What’s Your Employee Engagement Objective?
No less a business icon than Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motors famously advised, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”
What is the “always done” in your organization when it comes to engaging your employees in the day-to-day work?
When was the last time you considered what your objectives should be as related to inspiring your team toward greater engagement?’
If I haven’t yet grabbed your attention, if you’re rolling your eyes and muttering under your breath, “Here we go; more of that touch-feely stuff,” then let’s use an objective that will get your attention: INCREASED PRODUCTIVITY.
Study after study tells us unequivocally that an engaged workforce is a productive workforce. What do I mean when I say engaged? Employee Engagement is defined as the opportunity to use your creativity on a daily basis. When jobs become, “same old/same old” routines, employees quickly become disengaged and productivity drops. The drop may not be evident if you continue to successfully get the product out the door. Decreased productivity manifests in other ways:
- An increase in the amount of time it takes to get the same amount of product out the door
- More mistakes even though processes are the same (which is likely why there are more mistakes)
- General sloppiness – in the physical space, paperwork, and/or communication.
In order to define your Employee Engagement objectives, take a look at your stats. Where are the productivity leaks? How are you addressing them? And here is the most important question: what is your plan for getting your employees directly involved in addressing them? Believe me when I tell you they want to be asked. Depending on your culture and how far it has devolved, you may need to give them the opportunity to address these issues in some way other than a group meeting (who wants to stick their neck out in a group?). Here are some ideas:
- A survey conducted by an outside entity where they are guaranteed their responses will be confidential
- One-on-one meetings that are collaborative in nature, versus confrontational
- Use a fun, incredibly productive collaborative, team-building tool such as a World Cafe. I used this approach early in 2017 with a public sector group going through an upsetting amount of change. Their new Director was skeptical about his team opening up because he had trouble getting them to talk about these issues. Surprise, surprise! They came to life in the World Cafe and came up with incredible solutions to their issues. And the good news? Because these solutions were their ideas, they got implemented as agreed!
So what ARE your Employee Engagement objectives? Give it some thought. In the immortal words of Yogi Berra, “It ain’t over till it’s over!”
Getting the Best Your Team Has to Offer
What if you found a way to unlock the mystery of how to get the best out of each of your team members? And what if it didn’t require taking a class or reading any management books?
If you’re a leader in your organization, chances are you spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to improve the productivity of your team. Unfortunately, most of this pondering happens in your mind instead of spending time communicating with your team to find answers.
There is a very simple formula for figuring out how to get the best from your team.
ASK THEM!!!!
As results coach Tony Robbins says, “Success leaves clues.” Here are some great questions to use:
- What is the best way for me to interact with and follow up with you once you’ve received an assignment?
- What could I do to better support your work?
- Who was the best manager you ever had and why do you say that?
- Tell me about a time when you’ve produced work you were really proud of. Once answered, then ask:
- What were the elements that supported that success?
- What was it about how you approached that project or task that created such good results?
- What, if anything, did it have to do with your surrounding work environment?
Interestingly, these are the kinds of questions often asked when interviewing a prospective employee but, once hired, too many leaders stop asking.
Any and all of the questions above could spark a great group discussion for your entire team. You’ll find that some thrive in a quiet work environment; others do better surrounded by noise and activity. Some want you to routinely follow up; others would prefer to proactively keep you updated.
This approach works equally well for non-office workers who also have preferences. Let’s take drivers, for example. While in the cabs of their trucks some are more productive when listening to music, some prefer talk radio and others would do their best work while listening to books on tape. The more you can accommodate these work preferences, the more productivity you will witness.
Experiment with this. The more you know about how your employees approach their work, the better you can engage them.
Socratic Delegation: get tasks done right the first time
Do you often wonder, “Why is it we never have time to plan things well at the front end but we always have time to clean them up when they go wrong?”
The answer to this lies in how we delegate.
del·e·gate, verb
entrust (a task or responsibility) to another person, typically one who is less senior than oneself
send or authorize (someone) to do something as a representative
There are two words that stick out in the definition above: entrust and authorize. The act of entrusting and/or authorizing requires that the representative to whom you are delegating take ownership of the task, In order to take ownership, it is crucial that s/he is involved in determining how the task is to be done. This does not happen when, instead of asking for input, you provide instructions, clear or otherwise, for how to do it.
Why can they not follow simple directions? It’s largely because they don’t actually absorb them. The moment you tell another what you want him/her to do, that person begins to formulate a plan. And even though you may be talking, giving specific directions, s/he is only half listening, concentrating instead on how s/he plans to tackle it.
Your role, if you want to ensure that the task/project gets done correctly the first time around is to find out what’s being planned. That’s when Socratic Delegation can become your greatest tool.
What is Socratic Delegation? A method of using questions when assigning work, resulting in individuals developing their own implementation plans instead of being told how to do it.
The process is as simple as:
“This is the (measurable) result I’m looking for.
I need it by __________.
How do you think we should do it?”
A friend of mine, a Public Works Manager for a city in California, volunteered to edit the book I’m writing on Socratic Delegation. When she returned the manuscript she had this to say about the process, “I found myself using it after reading/editing. Wow, it works! Specifically letting the team figure out how to tackle a project.”
Why not try it yourself this week? Become a believer!
Please let me know what happens or if you have questions: Silver@SilverSpeaks.com
Click for the comprehensive process, Socratic Delegation Step-by-Step
Do you delegate or command?
Happy 2017! Remember, you get more of what you focus on so, if you’ve been commiserating with others about how awful 2016 was, STOP IT! Otherwise you are well on the way to a repeat performance in the New Year. Let’s instead focus on how we can leverage the clean slate that is handed to us every January 1st by the Gregorian calendar.
Speaking of clean slates, why not use yours to improve employee engagement in your organization by getting better at delegating? I’ll be focusing on the topic of delegation for a while in my blogs because my new book on the subject is nearly complete and will be launched sometime during the next month. I have much to share.
Why did I choose to spend so much time doing a deep dive into delegation?
In my work with teams over the years it has become abundantly clear that most people in leadership—executives, managers, supervisors, project managers, team leads, even parents!—are confused about how to delegate well.
Our early models for delegation were our parents and it’s a pretty safe bet that, at least at the beginning of your ascension into leadership, you relied on their examples to “be the boss.” As you ponder that assertion, do you find it to be true?
All parents are different so I’m not going to assume that yours were like mine but the model I grew up with was, “Do as I say and RIGHT NOW.” There was no discussion, no opportunity for clarifying questions; it was a time to jump into action or face the consequences.
Maybe your parents were great at giving orders but not so great at follow up to make sure it was done. Or perhaps you grew up with indulgent parents who didn’t ask you to do much. Instead, they did it for you.
It’s important to know whether your current style of delegation is working well. Does your team deliver on time and as you requested? Or are there too many “do-overs?” Are you in clean up mode more than is comfortable? Are you doing more of the work than your team?
A first step in delegating well is to stop giving directions. Stop telling your team HOW to complete tasks. If they already know how, it’s insulting. If they don’t, it’s important for you to find that out. Here is a quick delegation process for you to experiment with this week:
“This is the (measurable) result I’m looking for.
I need it by __________.
How do you think we should do it?”
I call this method Socratic Delegation after the Greek philosopher. Socrates did not teach his students in the traditional way, by lecturing. Instead, he asked them questions, inspiring them to think and come up with their own ideas.
We will dive deeper into Socratic Delegation in future blogs. For now, I encourage you to try the technique outlined above at work and/or at home with your children. See what happens. Notice what you learn. Were ideas identified that wouldn’t have surfaced if you’d simply told them how to do it? Did things get done correctly the first time?
Please let me know what happens or if you have questions: Silver@SilverSpeaks.com