bonus thought before we close things out. Resistance to this type of investment often comes from fear. And I want to name something. When leaders resist investing in people, it's often not because they don't care, it's because they're afraid. Afraid of losing control, afraid of spending time or money without an immediate ROI. But real leadership requires courageous investment in relationships, in growth, and in trust. Because when you stop seeing people as expenses and start seeing them as assets, everything changes. So in closing, remember you don't have to choose between people and profit. When you invest in your people, you're investing in your profit because performance follows engagement. And here's your reflection question for this week. Where might you be underinvesting in your people? And how is it showing up in your results? And one more, what's one small way you can invest in your team this week? Not because you have to, but because it's good business. So, I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Share it with another leader who needs a reminder that people and profit can go hand in hand. I'll see you next time. Like what you heard on today's episode and want to go deeper? Subscribe to this podcast so you never miss an episode. You can also pick up my book, Lead Anyone, on Amazon. Then, go to my website to check out ways that we can support your leadership goals. From executive retreats to customized training and coaching, my team of experts will help you level up your leadership and accelerate your results. Go to www.eliseboggs.com for more info.