#1 Tip To Keep Team Members Engaged

Woohoo – it’s Friday! You made it another week! Hope you had a great week. Do yourself a favor, and please pause your busy day for a moment and reflect on what went well this week, what did you learn, what was the major struggle for you this week and how might you deal with it more effectively in the future. If it helps, email me what you came up with. There is great power in reflection and sharing…and it often goes untapped.

Ok back to our regularly scheduled show…this week’s focus is on strengths.

How can managers keep their employees engaged, especially right now with so much uncertainty in business, our health, our economy, our world? This is the time for leaders to step up their game, be human-centered, show vulnerability, express authenticity, and care about their team members. My suggestion for how to do this? It’s simple. Have regular, authentic one-on-one conversations with your team members.

YUP, SCHEDULE A WEEKLY 1:1 CHECK-IN WITH EACH TEAM MEMBER AND SPEND THE TIME FOCUSING ON HIS OR HER EXPERIENCE.

This check-in is not the time to get a project update or assign tasks or talk about other transactional items. Sure, those things have to happen as well, but schedule a separate meeting to talk about that. The purpose of the 1:1 check-in is to connect on what is happening in the team member’s world.

Your role is to listen…pay attention…be curious. Focus on the employee’s experience during the conversation, not your interpretation of their experience. And the conversation doesn’t have to be lengthy: 10-15 minutes is usually enough.

Here are a few suggested conversation prompts:

Did you have a chance to use to use your strengths this week? How might you use your strengths more next week?
What did you loathe this past week? How might you do those tasks differently?
Do you feel like you added outstanding value this week?
What are your priorities for the upcoming week? Any obstacles in your way that we can talk through?

This may feel awkward at first, but stick with it. Like with a new workout, you build your muscles and it gets easier. Your employees need you to be on your A-game right now. The workplace is changing. You cannot lead effectively in the same way you always have; you need to upgrade your skills, your relationships, and your emotional intelligence to remain effective.

I’ll be sharing more about this human-centered approach to the workplace on a panel for BT next week, along with a technologist, and a psychological technologist (who knew that was a discipline!?). Should be an interesting conversation so hope you can join. (Link below)

#1 Tip To Keep Team Members Engaged

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