How To Keep Your Talent Engaged

One of the major challenges running a business is keeping the team engaged.

An engaged team is key to achieving your business goals.

It is important that you are genuinely interested about what the team  are working on but be careful not to micromanage.

Keeping talent engaged involves four key areas.

Autonomy

Talent thrive when given autonomy.

If you want to evolve as a business owner, lead don’t manage.  Inspire your team to be better. Set guidelines and expectations then allow them to figure out the best pathway to achieve the outcome.  As a result they will create the outcomes that will benefit your business

Mastery

 The second key to  keeping the talent engaged is mastery.

Give them the opportunity to develop their skills and become a master of their destiny.

Once talent understand the parameters and have a clear blueprint for what you, the business owner is looking for, let them figure out the most effective route to achieve the outcome.  

Support and encourage them to master their skills.   

Recognition

Humans thrive on recognition

Public recognition goes a very long way in building the team morale.

And don’t forget the high achievers.  Remember to recognise even the guys that are getting paid well and are delivering consistent outcomes. Weekly summary meetings are a great place to deliver positive feedback.

Learning Opportunities

Great talent thrive when given the opportunity to step up in their space and lead. They are always on the lookout for that opportunity to grow learn new skills.  Give them a safe platform to do this.

You can begin by giving  your talent the opportunity to run meetings. Offering them the chance to  step-up to leadership opportunities (on a smaller scale initially) will be very rewarding for both you and your team.

Here are 5 talent engagement strategies

1. Lead, Don’t manage.

Staff need managing and this is time consuming.  Talent on the other hand simply need a set of guidelines, an understanding of what the desired outcome is  and support when required.

2. Be vulnerable.

 It is important for a leader to show a level of vulnerability and transparency when looking to engage your team with a greater level of autonomy.

 When people feel you, they’ll engage in your purpose and feel more settled in their role. They need to see the real you.

 As a business owner or a business leader, be comfortable to show who you are as an individual warts and all. The fact that you're not perfect, you're on a learning path yourself. Displaying that vulnerability will engage your talent every day of the week.

3. Learn to Let Go.

As a business owner, your business is your baby. But if you micro-manage things then perhaps you don’t trust your team enough or maybe you don’t have clear enough systems in place...

 Create an environment  that will allow your talent to thrive on leadership opportunities.

4. Lead by example.

Lead with absolute clarity and transparency. Set clear outcome expectations for the team.  As a leader you must display a high level of self awareness and remember that you are who the team look up to.

5. Create a great culture.

Creating a workplace culture is not difficult at all. Once there's a high level of transparency and clarity around acceptable behaviours and how you need to work with each other as a team, what's left is just fundamentally driving a fun and easy learning environment, which is overlapped with a strong sense of focus on outcomes.

Know your talent and create a great workplace culture. Provide structure and allow them to understand with clarity what those parameters are around acceptable levels of conduct.

To engage your talent is to inspire them. A talent who’s inspired at work is more productive than a satisfied one.