In our previous blog focusing on the four leadership habits, we focused on the importance of not only identifying your concept but important factors that need to be considered when sharing your vision with your team and work colleagues; this precedes the process whereby you spark engagement amongst your team as you strive to work brighter and more effectively.
Introducing pertinent methodology befitting of your company’s circumstances can be the difference between your grand ambitions thriving or ending prematurely.
Therefore, the second leadership habit is of the utmost importance as you strive to rouse your team, inspire peak performances and spark engagement.
How to Spark Engagement
It’s important to introduce methods that will empower, inspire and motivate people throughout your company to engage with tasks, prompting them to work collaboratively, whilst taking accountability for their actions.
Focus on Strengths Within Your Team
While a team member may be performing in their designated role, sometimes team members aren’t fulfilling their potential; there are instances whereby they can be utilised more beneficially.
Put yourself in the shoes of an employee: When was the last time that you truly felt energised and absorbed within a role? Consider what your employer did that made the role particularly enjoyable and implement these methods within your practice.
Give your employees a voice and encourage them to identify and understand their strengths and feedback on how they can be a truly valuable member of the team. Providing your team with the chance to speak up enables them to communicate their strengths that may otherwise slip under the radar if they aren’t allowed to provide their input. After listening to your team and considering their suggestions, roles can then potentially be allocated.
If an employee is working in a role that they’re passionate about and plays into their strengths, they’ll devote more time and effort, engaging with their responsibilities on a greater level and offering the company with a greater return on investment.
Delegate Effectively
In business, time is of the essence. Therefore, it’s important to delegate tasks strategically amongst your team.
Clear, effective delegation amongst your team is imperative. This will dispel lapses in communication and help you to achieve your desired working outcomes.
The following process will enable you to delegate effectively and prioritise important matters within your schedule:
- Establish what your desired outcome is; it’s important to delegate outlining the outcome you’d like to achieve, rather than micromanaging and focusing on current circumstances;
- Ensure that the task is delegated to an appropriate person;
- Make it clear what your expectations are and check-in with their expectations;
- Ask individuals or groups why they consider the task to be important, to ensure you’re on the same wavelength;
- Request an action plan;
- Make it clear when to ask for help;
- Give a definitive timeframe for the task and confirm the deadline via email.
Provide Continual Feedback
Feedback is essential for any business; employees need to be told where they’re performing well and where improvements need to be made.
In providing measures of sales regularly, a company and its employees can identify what measures can be enforced to ensure that targets are fulfilled.
Moreover, developmental and positive feedback should be introduced by leaders to prompt new behaviours and improvements, or to ensure that high standards are maintained.
Case Study: How Does Michelle Spark Engagement Within Her Team?
After establishing and sharing her vision, Michelle is now at a stage whereby she has to spark engagement amongst her team. Beforehand, she has to consider three important queries: Who is on the team? What are their strengths? What tasks need to be completed to align with the vision that’s she has shared?
Michelle has to liaise with the senior management team to establish how they envision each person’s role, ensuring that objectives aren’t only completed, but accomplished to a level whereby each person within the team is offering concentrated value.
Within her vision, Michelle outlined ambitions for sales to increase by 5% by the end of the year. Therefore, focuses on the strengths of each team member to enhance the likelihood of the target being achieved and potentially surpassed. Michelle considers whether the existing sales team are equipped with sufficient resources and whether there’s an adequate workforce currently occupying the sales positions.
Michelle has to ascertain whether ample building blocks and foundations are in place that will enable the company to succeed. If Michelle identifies any staff members who can improve their output, she must offer developmental feedback in an attempt to encourage new habits within the team.
It’s important to ensure that a sales team comprises specialist salespeople, not employees without sales experience. Michelle, the senior management team and the sales manager needs to have the unwavering support and engagement of the sales team; if this isn’t the case, then this can thwart the facilitation of goals and prevent targets from being reached.
Additionally, a target has also been set whereby one new product has to be introduced for a clinical trial by July, with key considerations again considered to ensure that the practicalities are in place that will permit tasks to be assigned to people who are specialists within the relevant field.
During this process, Michelle considers which members of the product innovation team are best suited to take the product to trial
Having identified who will perform each role, the emphasis now shifts to how the talent will successfully implement their skillsets. We’ll concentrate on this topic in the next blog piece.
Are your employees disengaged? Do you need guidance on how to spark engagement and unlock potential throughout your workforce? Call Co-Creation on +44 7876 024555 to speak with a member of our specialist team or email us to find out how we can help you effectively interact with your workforce.