Agile Manager - Engagement and a Culture of Innovation
Why is it important to have engaged employees?
Companies, much like individuals, don’t benefit from remaining static—especially given the rapid pace of change in the world around them.?
To succeed in that responsibility, managers need to be equipped with tools to lift employee engagement.
Reports show that the engagement rate amongst employees in big companies is less than 50%.
Gallup’s most recent survey reports only 1 in 3 employees are engaged in the U.S.
And one of Gallup's biggest discoveries: the manager or team leader alone accounts for 70% of the variance in team engagement.
According to the study, disengagement translates into lower rates of :
And higher rates of:
If you are looking to create an engaged team then you need to focus on solutions that elicit engagement in your team.
The key drivers of engagement are:
One way to raise engagement is to create a culture of innovation.
Engaging in continuous improvement processes and regularly seeking feedback from employees can help identify areas for enhancement. Creating a culture of learning, adapting, and acting on feedback can demonstrate an organization's commitment to employee engagement.
In my experience as a founder, leader and manager I know these two statements to be true. And understanding and adopting these two statements will make you a better leader and manager and improve enagement.
If you want to innovate then you’ll have to align your vision, values and standards with your employees. They have to want to do what you want to do.?
This is the essence of engagement.
You don’t need to tell them what to do if you provide a system or an operational framework that includes your vision, values and standards. The more bold and compelling the vision the higher the level of engagement.
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Ordinary people will do extraordinary things if your vision, values and standards are aligned.
And, as a manager or leader, taking responsibility will set you on a path of discovery.?
Most importantly, you’ll redirect focus to systems (operational frameworks) and processes as opposed to people (personalities).
There is no motivation to learn and grow if someone else is always to blame. There is no motivation to collaborate or solve problems if someone else is in the way. Innovation is the process of solving problems or taking advantage of opportunities.
It’s moving from a complaining/deflecting/stationery mind-set to an agile mind-set which requires transparency, creativity and a bold and compelling vision.
You can manage personalities but it will require a degree in behavioral psychology and most people don’t have time for that.
If you adopt a systems based approach to continual improvement then you’ll be focused on creating systems that work, despite a person's personality.
Meaning you’ll be able to hire anyone and they will be able to succeed because you’ll have all the resources and support in place for that person to succeed.
And any new hires will be a welcome test to your system. New hires provide an opportunity to uncover known unknowns or unknown unknowns in your system or processes.
The bottom line is it will take you away from blaming others for failures which will definitely improve employee performance and engagement.
I’ll end this article with one important tenant from the agile manifesto which is transparency.
Transparency practices promote a culture of openness, collaboration, and shared understanding which, according to the research, will raise engagement.
Next week I’ll write about tools you can use to increase engagement and move towards a culture of innovation.
Until then—be agile.
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