Equipping Your Team: 5 Steps to Leadership-Driven Employee Engagement

August 9, 2020 | by Todd Hanlin

If I could save you $40K this year, could I get your attention?  Studies show that this number is the average cost of replacing a mid-level employee after calculating the tens of thousands of dollars in direct costs and lost productivity!  As business consultants, our team is frequently tasked with a turnaround situation or a “broken” process. Excessive turnover and disengaged employees are a common thread in every distressed business with which we work.  Employees have lost faith in their leadership because they do not feel valued.

Whether we want to admit it or not, people are an organization’s most significant asset.  The current world environment has made it even more difficult to retain talent, so finding ways to enhance job satisfaction and employee loyalty through employee engagement is critical.

A common approach would be to simply ask how we retain our talented resources. Yet, I recommend a different approach: “How do we, as leaders, create an environment in which our employees feel valued and can contribute their best?” By investing time in and empowering our teams to be effective and offering the necessary support, they will engage and thrive.  The steps below outline 5 key areas that will enable you to increase the level of employee engagement in your organization, regardless of industry.

1. Become a Servant Leader. In an interview, Cheryl Bachelder, CEO of Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, once described how to spot a servant leader. She said, “When you ask someone to tell you about their best boss, they tell you about the ambitious accomplishment they had under the leader, and how the leader made it possible for them to have this remarkable achievement.  It’s being courageous by setting aspirational goals combined with the humble serving of others along that journey. The healthy tension between daring and humble is what creates the best circumstances.”Serving through a combination of humility and courage leads to greater aspirations and a braver company. Encourage your team through mistakes.  Make it okay to fail.  Reassure them that they are part of something much bigger than one person.
2. Offer an Environment of Inclusion AND Diversity. Jacob Morgan, 4X best-selling author explains, “Diversity is bringing together people from different backgrounds, races, genders, religions, sexual orientations and more. Inclusion takes it one step further to create an environment where those people are welcomed, respected and included. It’s how you make that diverse group feel like they belong.”  To be clear, inclusion is a behavior—actively valuing and fully leveraging our different perspectives and backgrounds to achieve our business goals.Recognize that while I am not proposing we all sit in a circle, hold hands and sing campfire songs together, we still need to understand one another.  We need to consider the insights of others and proactively identify individuals who might be excluded.  As the dimensions of diversity are better understood, we can advocate for and support these individuals to help them succeed as well as challenge exclusionary behaviors that we might encounter.Genuine curiosity that drives active conversation with employees that have different backgrounds, styles and perspectives bridges gaps and develops trust within your team.  Taking time to discuss inclusion and diversity as a team helps develop an environment where employees feel safe to share their unique views, ideas and concerns.  Dedicating time to these discussions will demonstrate your sincerity as a leader to remove any barriers that can prevent each team member from contributing at full potential.  It leverages team talent to promote synergy and allow breakthrough success!
3. Actively Listen to Your Team. A clear distinction between leaders who serve others versus themselves is their ability to listen.  When you take time to listen, you hear not only the objections of others, but also their anxieties and fears, which uncovers solutions.Do you find yourself formulating your response in your mind while others are talking instead of truly listening to what they have to offer?  Leaders can easily miss opportunities to support and serve their teams if they spend more time hearing rather than actively listening.  If you have been on one side of a conversation where it was clear that a colleague was hearing but not listening, you understand how it can impact the perceived value of your message.
   

   I remind myself every morning: Nothing I say today will teach me anything. So if I’m going to learn, I must do it by listening. -Larry King

   There are many methods of developing better active listening skills. For instance, I remember several years at a manufacturing facility that required significant overtime.  During the week, everyone was crazy busy, and stopping to “listen to” an employee was tough. Yet, the weekends when I had Saturday leadership coverage yielded vast amounts of insight.  I was not preoccupied with the meetings and interruptions of the typical workday and could focus on the employees. Other tips to improve active listening skills include:

   • Wait a few seconds before you respond. By allowing a pause after a colleague’s commentary, you show them respect and allow your brain to process their input.
   • Pay attention to body language. Listen not only to what they are saying but to what their body language is telling you. Words are only about 7% of the message.  Body language and tone/inflection make up the other 55% and 38%, respectively.
   • Maintain eye contact. While it is not a staring contest, actively looking into the eyes of the speaker shows them your intent is to understand what they are trying to communicate.
   • Keep an open mind. Stephen Covey taught us: “Seek to understand and then to be understood.” Don’t jump to conclusions or interrupt the speaker.  Allow your mind to process the information before you try to offer a rebuttal or a solution. This provides an unspoken show of respect for the speaker.
4. Spend Time Getting to Know Your Team. It is true: People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.  While social distancing has created hurdles around spending time together, there are many creative ways to develop relationships and build rapport within teams. For example:
   • Online video lunches and virtual happy hours. Video chats offer an opportunity to get to know people in their surroundings in a more relaxed atmosphere. Themes like Hawaiian Day, Green Day and Crazy Hat Day allow creative juices to form bonds between employees and remove barriers.  Encourage video participation but make it safe for those who prefer not to share yet.
   • Facilitate development discussions. Leaders who spend more time making their team successful breed winning teams. Most employees appreciate periodic discussions that help them grow and align them with resources that accomplish that goal. Even employees who wish to continue in their current roles appreciate knowing that their leaders are concerned about their development.  Help your team find mentors and introduce them to people who encourage them and aid in their growth.
   • Skip-level meetings & 360° feedback. Organize times for your employees to speak with your superior to obtain additional information regarding your effectiveness as a leader. Conduct the same with your employees’ direct reports to provide them insight on their performance as managers.  Provide opportunities for peer reviews to give employees constructive feedback on their interactions within the team.
   • Bowling, mini-golf, team picnic, chili cook-off. Activities that offer some healthy, yet friendly competition can enhance camaraderie in a non-threatening environment.  The most serious and the least experienced can both enjoy these events as well as those who are not actively competing
5. Be a Multiplier Leader and Not a Diminisher. In teaching 5S as a Lean Principle, one of the 8 recognized wastes is underutilized human potential.  The New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author, Liz Wiseman, uses the concept of Multipliers and Diminishers to describe how we achieve the highest level of contribution from our teams.  Diminishing leaders come in many forms and may not recognize that they are functioning in that capacity.  Here are some ways to recognize that you may be exhibiting diminishing tendencies and how you can correct them:
   • Are you micromanaging your team? Do you avoid delegation, keep your people from making decisions or oversee every aspect of your team?  Consider casting a vision or helping them establish a goal and then empowering them to determine how they achieve the result. The servant leader supports rather than controls.
   • Are you a genius, or are you a genius-maker? Multiplier leaders who create an environment where everyone around them becomes smarter and more capable have been shown to get 50% or more return from their teams than a Diminisher.  Surround yourself with intelligent, capable people, and then assume they are smart and can figure things out on their own.
   • Do you give directives that showcase how much you know? With a highly competent team, giving personal direction regarding the path forward can limit the results.  By challenging the team in a way that stretches the organization, it not only challenges the leader, but also drives the team to push beyond what they already know.  Recognize your team’s ability to own the direction and the results; then, they will likely exceed your expectations.  To put it another way: “If you are the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room.”

From books to blogs to videos, there are many resources that will improve leadership skills. We live in a world where knowledge is available at our fingertips.  The good news is that by learning and then applying knowledge, we can enhance the engagement level of our teams, regardless of where we function in the organizational hierarchy.  Employees want to be heard.  They want to be valued.  They want to know that they matter to the bigger picture.  And, while business culture does not change overnight, the steps above can begin to shift direction.  Reinforcement, celebration of results and constant communication regarding the progress of the organization will result in the desired improvements.  The culture will evolve from a job where people just swipe in to a careerwhere people want to contribute and give their absolute creative best!

Sources:

• Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter by Liz Wiseman with Greg McKeown (2010)
• “The CEO of Popeyes Says Becoming a ‘Servant Leader’ Helped Her Turn Around the Struggling Restaurant Chain” by Jenna Goudreau (24 March 2015)
• “Want to Become a Great Leader? Become a Great Coach!” by Jacob Morgan (12 June 2020)

#inclusion #diversity #employeeengagement #jobsatisfaction#jacobmorgan #Multipliers #LizWiseman