Careers facilitate social engagement and play an important role in creating and defining meaning in our lives. Our careers help to shape our work and personal lives.

I believe everyone has a right to career satisfaction, which is a fundamental source of energy, creativity and capability. For many, however, career satisfaction can be as elusive as self-esteem. That said, when career harmony does exist, problems of the greatest complexity seem to be solved more quickly and easily. The positive impact on our lives is palpable and exciting. The payoff of better career conversations can therefore be remarkable.

In my experience, many leaders are fearful of confronting a lack of career satisfaction and its consequences, preferring to ignore the realities that surround them. Despite all that has been written and said about employees as ‘free agents', I continue to be amazed at just how many leaders still feel ill equipped and reluctant to have meaningful career conversations with their employees. The implications of employee–organisational relationships on individual career development and the co-dependencies at play cannot be understated.

Employees got the message loud and clear long ago that it was up to them to manage their own careers, but many don't know how to navigate their career pathways and receive little help from their manager or employer. I have found that many leaders lack career management and coaching skills to assist them; indeed, quite a few are fearful of the most basic career discussions. This has resulted in their delegating this aspect of their leadership responsibility to Human Resources or outsourcing it entirely to an external career coach. No matter how capably handled, neither option is likely to be as valuable in helping employees with their career development as if you, their leader, delivered it!

Some leaders believe discussing career aspirations may unsettle their employees or, worse, drive them to unrealistic career aspirations or demands. Either way, it seems many fear that beginning a career conversation risks opening up a discussion they would rather not have. This could not be further from what's actually needed.

It might surprise leaders imbued with these views to know that their employees routinely think about their career much of the time, whether asked about it or not. Leaders need to be acutely attuned all the time to their employee's state of mind with regard to their career and relationship with the organisation. They should be agile and committed in how, when and where they engage with their employees, especially when it comes to their careers. This requires leaders to build this commitment and flexibility into their leadership routine. I discuss the importance of agility with regard to leadership and career conversations in chapter 1.

Some leaders can feel frustrated (even angry) when under siege from competitors that ruthlessly and relentlessly attempt (in many cases successfully) to lure away their top talent. You can be 100 per cent certain that your competitors are approaching your top talent right now to ‘feel them out'. They may use talent scout specialists as well as sophisticated research techniques and social media campaigns designed to encourage employees to question their job satisfaction and whether their needs and aspirations are being met by their current employer. Such competitor tactics can be a powerful source of employee career destabilisation.

Technology has facilitated these covert operations by making them much simpler and more cost effective to implement. I like to think of it as your competitor's ‘silent army' working systematically to steal your top talent and provoke unwelcome resignations, often at the worst time!

As a leader, you have limited power to defend against competitors' approaches to your employees, which are largely out of your control. Even if you could retaliate, I strongly advise against it to avoid harming the trust between you and your employee.

The best way to counter such competitor attacks is by positively investing in your relationships with employees, taking an active, dynamic and ongoing interest in their career development, beginning with one-to-one career conversations. In my experience, when this is done well, employees will often feel more comfortable, less defensive and more likely to disclose competitor approaches without awkward probing questions from you. Make sure you always keep in mind that if you are not taking care of your best employees you can be sure your competitors will. Trust me when I say this is your best defence against unwanted competitor attacks on your employees.

Looking at retention of talent more broadly, underlying the explicit career forces at work are the implicit, subtle stimuli that can generate career doubts. These can have their roots in the recruitment process, when exaggerated promises are made by the hiring manager in the excitement of pre-employment interviews — promises that then fail to materialise. Inflated promises or representations, explicit or implied, are remembered and evaluated by employees when they come to work every day. The organisation's failure to measure up to its promises tests organisational trust and sows career doubts.

Telltale signs of this problem take many forms. For example, employees may become overly critical of the organisation and start to complain about their salary or other financial conditions. Or they may spend time revising their résumé, searching online job boards and posting on social networking sites coded or open messages that they're on the market. These explicit or implicit signals of career dissatisfaction are a window to the true state of career satisfaction that employees may, or may not, be willing to share with their leader. They can result in a ‘silent' disconnection from their leader or the organisation that may be fully recognised only when an employee hands in their notice, when it's usually too late to recover the employment relationship.