To embark on a journey of strengthening engagement among team members, organizations must assess the competency of their leadership teams. Data from Gallup suggests that managers can influence up to 70% of the variations seen in employee engagement scores across different departments.
What’s the implication? To identify ways of improving the workplace, start by evaluating the effectiveness of your leaders.
Employees’ interaction with their manager often holds more weight than their broader workplace interactions.
By now, the crucial role of an employee engagement plan and its influence on the environment in which team members operate is evident.
Assess The Competencies Of Your Leaders
Leaders must introspect and gauge their competence to uplift the workplace environment, job satisfaction, and employee output. This effort entails thoroughly assessing leadership effectiveness in diverse roles and at every hierarchical level.
Starting with a foundational understanding enables organizations to pinpoint potential growth areas and conceive strategies for workplace betterment. Organizations can foster an ethos of transparent dialogue and individual growth by proactively developing their leaders to fulfill their responsibilities.
To assist your team in measuring leadership competence, consider the following prompts: Utilizing a Likert scale (ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree) is advisable to evaluate vital aspects such as employee well-being, collaboration, and culture.
7 Key Queries to Gauge Leadership Competence
- Does my leader consistently and clearly convey expectations to me promptly?
- Do I feel at ease approaching my manager with concerns or questions?
- Does my leader communicate adeptly with our entire team?
- Does my manager genuinely value and respect me?
- Does my leader consider my suggestions and insights on job-related topics?
- Does my manager support my growth and advancement in my position?
- Do senior leaders diligently convey the organization’s objectives and values?
Embracing feedback can help ensure that knowledge-sharing and open communication are trademarks of your team. Offering team members regular avenues to voice their perspectives and subsequently acting on this feedback is a concrete step toward employee engagement.
Creating a standard for leadership effectiveness can help inform the strategies to capitalize on leadership strengths and identify growth areas.
Practice Coaching Rather Than Managing Your Team
Embracing a coaching leadership style can encourage managers to move from merely instructing to partnering with their team members.
Building trust is foundational to coaching. Offering advice or mentorship without establishing a trusting relationship can make it challenging for team members to accept. Thus, leaders should create a psychologically safe and encouraging space where coaching feels normal.
Employee Listening Is At The Heart Of Coaching
Central to coaching is the fundamental, transformative act of genuinely listening to others. Many times, leaders can dominate conversations. They may tend to advise, teach, or focus on their own experiences. While such methods can have their place, lacking a coaching mindset can make team members feel ignored or insignificant.
Encourage And Support Self-Awareness In The Workplace
While many link coaching with human resources, group activities, or specific training sessions, these are standard practices. Granted, training initiatives have their merits, but they often demand considerable preparation, allocation of resources, and attention to kickstart.
Automated Coaching offers a quicker, more efficient avenue to support the development of emotional intelligence and self-awareness in an organization’s leaders, teams, and individuals.
Leaders have packed schedules, requiring streamlined methods to bolster team communication, collaboration, and timely conflict resolution. Receiving real-time insights tailored to individual needs and effective team management can lead to subtle yet impactful changes.
Every mindful decision to adjust one’s leadership style or recognize the unique personalities of one’s team can improve collaboration and create a better employee experience.
Advocate For Work-Life Balance
Championing a balance between work and personal life is pivotal in enhancing the workplace and aiding your team’s wellness. Employees with the freedom to flex between their work commitments and personal time are more likely to engage in their roles deeply.
Empowering employees with autonomy over their schedules can help them juggle their professional and personal responsibilities, increase job contentment, and reduce stress.
Many employers are delving into hybrid work models, allowing team members to work remotely or from varied locations. This adaptability is a win for employees: it can reduce travel expenses, accommodate their work preferences, and conserve valuable time.
Individuals seek a workplace culture where they can truly thrive. Organizations that proactively invest in developing their people can create an environment where employees aspire to belong. Leaders who model a coaching spirit, acknowledge the modern workforce’s inclination for adaptable work schedules, and celebrate the distinct strengths of their team members are poised to cultivate a happy and engaged workforce.
Stephanie Licata is the Learning Strategist at Cloverleaf whose whole career has been around training programs. With nearly two decades of combined management, leadership development, and education experience, she is a multi-faceted learning, leadership, and organizational development professional, training specialist, and ICF Certified Coach with a Master’s in Organizational psychology from Columbia University. Her signature program is a Coaching Skills for Leaders Certification for those who manage people. From the C-Suite to the first time manager, thousands of leaders have been through this lean and digestible program. With short bursts of skill training, leaders learn and practice leadership communication skills right away. In addition, she provides teams with executive/leadership coaching for all sizes of organizations.