100% Engagement
June 22, 2008 – 12:10 pmCreating an engagement environment
The bottom-up leader knows that working with colleagues in constructive ways will produce truly effective results. This is because their environment is designed to encourage an exceptional level of engagement from everyone. This can be achieved even allowing for the fact that many people in organisations, based on their experience, would consider the notion of achieving 100% effective engagement unrealistic and unachievable. They know that people are motivated differently and consider that this makes it almost impossible to really get them to make a 50% contribution on average. Of course this would be a fairly objective reality from their perspective due mainly to the overall ineffectiveness of organisations they have work with to treat their people in an appropriate manner.
People want to do a great job
There are very few people who start each morning with the goal of screwing up in ways that create havoc for their colleagues and the organisation. In fact 95%+ of people employed in organisations truly want to do a good job and to be recognised and rewarded in an appropriate manner. The smart organisations aim to achieve this by making certain that the following is in place for each team leader/member:
· Team leaders always make themselves available to meet, greet, and help new team members ease themselves into the organisation.
· Provided with a workplace or location where they can safely leave personal belongings.
· Introduced to the team members they will be working with.
· Shown how the mission/purpose of the organisation links to the contribution they are going to make.
· Time is made to clearly explain what they are expected to achieve
· Supplied with the materials and equipment they need to their work well
· Given the opportunity to do their best work every day
· Receive regular feedback on performance including recognition/praise for work well done
· Shown that their views and opinions will be heard and valued.
· Given the opportunity each month to talk with their team leader about their performance/progress.
· Provided with opportunities to learn and grow at work by team leaders who encourage their development.
It would be pretty obvious to anyone in a leadership position that to have the above in place should enable everyone to achieve high performance. However, it no longer surprises me when I learn of new employees arriving and nothing has been done, simply because of a breakdown in internal communications. In fact many managers expect most of the above to be attended to by HR and this is the greatest mistake they can make as they are fully accountable to make certain that each new team leader/member is quickly integrated into the team by them.
The ingredient that is essential is the active involvement of team leaders/members who are committed to assist each new team member succeed. To make this a reality all leaders need to recognise that this is their accountability and that they need to be intimate aware of what is going on in their areas of accountability.
Knowing what is going on
Most sensible leaders know that they just don’t have all the information they need to be truly effective in their role. Here we have the compelling reason to actively involve others in the information sharing process as a means of being informed about the key issues. This is more easily achieved when the culture is free of blame/finger pointing and encourages open and honest sharing of views and opinions. However, when people feel that they are not valued or trusted they will naturally be unwilling to share their perspectives on the issues being confronted by leaders.
The bottom-up leader instinctively knows that the answer to most issues can be found by dialoguing with the team members who are actively involved in dealing with it. They just don’t stop there as they also know that other colleagues could have a perspective that would add more shape to finding a workable solution. By building a picture based on the inputs from a range of people the team leader is usually in a position to identify three potentially workable options. By dialoguing the options with other team leaders the most likely solution would be apparent and this would be tested with the team members before implementing. The effectiveness of dialoguing is unlikely to be truly effective in a hierarchical organisation due to the checks and balances put in place by formality and status levels.
Colleagues and familiarity
The description of colleagues as STAFF is a throwback to olden days with its military connotation of Officers and Other Ranks out of which grew the terms Managers and subordinates. One of the myths that still permeate organisations today that continually reinforce the need for an emotional distance between managers and staff is familiarity. The fear that many managers have is about how to discipline people if you have a friendly relationship with them. The answer frequently given is – “with great difficulty”. However, there is another side to the coin that when a constructive relationship exists, a manager would be able to confront a team member in a manner that produces a positive outcome. This is simply due to the relationship being robust enough to enable both parties to handle issues that are affecting performance or the relationship.
The new reality for today’s business is one of creating a working environment in which everyone involved is encouraged to work together in a supportive and constructive manner. As competition gets fiercer for business and good people it makes good sense to find ways that enable everyone to do their best work. This is achieved when the person knows clearly what they are expected to achieve, are capable of doing the work, have all the resources needed to achieve the agreed outputs, and receive regular constructive performance feedback. When this is done in an enabling way by demonstrating belief that the person can achieve and provide all the assistance necessary an increasing number of the team will reciprocate.
Eliminating underperformance
Another real benefit of a bottom-up led organisation would be is ability to constructively dealing with under-performance by a colleague. Right from the time people start with the organisation the aim is to make it abundantly clear to them what they are there to accomplish. The list of factors above is used as a checklist to ensure that all team leaders and members are equipped to contribute their best effort. When someone appears to be underperforming or their behaviour is dysfunctional their team leader would confront the situation as soon as it was apparent.
The process would involve dialoguing with the person firstly to identify if they are aware of the issue and secondly if they perceived it to be unacceptable. This is a critical part of the confronting as it avoids the team leader making judgments on performance that may not be accurate and could lead to conflict. Obtaining the perspective from the person enables the team leader to determine the most effective way of dealing with the issue with the aim of assisting the person to return to the required standard in an agreed timeframe. If this does not happen then the disciplinary process would be initiated as the bottom-up leader does not accept mediocrity on the team.
Getting the right people in the right seats on the bus
Jim Collins the author of ‘From Good to Great’ presents compelling stories based on five years research of effective organisations. One of the clear messages from the great companies was about making certain that you have the right people in the business and he used the above metaphor to describe this. The message is very strong in that having one wrong person on the bus or in the wrong seat will quickly or eventually lead to performance mediocrity. Therefore the bottom-up leader works hard to build the capability of all the team by making certain that they are fully informed about their own performance and how this relates to the organisations performance. Engaged team members are those that are informed, feel in control of their contribution, sees how it adds value to the desired outputs, and is recognised and appropriately rewarded.
The challenge of being a different leader
If you are an enabling leader you are also likely to be embracing many of the practices of a bottom-up leader. I will focus on how to develop the capabilities to be a bottom-up leader in the next post.
Tom
