Many supervisors, managers and team leaders bemoan the fact
that their team is not totally engaged with what he or she
is trying to achieve. Is it poor communication on the
boss's part? Lack of direction? Lack or little motivation
from the team members?
A recent survey by the Corporate Leadership Council
reported that from a study of 50,000 employees worldwide,
only 11% reported that they felt fully engaged in their
current work, 76% felt neither engaged nor disengaged and
13% felt fully disengaged.
Where do your team members stand?
* Fully engaged?
* Neither engaged nor disengaged?
* Disengaged?
Before you answer that, or perhaps start putting the names
of some of your team members into the three categories, it
is worthwhile revisiting the definition of the word
"engagement".
Engagement:
1. The act of engaging, pledging, enlisting, occupying, or
entering into contest.
2. The state of being engaged, pledged or occupied;
specifically, a pledge to take some one as husband or wife.
3. That which engages; engrossing occupation; employment of
the attention; obligation by pledge, promise, or contract
an enterprise embarked in.
I believe we can gain some ideas about engaging our teams
by taking a lead from each of the three definitions -
namely, "external contest", "pledge to take on" and
"engrossing".
What happens in practise? Do organisations engage their
people by "defining the contest", "getting them to pledge
their commitment" and "providing engrossing challenges"?
In their studies of some 300 organisations who were
actively working on engagement strategies, the Corporate
Leadership Council summarised the strategies of the more
successful organisations. Can you see the three elements
of engagement in their strategies?
The successful strategies were:
* Diagnosing the urgency of the engagement challenge
* Determining the organizational strategy that engages
managers and employees
* Creating engagement opportunities to enable employee
contribution
* Framing an engaging structure that builds organizational
credibility with employees
* Benchmarking engagement over time for continuous
improvement
Here are some tips for building engagement within your team
that I have used successfully.
1. Define the external contest
People often work best together and pull together as a
team, when they are faced with some kind of external threat
that is common to everyone in the team. You may have
experienced this yourself at some stage. For instance,
this often happens in cases of takeovers and mergers where
people who might previously have been a loose working group
(sometimes with not a lot in common) are suddenly faced
with an external threat that they can't quite understand or
manage. Often in these situations, they focus on the
things they can manage and the things they do have in
common. The external "they" or "them" becomes the common
enemy that they can all relate to - they rally around one
another to fight this common enemy. Something out there in
the environment has come to be seen as a common threat and
so, they bond successfully together as a team to fight the
common enemy.
But people can also pull together and become very effective
as a team when they have a common positive external
pressure, such as winning a contest, or being seen as the
"best" team. As a team leader, the secret is to identify
what in the external environment might be the threats and
opportunities the team can bond around.
2. Get team members to pledge their commitment
Does this mean getting them to sign a formal document, or
have them all stand and sing the company song? Hardly
(although I have heard of organisations doing just that).
What it does mean is getting your team members on board by
being attuned to their values and motives and aligning
these with your team direction. How do you do this? At
the end of this article, I will outline how you can run a
workshop that embodies commitment.
3. Provide engrossing challenges
It will be extremely difficult to get team member
engagement if the work that your team members do is dull
and boring. All the studies of motivation over the last 50
years include at least the following to build motivation:
* Achievement - people need to see results for what they
do. Make sure that their work is able to be measured,
preferably by each team member themselves.
* Recognition for achievement - praise and recognise team
members for the work that they do well. Encourage team
members to praise one another. Set the example and build a
culture of recognition by finding at least one of your team
members doing something well every day and praise them for
it.
* Responsibility - encourage people to take responsibility
for their actions. Allow them to make decisions (without
the need to refer to you) within their area of
responsibility.
* Meaningful, interesting work - ensure the work is
meaningful to each individual. Assign people to work that
they find satisfying. Look for ways to make the work more
interesting - get your team members involved by asking for
their ideas on how to make their jobs more interesting.
* Growth and advancement - provide team members with the
opportunity to develop themselves both personally and
professionally. Your aim is to have the most marketable
team members in the organisation. You will know when you
are successful at this, when your fellow managers keep
wanting your people to join their team. When you develop
this type of team culture, you'll have people lining up at
your door wanting to be part of the most successful team.
How to get started? In addition to some of the points
mentioned above that you can implement immediately (e.g.
daily, look for someone doing something well and praise
them for it), plan and run a workshop (preferably off site)
to set the tone for engagement and to gain commitment. I
have used the following process with many teams and found
it embodies all three of the engagement principles -
"defining the contest", "getting team members to pledge
their commitment" and "providing engrossing challenges".
The Ideal Team - a workshop process:
Ask your team members to write down (preferably prior to
the workshop) answers to the following two questions:
Picture yourself at your normal place of work -
1. What drives you to succeed at work? List as many things
as come to mind.
2. What are the aspects about your work (or place of work)
that you value?
At the workshop, ask people to contribute points from their
answers, e.g. "Keeping in mind the work values you have
just identified, develop a picture of our team as it might
look if you could describe it as my ideal team"
1. What do you want our team to look like in six months
time? This should be a team that will enable you to
achieve your goals and provide job satisfaction.
2. What are the things that we can do (or not do) that will
help make our team more like your ideal team?
3. What are those things that will work against the team
moving towards your ideal?
4. From the list, what are the 2 or 3 most important things
we must do to achieve this ideal team status?
5. On the other hand, what are the 2 or 3 things we must
avoid doing if we are to achieve our ideal?
6. Develop an action plan with time lines and check points
over the next 6 months to assess progress. Make sure you
follow up on these regularly.
7. Finally, ask each team member to nominate publicly "The
one most important thing I can do to help us become the
ideal team is . . . "
I'm sure that adopting and implementing the three
principles of engagement in everything that you do as a
team leader will soon have your team mentioned around the
organisation as "the ideal place to work". Watch out for
the rush!
----------------------------------------------------
Bob Selden is the author of "What To Do When You Become The
Boss", a practical "how to" for managers. If you have a
management challenge, visit Bob at
http://www.whenyoubecometheboss.com to find an answer.
Alternatively, you can phone Bob on +41 61 921 66 51
between 9 and 5 (GMT +1)
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