Episode #4: Four Vital Ways To Get Your People More Engaged

There is a lot to do and once you get to a certain scale you realise you can’t do it all by yourself. This is when you need your staff. That is fine, but they didn’t start the business or if it is an established business, they are not the boss on much better money. How do you get your people to actually really care about the business?

There are four things to focus on. This research was completed globally , including in Japan and it showed the same results.

1. Look carefully at your relationship with your direct reports. This is the biggest factor and this is where you may be the source of the disengagement. The simple rule is this: how would you like to treated by the boss? Okay, in this case, you are the boss, but are you reserving one rule for yourself and how you wanted to be treated and a having a different set of rules for your team? Do you know what is going in their lives? Do you understand their motivations, goals, aims, values? If you don’t, then get busy and find out.

2. Do the people at the bottom believe that the people at the top are taking the organisation in the right direction?Often the WHY of what we are doing is not communicated well enough. The senior execs know what it is, because they created it. They just do a poor job of informing everyone down the line about it. You might think, “Hey, I told then the Vision, Mission and Values, so it is done and dusted”. It is not done, because you have to keep telling them and telling them, all the time and forever. Leaders learn this the hard way. You cannot tell them once and expect they get it. Note to self: keep telling them.

3. Are people proud to work in the organisation.If you work for Toyota then it is probably pretty easy to feel pride, because you are Godzilla dominating everyone. If you don’t have gargantuan bulk, a massive brand or world domination going for you, then you have to think about getting pride going in the troops. Punch above your weight, be the speedboat not the oil tanker, monster a niche – find a way to emphasise your mission, differentiation or special juice.

4. The spark, trigger, nitro to light up engagement is the boss making sure the people know the boss cares about them and really values what they do.Sounds tremendously simple, except we find ourselves constantly barking out orders like a mad pirate captain. Really communicating that the work people are doing is highly valued gets their motivation, confidence and engagement going. But are you doing it? If you aren’t, then look for ways to communicate that they and their work are highly valued around here and do it in a genuine way.

So the four things to get engagement are ONE. work on your relationship with your direct reports, TWO. explain the WHY, THREE focus on your company’s super power and FOUR tell people they and their work is highly valued by you.