The Psychology of Team Member Engagement

Team member engagement is the degree to which a team member feels connected to their job. Engaged team members are far more productive than disengaged team members. (Disengaged team members feel no real connection to their jobs and tend to do the bare minimum.) The objective is to have a team of highly engaged team members, and that is what this step is all about. Team member engagement is accomplished by giving feedback, providing autonomy and empowerment, by doing Weekly Check-Ins and Quarterly Mentoring.

People want purpose and meaning from their jobs. They want to be recognised for what they are good at and what makes them unique. This is what drives employee engagement.

Engaged team members produce superior results, are more productive, loyal and stay at an organisation longer, and team member engagement links to better business outcomes. Based on over 50 years of team member engagement research, Gallup has shown that engaged team members produce better business outcomes than others - across the industry, company size and nationality, and in good economic times and bad.

Engaged team members are highly involved in and enthusiastic about their work and workplace. They are psychological "owners" who drive high performance and innovation and move the organisation forward.

Non-engaged team members are psychologically unattached to their work and their company because their engagement needs are not being met; they're putting in time but not energy or passion - into their work.

Actively disengaged team members are unhappy at work; they are resentful that their needs aren't being met and act out their unhappiness accordingly. Every day, these team members potentially undermine what their engaged co-workers accomplish.

Team members' emotional commitment means engaged team members care about their work and their organisation, identify with its vision and purpose, use discretionary effort, and are enthusiastic about it. They are committed to their work and workplace. Their level of psychological investment is a measure of the strength and mental and emotional connection they feel toward their workplace. This means an engaged supervisor works overtime when needed, and an engaged clerk keeps the store clean.

Engaged employees lead to better business outcomes. In fact, according to Towers Perrin research, companies with engaged team members have 6% higher net profit margins, and according to Kenexa research, engaged companies have five times higher shareholder returns over five years.

Effect on productivity

Most managers understand that team member engagement directly affects an organisation's profitability. Engagement can be affected by social cohesion, feeling supported by one's manager, information sharing, a team vision, communication, and trust. Team members want to feel valued and respected; they want to know that their work is meaningful, and their ideas are heard. Highly engaged team members are more productive and committed to the organisations in which they work.

The role of managers

Managers need to be coaches. They can be effective coaches by focussing on the individual needs of each team member. It is also important for managers to be able to flex their coaching styles - for example, the needs of individual team members may require them to be a "teaching" coach where the manager passes along an expertise to achieve something, or a "facilitating coach" where the manager asks questions and listens instead of telling or giving answers."

Team member engagement increases dramatically when the daily experiences of team members include positive relationships with their manager. Team members want relationships, particularly with a manager who can coach them to the next level. Managers drive team member engagement.

How much of your time do you spend working on your team member relationships? Building strong professional relationships and an environment of trust and respect takes time and effort, but it pays huge dividends in performance.

Engagement can replace annual performance appraisals.

The key reason for dropping annual appraisals is that engagement more closely follows the natural cycle of work. When rapid innovation is a source of competitive advantage, as it is now in many companies and industries, that means future needs are continually changing. Because organisations won't necessarily want employees to keep doing the same things, it doesn't make sense to hang on to a system built mainly to assess and hold people accountable for past or current practices.

Businesses no longer have clear annual cycles. Instead, projects are short-term and tend to change along the way, so employees' goals and tasks can't be plotted out a year in advance with much accuracy.

Shifting away from annual performance appraisals toward a process of continuous coaching and development (Weekly check-ins and Quarterly coaching) requires a new role for managers. Ideally, conversations between managers and team members occur when projects finish, milestones are reached, challenges pop up, and so forth, allowing people to solve problems in current performance while also developing skills for the future.

Moving away from the traditional focus on individual accountability (the annual appraisal) makes it easier to foster and evaluate teamwork especially given that the move toward team-based work often conflicted with individual appraisals and rewards.

Engagement promotes feedback.

A key reason team members feel disengaged is because of a lack of a manager's feedback. Team members are usually eager to share feedback with their managers and do so in the hopes of driving positive change in their workplace. However, team members feel that all too often, their feedback goes unheard and does not result in meaningful change. The bottom line? Managers aren't listening, and team members are taking notice.

Engagement means giving autonomy and empowerment.

Team members who do not have autonomy or empowerment require external motivation, whereas team members who do possess autonomy and empowerment do not. Autonomy and empowerment are critical attributes of high-performing teams; without them, you have frustrated team members who are constantly reminded that they're not trusted to make even small decisions let alone the bigger ones; this saps motivation and leads to resentment.?

Strengths-based autonomy and empowerment.

Providing autonomy and empowerment means understanding the strengths and skills that each team member has. For example, it means recognising that somebody in the team may understand risk analysis better than you. As a result, they're best placed to make decisions related to project risk, and it follows that you should implement this line of thinking throughout the team. If somebody has the skills needed to make decisions, allow them to do so. This extra accountability acts as a motivator and confidence builder. You're letting people do the jobs you pay them to do, which always leads to better results.

Engagement means having an open-door policy.

There are only three reasons to have your office door closed:

1.????To tell team members to keep away from you, which you never want to do.

2.????To do urgent work to the extent that you cannot handle an interruption.

3.????To have a private conversation.

I consider options 2 and 3 as the only valid options, and I am somewhat averse to option 3, as there should be no need for private conversations in a high-performance work environment.

Engagement means being in contact with remote team members.

Consider communication with team members who work remotely; the best way to keep in touch is about having frequent face time meetings (and six-monthly in-person meetings). When managers understand the importance of their relationship with their remote team members, they begin to individualise their approach to helping these team members achieve higher performance and encourage collaboration and teamwork.

Engagement Practice 1 - Weekly Check-Ins

Weekly check-in sessions are a vital part of the team member-manager relationship. It's where team members get individualised attention, and the manager can provide mentoring. It provides you with a management tool to develop your team members to their fullest potential. This is a free-form meeting for all the pressing work issues, ideas and frustrations that do not fit neatly into status reports, email, and other less personal and intimate mechanisms. It means weekly status or progress reports can be dispensed with.?

Regular Check-Ins help you stay in the loop, alerting you to potential problems at an early stage so that you can step, correct, or influence events before things go out of control. A general aim is to understand each other's work and personal situation and out of work stresses and obligations. The overall objective is to build a supportive and trusted relationship and discuss and influence your team members toward improved 'work performance' with positive outcomes. It is also the opportunity to:

Motivate team members to continue a behaviour that increases their effectiveness.

Stop a behaviour that reduces their effectiveness, especially if it turns them into a problem team member.

Giving this kind of feedback consistently and well establishes and strengthens trust. The more trust and rapport you can build, the more readily your team members will accept and act on future feedback, creating a pattern of learning and growth. It is important to have genuine conversations about performance, with the intent of getting a team member to improve, whatever their role or level of responsibility. All feedback is an opportunity to improve.

Engagement Practice 2 - Quarterly Mentoring

Weekly check-ins are focused on current events, whereas the quarterly mentoring session is concentrated on a team members long term professional development. The objective is to learn what drives your team members, how they want to grow professionally and how you can help.

When held consistently, such meetings further enhance the building of trust and allow team members to benefit from shared context; this also boosts team member engagement and productivity. Your aim is to understand the team members strengths and the direction they hope to go in so that you can facilitate their personal and professional growth. Mentoring is a management skill with high potential. People never forget their most impactful mentors. New team members will see managers as the kind of person they want to be like. Mentoring is a key competency, and managers who take mentoring seriously do indeed have a profound impact.

The mentoring session nurtures the alignment between team members aspirations and organisational imperatives. They transfer their knowledge and expertise from you to the team member. Typically, you will have been in an organisation or profession longer and have greater authority within the organisation or profession than does the team member. The combination of expertise and position enables you to have a significant impact.

Mentoring helps businesses attract and retain talent and enhance organisational commitment among team members who seek developmental opportunities. Turnover decreases and development accelerates. The team member benefits in numerous ways: gaining access to management opportunities, career mobility, better rewards and higher compensation, increased adaptability when facing new situations, improved professional identity, greater professional competence, increased career satisfaction, greater acceptance within their organisation, and decreased job stress and role conflict. Studies have shown that mentors are more satisfied with their jobs and committed to their organisations than those who do not mentor.

Summary

1.????Feedback - provide feedback, actively listen to team members, and give positive recognition, especially when taking on a leadership role.

2.????Autonomy and Empowerment - provide team members with complete autonomy over their work and empower them to make decisions. Give them the amount of authority they need to complete the task without checking back with you on every detail.

3.????Open Door policy - have an open-door policy making yourself 100% available to team members.

4.????Remote team members – have regular check-ins with them and get to know their preferred working style.

5.????Weekly Check-In meetings - start weekly team member check-ins, have a standing agenda focussing on current activities and issues. Establish an environment where team members are comfortable expressing their ideas.?

6.????Quarterly Mentoring sessions - start these to discuss team members professional development needs. Assign leadership roles to high-performing team members.

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