How to Get Your Team Engaged

Is your team engaged, enthusiastic, motivated, and committed; except for the 8 hours they work for you?

You can hire people, you can fire people, and you can tell them what to do. What you can’t do is make them like what they do. Some business leaders are content with having an unhappy team.  If they just do their job, then their mental state is superfluous. This line of thinking is not only wrong, but it is entirely counterproductive to the continued survival of a business. Gallup has run some excellent reports that demonstrate the performance difference between engaged and disengaged employees. They identified many benefits that engaged employees bring to the table: motivation, innovation, and a willingness to take on more responsibility within the company. So how can you keep your team engaged?

That level of team engagement contrasts greatly with employees who don’t even want to be there. They do their jobs, but they never put in more than the bare minimum of effort. Don’t expect them to ever go outside of what their job description requires.  If there is a chance for them to skip out on work without getting fired, they’ll take it. Obviously, you don’t want to have a team that consists of these people. But without the right knowledge of how to motivate a team, you’ll find yourself unable to inspire your employees to go above and beyond the basic requirements.

A great company cannot exist or grow without great employees, and there are steps you can take to mold them into the people you want to have working for you. These tips are proven methods of getting your employees engaged in what they do, and anybody can learn to apply them.

1) Keep Your Team Engaged: Be a team, not a dictatorship

Every ship needs a strong captain, but that doesn’t mean that you should spend every second reminding your employee who’s the boss. Your employees look to you for guidance, but they also want to feel as though they are part of a team, and you will pitch in when needed to get the job done. It’s very tempting to just give orders, or worse, rattle off long lists of directives that you just don’t want to do. If you give the directive and then pitch in to reach the goal, you’ll show your employees that they are all part of a team, and they sink or swim together.

2) Keep Your Team Engaged: Give them a chance to shine

It is true that some people are placidly content with being a cog in the wheel. I’m sure you know of at least one person who is sitting in a job they are relatively indifferent to just so they can collect a pension in twenty years. Those that fit that mold will gravitate towards jobs that give few chances to stand out and plenty of job security. For those who want to achieve more, they will never settle for a job pushing pencils all day. These more ambitious employees are always looking for a way to prove to you that they are capable of so much more than low-level work. Denying them this opportunity will either push them to greener pastures, or if they can’t/won’t quit, cause them to become disillusioned with what they do.
If you find somebody who wants to prove themselves, let them. But give them room to fail as well, give them the objective, then let them figure out how to accomplish it.  An employee who shows the initiative and drive to better themselves is a person that will bring your business an incredible amount of value. Don’t waste this potential.

3) Keep Your Team Engaged: Don’t take them for granted – show your gratitude

This goes beyond a simple “thank you”, although those two words can have quite a bit of power in themselves. If your employees feel like their contributions are not recognized or rewarded, then they will feel little incentive to go above and beyond in what they do. How you show this gratitude is as important as the action itself, because a perceived token gesture is even more insulting than a lack of a reward at all. Put another way, if somebody comes up with a million-dollar idea and you give them a monogrammed lanyard as a gift, don’t expect that person to stick around. Rewarding achievement is the flip side to punishing failure, and a balance between both is necessary to craft the ideal team.

As intuitive as these three traits seem, you probably know from personal experience that a lot of managers don’t quite know how to implement these strategies effectively.

If you find yourself having difficulty reaching your employees, get in touch to find out how my Engage and Grow program can turn your employees into high performing leaders within your company. Start with a free employee engagement assessment survey.