MOTIVATING OTHERS: 8 TIPS TO ENGAGE YOUR TEAM TIPS 1. Get to Know Your People 2. Set Clear Expectations 3. Develop Your Employees 4. Notice What Gets Done 5. Empower Your People 6. Provide Meaningful Work 7. Create Coachable Moments 8. Act on Employee Feedback ENGAGEMENT- THE FACTS ARE YOUR EMPLOYEES EXCITED ABOUT COMING TO WORK? ARE THEY PASSIONATE ABOUT THEIR JOBS? If not, you may be facing an employee engagement gap, with team members who don’t feel motivated or connected to their roles. There is no arguing that a highly engaged employee is a productive employee. Engaged employees work with passion and feel a profound connection to their company. They care about their work, drive innovation, and move their organization forward. Unfortunately, engaged employees are hard to come by. Gallup recently reported that only 13% of employees worldwide are engaged at work. The United States, at only 29%, was found to have one of the highest levels of engaged employees, demonstrating that there is a great deal of room for improvement. The good news: There are plenty of ways to make your team feel more inspired by their work, and many of these tactics can easily be incorporated into your day-to-day operations. Read on for 8 tips that can help you enhance employee engagement. If you would like to order more copies of this e-guide, or learn more about our services please contact us at [email protected] or visit www.apex-ps.com. People are more than their job titles. Take time to listen to them and learn about what is important to them. This will help build trust and will have great benets to your relationship and their work in the long run. TIP #1 GET TO KNOW YOUR PEOPLE With people’s busy work schedules it is too easy to forget to devote time to really getting to know your team. However, managers who take time to understand the backgrounds and values of their people are able to get more from them in the long run. A manager who already understands what an employee’s strengths, personal values, and drives are is better able to assess how to motivate and coach him or her – this will make your job a lot easier. It’s important to start early in this process. If you have a new employee, don’t wait until they have worked for you for months. Spend time with them and ask questions about themselves, their families, how they like to get feedback, what they would like from you, their goals, motivators, and their strengths and challenges. Make sure that you demonstrate that you are truly interested in learning about them. Interrogating them will only drive them away! Always remember, communication is a two way street, if you are taking the time to ask these questions, make sure you are also taking the time to truly listen. Compared to other performance management activities, your ability to set realistic performance expectations has the greatest impact on employee engagement. To eectively set realistic performance expectations, you can have goal setting discussions shortly after performance reviews and when your direct reports rotate from one project to the next. TIP #2 SET CLEAR EXPECTATIONS Here are some questions that can help you think through the process of setting employee performance expectations: Are the goals relevant to the business? Is the scope of the goals appropriate? Are there too few or too many goals? Are the goals coordinated with others’ goals? Are the goals results-based and measurable? As a manager, encourage professional development by having a clear plan in mind. A development plan will help create a roadmap for your people. Help your employees establish goals that are aligned with their strengths. Once their goals are established, pair them with a mentor that is in a similar target position. Everyone can benet from a mentor and it is a great way to use internal company talent. Also, challenge your employees to push themselves out of their comfort zone with special projects or additional assignments outside of their day to day roles. TIP #3 DEVELOP YOUR EMPLOYEES As humans we are driven to grow and develop new skills. As a manager, it’s important to spend time developing your employees. Employees of managers who are very eective at development can outperform their peers by up to 25%. IMPACT OF MANAGER-LED DEVELOPMENT ON EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE MANAGER A: Performance of employees reporting to Manager A Very Ineective at developing employees Performance of employees reporting to Manager B Increase directly attributable MANAGER B: to manager B’s eectiveness Very Eective at at employmee development developing employees +25% EMPLOYEES BENEFIT MOST FROM MANAGERS WHO CLARIFY PERFORMANCE STANDARDS AND FOCUS ON EXPERIENCE-BASED LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES. Recognition from a manager is a huge motivator and it does not have to come at a nancial cost. A “thank you” or “nice job” can go a long way. TIP #4 NOTICE WHAT GETS DONE Employees want to be acknowledged for their eorts and hard work. Recognition from managers and supervisors can have an immediate impact on better productivity and performance. It promotes positive behaviors and attitudes, which in turn, enhance engagement. As a manager, you must understand what forms of recognition motivate your employees. For some, it is important to be recognized publicly, whereas others may prefer an email message or a thank you note. One of the easiest ways to nd out what forms of recognition are meaningful to people is by simply asking! Keep a record of your employees’ preferences so that you can be sure to use the correct approach in a timely manner. Here are some recognition ideas: Write a thank you note Create a wall of honor Email a message to the team highlighting Monthly appreciation awards for the the individual’s performance entire team/department/ company Bring in food items to celebrate Make employee recognition part of your language Empowerment grows out of a culture of openness and trust. When you stop micromanaging your employees and start empowering them to discover their talents, they will become increasingly self-condent and will be responsible for their own results. TIP #5 EMPOWER YOUR PEOPLE Empowerment provides employees with intrinsic rewards by allowing them to make decisions on their own and value the successes that follow. As a leader, it is your job to make sure your team has the right vision so that they truly understand the company’s/team’s purpose and direction. However, it is not your role to control every step of the process. Rather than micromanaging everything your employees do, let them be responsible for their own results, and give them the exibility and power to achieve outcomes in their own way. They may stumble, but they will learn a great deal, and in doing so will gain respect from others along the way. Ensure that your people have everything they need to succeed. Be clear and make sure that their goals are aligned with those of the company. You can provide support and a certain level of supervision, without controlling every detail and process. We were created for meaningful work, and one of life's greatest pleasures is the satisfaction of a job well done. ”--JOHN C MAXWELL “TIP #6 PROVIDE MEANINGFUL WORK When it comes to engagement, nancial rewards fall lower on the totem pole than most people think. As a matter of fact, no matter how much money one is making, it is impossible to feel engaged at work if you feel like the work you are doing is not meaningful. Employees need to believe that their job makes good use of their skills and abilities. As a manager, learn about your employees’ goals and what is important to them, so you can better determine the special projects and kinds of roles that will allow them to have the most positive impact on their work. A great way for leaders to promote growth and inspiration is to take advantage of coachable moments in everyday interactions with their employees. Always be on the lookout for these opportunities and be willing to spend the necessary eort to take advantage of them – these moments will add up and will lead to key growth opportunities for your employees! TIP #7 CREATE COACHABLE MOMENTS Many managers believe that it is their responsibility to give feedback only during the annual review process. Coaching is a dierent approach to this. It takes these learning opportunities away from an annual process, to continuous opportunities for growth. Your goal as a manager is to always be “tuned in” to nd opportunities for coachable moments. Here are some things to consider: Be Willing to Slow Down and Focus on Asking Rather Than Telling. Make Connections. Recognize a Coachable Moment. By asking rather than telling, employees Once an employee has gained awareness The pace of work in today’s organizations have to dig deep and really think about of a new skill or knowledge highlighted is hectic, and many times the moments to what they did, why they did it, and what through a coachable moment, it’s engage an employee about their growth they learned. This is where true growth important to discuss application. How is and development are easily missed. It’s occurs. the person going to continue to develop important for leaders to slow down, open the skill? Leverage it? Highlight it? Use it their eyes and ears, and actively look for to reach key project goals? If connections these coachable moments. It’s impossible are not made, the impact of the coachable to predict when these moments will pop moment is limited.