The Team-Building Antidote to the Summer Lull and Employee Disengagement
"Remember, teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability." — Patrick Lencioni.
The Question
How to reset your team engagement?
Summers can be an atypical time for a lot of organizations.
Individuals on teams may be in and out between PTO. As summer continues, clients and sales prospects take well-earned time to recharge, thus often making response times slower.
The pace may feel like it generally decelerates.
And these ebbs and flows are a good thing. As a leader, you need to keep a pulse on your leadership style and be weary to not constantly fall into a high-pacesetting style that can burn out the team.
But what if you fall into too deep of a lull? Your engagement can begin to dwindle.
Although there are no quick fixes for a disengaged team - you can partly help kickstart the process with this week's hack. ??
The Research
Organizations continue to experiment with work set-ups as the workplace tries to continuously balance a new normal in this shaky pandemic terrain.
Some remain fully remote, some hybrid, and some may be fully back in the office.
Depending on your organization's approach, there will inevitably be some disconnect between team members, their communication with one another, and their cap on mutual trust.
If not addressed regularly, these inconsistencies place additional strain on employee engagement.
Paul J. Zak's research and article in HBR?on the neuroscience of trust and economic performance showed that individuals with high levels of trust showed?"74% less stress, 106% more energy at work, 50% higher productivity, 13% fewer sick days, 76% more engagement, 29% more satisfaction with their lives, 40% less burnout."
Yet organizations often look externally to boost employee engagement with low-hanging fruit, such as the cliché example of pizza parties, which only extends the time spent at work and an appetite for something deeper.
While some may try to out-pace engagement with bonuses and raises - a solution with air only for the short term.
Managers and leaders are left wracking their minds on what to do.
Luckily, employee engagement is a collaborative process.
Some Advice
To help kickstart resetting employee engagement, you need to bring your people together to realign over collaborative mission and goals, build their skills as a team, and redefine a mutual culture.
Watch a snippet of what this team-building hack looks like??
Your Hack
This week your hack is to?plan a retreat with team building in mind.
As humans, we have a deep-seated need to belong.
Organizations that see work as just a group of people congregating to just work are missing profound team-building opportunities.
As leaders, you must create space to build trust for your team members. And that means intentionally prioritizing building relationships.
Summers can be a great time to plan these opportunities for team-building retreats.
Its primary purpose focuses on strengthening relationships by allowing members to connect personally and creating better, stronger bonds while also working on realigning company goals.
The new environment can bring about the sharing of new ideas and provide the space for feedback from the team.
The takeaways from these retreats can be the bread and butter managers and leaders look for when addressing employee engagement.
Though it is not a one-size fits all solution, it can be the first avenue to begin addressing engagement below the surface.
The vital nuance here is that team-building?cannot?be a one-time thing. If you return to "business as usual" from the retreat, you will have no long-term success.
Team-building must be an ongoing process (not even necessarily always in retreat form).
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The team must have ample opportunities to strengthen their bonds, have the space to provide candid feedback on the team's functionality, re-assess their strengths and weaknesses and make plans to improve their performance.
Parting Thoughts
Just as we referenced Lencioni at the start, "...teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability."
Team belonging and team-building start with just that. And leaders are instrumental in setting that precedent.
At?Unicorn Labs, we believe in the power of retreats. This is why we're so passionate at creating these experiences for other organizations and creating resources for you to do the same??
Unicorn Leaders — The Podcast
Have you heard the newest episodes!?
Our most recent podcast guests are trailblazers in the entrepreneurial world: Aydin Mirzaee & Cassy Aite.
???Aydin (Co-Founder and CEO of Fellow. APP and Creator of the SuperManagers Podcast) talked about how managers can influence team performance and why receiving advice can be dangerous.
???Cassy (Co-Founder and CEO of Hoppier) shared the importance of being genuine with employees and how recognizing an achievement can backfire if not done correctly.
Take a listen & subscribe ??
THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT
Sincerely,
The Unicorn Labs Team