Engagement has been one of the hottest topics of the last few years. This government report, published in the autumn of 2008 set out the case for increasing engagement in any organisation.
By July 2012, this government report concluded that effective management can significantly improve levels of employee engagement, but that 43% of all UK managers rate their own line manager as ineffective.
Clearly, we are wrestling with how to engage our people.
Here is a one week plan to raise engagement in your team. It may be no more than a reminder for you, but it might be useful to someone else in your organisation.
Monday: Recognition
Back in the office after a weekend off, looking at a to-do list as long as a Charles Dickens novel… everyone needs some recognition on a Monday. Look around your team and think of one quality on which you can complement each person.
It could be organisation for one, diplomacy for another, tenacity for a third, intellectual stamina for a fourth, punctuality for the person who started with you last week.
Think about the person, choose a quality they have that makes them good at their job, pick your moment, and complement them on it. Be as specific as you can, mention an example of this quality in action, and let these people know why they are valuable team members.
Tuesday: Clear Communication
Knowing you are doing the right thing, to the required standard, to the agreed timeframe increases anyone’s sense of control over what they are doing, and satisfaction that they are doing a good job.
On Tuesday, for everything you delegate agree a deadline for completion and an easily measured standard for the work. Make any conversations that would have run like this:
– Who’s going to sort this out?
– Yes, I’ll see if I can do it
Run more like this:
– Who’s going to do this?
– I will.
– When can you do it?
– By the 25th
– You’ll submit all the completed accounts, with no gaps for figures that have not been submitted, by 17:00 on the 25th?
– Yes, fine
Add recognition from Monday where you need it.
Wednesday: Involving Others
People like to be as involved as possible in decision-making. When you delegate anything today, ask for others’ ideas on how it should be done.
Gathering their ideas could involve a two minute conversation. Or, it might involve the other person going away to write a longer proposal for how something should be approached. Whichever it is, take the time to listen to their ideas and implement whatever you can.
Where you can’t implement their thinking, take the opportunity to coach them on what would be a better approach and why. This will strengthen your people resource.
Thursday: Informal Appraisal
People are likely to be more engaged if their manager takes an active interest in their development.
Choose someone from your team, and take them for a coffee for 20 minutes. Reinforce how valuable they are to the team (Monday’s recognition can come in handy here), and point out some of their successes over the last few months.
Then find out what they are pleased with about their contribution over the last period, and where they would like their career to go in the next year or two. Find out their ideas for how to get to this goal (Wednesday’s idea about involving others can be used here), and agree some clear actions (Tuesday’s idea about clear communication can be used here).
Be sure to follow up on these agreements.
Friday: Time
Unproductive meetings erode engagement. A key measure of how productive a meeting will be is the quality of the preparation everyone does beforehand.
Choose a meeting you will run next week, and decide what everyone should do in advance to prepare for the meeting. Contact all attendees and ask them to do this preparation. Be specific about what you are asking them to do (Tuesday’s idea about clear communication).
If in doubt, ask each attendee to prepare a one minute presentation to the group about an aspect of work they are responsible for, including current challenges, their suggestions for overcoming these, and the help they will need from the rest of the group to do this.
A demand like this will ensure people arrive at the meeting ready to focus on solutions and the future, rather than only on problems and the past.
What to do on the following Monday? Book a holiday! Or, you could go through this cycle again. The challenging part in raising levels of engagement is not lifting them from 0 to 50% – fixing awful management shows huge gains quickly. The challenge comes when everything is already going pretty well.
As a manager you will be doing all the things on this list already, like a club tennis player plays forehand, backhand, serve, volley and smash. The difference between a club tennis player and Roger Federer is that he plays all these shots so much better.
The same is true for great managers – the activities they are involved in are the same as those undertaken by merely good managers: delegation, communication, involving others, recognising the team, running appraisals and meetings etc. Their difference is they do all these things much better. What makes the difference? The same thing that sets the top tennis players apart: practice.
