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Your Employee Engagement Roadmap - Part 3
Last week in part two of Your Employee Engagement Roadmap, we looked at the reasons for disengagement and the common connection. Remember Tom and how his employees felt he just wasn’t approachable, and he compounded that issue by reacting poorly? He fell into the common pitfall of getting frustrated and barking orders (Part 1). We concluded that many managers are not connecting with their people enough.
If we’re looking to build a truly engaged team, it cannot be done without genuinely connecting with people.
To feel that we are part of a community is a basic human need. We want to feel cared about. We want to be able to trust in leadership. When people feel this way, they’ll do just about anything for you. (Well, within reason!) Just turn it around and think about someone that you feel connected with, who genuinely cares about you, a person you can really trust. Would you be more or less motivated when working for that person?
Trust is an important part of those basic human connections, and connecting with people really doesn’t take that much time. It really doesn’t take that much skill either! But it does take self-awareness, genuine interest in your people and self-discipline to stay consistent with these activities and build trust. These are the three main pillars of building an engaged team.
Master these three pillars, and just like everything else you do to engage employees, like giving those expensive perks, creating a fun place to work with slides, and even giving recognition - it will all be meaningful and impactful. And even if you don’t spend a lot on perks, just by genuinely connecting with your employees, you will immediately boost employee engagement.
The First Pillar - It starts with Self Awareness. How engaged are YOU? What are you doing (or not doing) to show your engagement level? What are you doing to engage with your people?
The Second Pillar - Take a genuine interest in your people. A lot of us are conditioned to think that work is only about work and we should leave personal things at home.
But people can’t leave it at the door – they are still bringing the energy, low self-esteem, sadness, and/or anger with them from the things happening in all aspects of their lives. And as leaders, we are too!
While this is not about becoming an armchair psychologist, it is about connecting in a meaningful and authentic way so people feel that you care about them.
The Third Pillar - It takes self-discipline to stay consistent with these activities. When we start something and we don’t follow through, people stop trusting in us. If we say we’re going to have regular one-on-one meetings, and we keep changing the date or cancelling the meeting, what message do you think that sends to your employee? I can tell you what I’ve heard from people on the receiving end – they think they are not a priority, not really cared about, and not respected.
Let’s take a look back at Tom’s situation. Tom really wasn’t doing much to engage with his employees (and it came out in coaching he had his own engagement issues). His employees didn’t feel like he cared about them - it seemed that he only cared about the work. Tom would have a moment or two when he connected, but he didn’t do anything to make this a part of his leadership routine.
Once Tom started working in the three pillars, that’s when things began to really change.
These three pillars immediately boost employee engagement. But we’ve only just scratched the surface of the topic of employee engagement in this series of blog posts. We’ll dive much deeper into how you can master these three pillars in toomorrow’s LIVE webinar at 2:00 p.m. EST!
You will get clear action steps you can take to create a plan for turning your team from disengaged employees to dedicated team members. Attendees can ask anonymous questions about your own challenges in leadership and get advice from me to help you overcome them. There’s still time to sign up to join us to Boost Employee Engagement Immediately - Without Spending a Dime! Sign up to join us here!
I hope to see you at the webinar tomorrow!
Cheers,
Laurie