Image by Clarita

How to keep the wheels turning even when you aren’t looking…

The Problem: you want your staff to go the extra mile. You want your team to take some risks. You want your employees to ‘get the big picture’ and do what it takes to make it happen. You want the wheels to stay on the bus even when you aren’t there.

What you want is engagement.

But no one’s buying. If you want something done you have to spell it out in detail, or just give up and get to that ugly . . . → Read More: Perpetual Motion Management]]> Share/Bookmark

Image by Clarita

How to keep the wheels turning even when you aren’t looking…

The Problem: you want your staff to go the extra mile. You want your team to take some risks. You want your employees to ‘get the big picture’ and do what it takes to make it happen. You want the wheels to stay on the bus even when you aren’t there.

What you want is engagement.

But no one’s buying. If you want something done you have to spell it out in detail, or just give up and get to that ugly “I’ll just do it myself” place of the defeated manager. You feel like every time you turn your back, the wheels come off the bus again.

You’ve got zero engagement.

Engagement is defined by John Gibbons (writing for the Conference Board) as “a heightened emotional connection that an employee feels for his or her organization, that influences him or her to exert greater discretionary effort to his or her work”. Notice the line from emotional connection to greater discretionary effort.

Discretionary effort is the phrase that describes what every employer wants: for the employee to figure out what is needed for sustainable success, and to do whatever is needed to get there – without anyone standing over their shoulder… Stuff just gets done.

So how do you get your team to this place? What do we require to become fully engaged? In my experience, three things are needed: clarity, hope, and commitment.

Clarity
In his book The One Thing You Need to Know… Marcus Buckingham writes that the one thing you need to know about great leadership is “Discover what is universal, and capitalize on it.” Buckingham tells us that what is universally required of leadership is clarity. Specifically, an optimistic clarity about the future.

We’ll work our hearts out for you if you can make us see with clarity the future we are all headed for.

Leadership is the work of leaders. That means get out front and lead. You must see the future with an optimistic clarity that inspires others to follow. Leadership does not just require optimism & clarity; leadership is optimism & clarity.

Hope
Hope, as I have defined it, has two components: an optimistic vision of the future, and the belief that we have what it takes to get there. As a leader your clarity of vision creates the precondition for that kind of hope. We must see where we are going, and we must believe it is a place worth getting to, before we decide to invest our blood, sweat, and tears to get there!

The success of every great religious leader, every reformer, every leader of any expedition across any ocean or continent has been dependent on their clarity of just how much greener that grass “over there” is.

When we can see that where we are headed is better than where we are now, clarity becomes hope.

Great managers play a critical role in inspiring hopefulness in teams. They support our contribution by constantly encouraging further growth where they know we are already strong, and by giving us opportunities to use those strengths for the greater good.

Great managers act as match-makers between our strengths and the jobs that need to get done. The result, when all is right, is that powerful feeling of a team that is firing on all cylinders, and every member is clear about their role in the success of the overall project. And like so much in life, success builds more success.

When clarity and hopefulness exist in an organization, the stage is set for the third component of total engagement: commitment.

Commitment

Starting on a journey of change and growth requires clarity and hope. But there is no journey at all without commitment. Commitment is the action piece. It’s time to start walking. Commitment is, to paraphrase Nike Corp., ‘just doing it’.

Organizational change sometimes feels like a leap of faith. The inherently chaotic nature of the environment & human nature, make the ‘perfect plan’ an illusion. Commitment is taking the first step over the edge without that perfect plan. Commitment exists when we step forward with clarity & hope about the future, with the best information we have, and at which there is no turning back.

If clarity is the domain of leadership, and engendering hopefulness the domain of great managers, commitment is the responsibility of the whole team. If clarity and hopefulness are the call, commitment is the response.

We see where we are going, we believe we can get there, and we have all committed to taking the first step together. Now we have engagement.

Keeping the wheels turning

Total engagement requires complete clarity.

Do you want your employees to tap into that mysterious ‘discretionary effort’ that means the wheels stay on the bus even when you are out of the building? Then make sure that you have done your part to be clear, and to connect our strengths to the task at hand. If you’ve really done your part in this, then you’ll get passionate engagement.