Be the Leader Who Engages Your Team

Engagement of a team starts with you, the leader.

You may not realize it, but your team and others in the organization watch you. If you are not engaged at work, then no one on your team will be either. If you want them to be engaged, then you will have to consistently set an example.

A team’s leader is the first place where engagement starts and it will be the reason a person leaves if it isn’t there. There will always be changes happening in an organization, but you will get through them easier with a team that trusts you and is engaged to work through those challenges together.

Determining Employee Engagement

Past your own engagement at work, how do you know if someone else is engaged? What makes someone on a team more engaged than anyone else?

An engaged team member is passionate about their job, they will do what it takes to get things done and they are committed to the organization. They are motivated from within and have a growth mindset. They love to learn new things and know that they will figure out what they don’t know.

What if you have someone who isn’t engaged though? They may come to the team with a fixed mindset. It can be a challenge for them to see past the limiting beliefs that they have and they may be more skeptical about what is happening. They don’t believe that things can change or that things will get better, so they accept things as they are.

Your Role as a Leader

Your role as the leader is to help them break through those limiting beliefs and see what is possible. Find ways to help them see that these beliefs are just old stories in their head and they can change them at any time. What can help is if you share your own stories where you have been skeptical and how that shifted for you. Stories are one of the most powerful ways to engage a team. They need to know that they can do something different by seeing themselves in your story.

Teams need to deliver results, but that won’t happen if you don’t have an engaged team. Think about the leaders that you have had and how they kept you engaged. What lessons can you take from those experiences and apply to your current team? What does your team need from you to be more engaged? How can you change things up to motivate them differently? Imagine what is possible. This is a time to get creative and think out of the box to drive strong engagement with your team.

Engaging Your Team Remotely

If you and your team have worked together in person, you already have that bond. However, when everyone is working remotely, it can be a challenge to ensure that everyone is engaged. What do you need to do to ensure that everyone is still connected on a consistent basis? What if you add new team members to the group? How do you adjust your leadership to support the remote engagement that is necessary for success?

These are the real questions and challenges that leaders are facing today. This pandemic has brought the topic of remote work to the forefront. For those leaders who didn’t think that their teams could all be remote, they can see that it does work. Obviously, people would prefer to be together, but everyone is adjusting to make it work in the remote environment.

The great thing is that companies are still hiring and on-boarding new team members remotely. However, new team members can add a layer of complexity to the team dynamics that managers will have to lead through. It works really well when there is intention, consistency and the leadership team is setting the example.

Questions to consider:

• How can you find ways to engage them as a group even while they are remote?
• Do you check in frequently with them and see how they are doing?
• Do you bring them together remotely also? I am seeing so many companies that are doing this effectively right now. All it takes is the time to strategically leverage a plan, intention, and creativity to make it happen.
• How are you finding creative ways to engage your team?

Susan M Barber, President of Susan M Barber Coaching & Consulting, LLC, works with individuals, teams, and organizations to build skills that leaders need to attain breakthrough results. Her passion for coaching and leadership development is driven by seeing the transformation of leaders as they reach far beyond their own ideas of success. She continues to drive custom programs for groups that want to make changes in their careers to become more powerful leaders.