Are your employees and teams fully engaged under your leadership? From the front-line supervisor to the C-Suite, this is a question that every leader should ask themselves, and answer.
As a consultant to business organizations and executive teams, going beyond just a title and job description is one of the simple leadership skills I teach top leaders.
Behavior engagement is a powerful instrument, but it’s often neglected by leaders. Large corporations spend millions training people in soft skills and diversity/inclusion management, but they rarely spend a dime teaching leaders how to transition from a worker to behaving as a leader.
In so many companies, there are managers who are getting the right results, however these results come at the expense of customer relationships and employee wellbeing. They are what we call the results-at-any-cost managers who decimate entire teams on their way out the door.
When I think about employee engagement waning at the hand of poor leadership relations, I am reminded of the day I left a corporate position to never return.
Three years prior I had accepted a leadership position but was not provided with the proper guidance or tools to engage my team on the way to success. It was a dream position to say the least and in hindsight, as a manager I didn’t realize the great deal of influence I had over the engagement of the people I supervised.
The primary responsibility of an effective leader is to ensure that the people reporting directly to him or her are as engaged as possible.
Mangers are critical to the health of an organization. Research shows that the more engaged you are as a manager, the more engaged your people will be.
Engaged managers and engaged teams involve six common things that good mangers do to create engaged teams, according to Tracy Maylett’s MAGIC: 5 Keys to Unlock the Power of Employee Engagement:
They Are Personally Engaged
Managers live what they preach. They are engaged both as an individual and a manager. They put themselves all in, bringing their hearts, spirits, minds and hands to their work. This contagious behavior will transmit to the culture.
They Are Involved
Engaged managers are not absentee managers. They interact with their workers, are there day-to-day, taking the temperature of everyone and learning to be inspired to give discretionary effort.
They Hire Wisely
Although managers may not sometimes have total discretion over hiring for their departments, the engaged manager does whatever he or she can to ensure that new hires are people likely to get onboard with the organization’s engagement environment.
They Understand Engagement
Engaged managers understand what’s truly important and is familiar with the components of engagement. He or she knows that employee satisfaction and employee engagement are not the same and won’t be tempted to mix the two. Engaged managers also know how to accurately assess their employees’ engagement, and create an environment where engagement can flourish.
They Don’t Mess Up
As Kenny Rogers sings, “You’ve got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em, know when to walk away.” When your team is fully engaged, sometimes your job is just to get out of the way. The mark of a fully engaged manager is knowing when to push people toward growth and when to back off before anxiety sets in ─ a skill that is learned.
They Lead By Example
In the words of Gandhi, “Be the change you wish to create.” A fully engaged manager leads by example.
The best way to get your people more engaged is to exhibit engagement yourself.
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At DecisionLab, we are here to support you with operating an effective organization and reducing financial waste. We have worked with leaders at all levels to optimize performance, build strong leaders and modernize growth. You can start by identifying the causes of your own personal patterns. Download our free high-performance wellbeing exercises that build morale, improve communication, boost productivity and optimize growth.
