The Three Tools To Engage Your Team: Episode #404 The Leadership Japan Series

The Three Tools To Engage Your Team: Episode #404 (Audio here for multi-tasking!!) The Leadership Japan Series

Engaging your team as a leader is a relatively new idea. When I first started work in the early 70s, none of my bosses spent a nanosecond thinking about they could engage their staff as a leader. What they were thinking about was catching mistakes, incompetence, error and willfull negligence, before these problems went nuclear. That meant micro managing everyone. “Management by walking around” meant checking up on people. The construct was that the team were problematic and the boss needed to have forensic skills to stop problems escalating. That was the age of the hero boss, who was the best at everything, knew more than everyone else and could do it all. That won’t fly today because technology has made business so much more complex.

Back in 1971 Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon noted, “ a wealth of information would create a poverty of attention”. This is where we bosses are today, with hand held devices which keep us permanently connected through the flood release valves of the internet. We are time poor, handling trouble aplenty, struggling to keep up with market shifts and spending too much time on Clubhouse. What this translates into is bosses are too busy to engage their staff properly. Unlike the 70s when it wasn’t a “thing”, engagement is known today and expected. We are doing a poor job by design today rather than through brutal ignorance. 

There are three useful foundation tools we can apply to spark the process of engaging our staff. Engagement levels are closely calibrated with how well the direction, values and culture of the organisation synchronise with those of the individuals in the team. Here is the tricky bit – how well informed is the busy, busy boss about the team members’ agreement with the firm’s direction, their value set and the culture they want for their workplaces?

This is where the “poverty of attention” kicks in and bosses don’t know much about their team, because they never ask. There is scant time for asking questions when you are busy raining orders down like missiles on the team. We can create connections with our team members by asking factual questions about where they were raised, how many in their family, where they went to university, etc. We may find commonalities of experience or gain insights into what has made this team member the person they are today.

We need to have this information as a base, but we need to go deeper to help us understand the way they think. That means using causative questions. These are enquiries such as, “why did you choose to study geography at university” or “why did you choose to join that company” or “why did you get involved with parachute jumping as a hobby?”. You get the idea. These questions reveal motives for decisions and inform about priorities.

The third tool is asking value-based questions. Our values drive our decisions and carve out our behaviour. For companies this is often where the wheels come off. The rhetoric about what the company stands for and the leadership behaviours don’t line up. There is nothing like tough times to reveal the firm and the boss’s true colours.

These are not immediate questions we would ask, because they can feel intrusive. Imagining you will engage someone by getting to know them better and leading off with a question such as “tell me about a turning point in your life” is not going to have the desired effect. We need to be building the trust over time and once we have gotten to know them reasonably well, we can then ask deeper questions. We can enquire, “thinking back to the way things have gone in your life, would you do things differently?” or “what have been the high points of your accomplishments so far?”, etc. 

Things are in constant flux and a conversation held eighteen months ago may have been overtaken by a series of events in the meantime. So we have to have to make chances to keep engaging with our team to keep up to date on where they are in their thinking, what are their current primary values and recent experiences 

Less time on Clubhouse and more chatting with the team will do a lot more for the engagement of your people and will help to drive toward achieving the organisations goals.

Engaged employees are self-motivated. 

o   The self-motivated are inspired. 

o   Inspired staff grow your business 

Are you inspiring them? 

We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. 

Want to know how we do that? 

Contact me at [email protected]

If you enjoy our content, then head over to www.enjapan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules and our whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. 

About The Author 

Dr. Greg Story, President Dale Carnegie Training Japan

The bestselling author of “Japan Sales Mastery”, and “Japan Business Mastery” Dr. Greg Story is an international keynote speaker, an executive coach, and a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. 

He publishes daily blogs on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter

Has 6 weekly podcasts:

1.     Mondays -  The Leadership Japan Series,

2.    Tuesdays – The Presentations Japan Series 

Every second Tuesday - ビジネス達人の教え

3.    Wednesdays - The Sales Japan Series 

4.    Thursdays – The Leadership Japan Series

Also every second Thursday - ビジネスプロポッドキャスト

5.    Fridays - The Japan Business Mastery Show

6.    Saturdays – Japan’s Top Business Interviews

Has 3 weekly TV shows on YouTube:

1.     Mondays - The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show

Also every Second Thursday - ビジネスプロTV

2.    Fridays – Japan Business Mastery

3.    Saturdays – Japan Top Business Interviews

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development.

Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making, become a 35 year veteran of Japan and run his own company in Tokyo. 

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate (糸東流) and is currently a 6th Dan. 

Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.