7 simple yet powerful ways to get the most out of your team

Do your staff just turn up to work, do what is required of them and then go home?

One of the challenges of leadership is to create an environment where people actually care about what happens in the business,  to the business and its success.

Imagine the impact on your business if all of your staff were working to their full potential and productivity. How can you achieve this and get your people to do their best every day?

Through your actions, behaviour and influence you can create an environment where people feel that they are valued, can contribute, do meaningful work and can see the results of their work.

Why?

These are the things that contribute to a happier workforce. Research shows that engaged happy employees are 47% (iOpener) and 43% (Hay Group) more productive. Companies with engaged workforce have profit margins that are three times higher than low scoring companies (Towers Watson).

An example of how engaged employees can impact the bottom can be seen in Lululemon which reported a near 50% jump in profit in Q2 of this year and saw revenue soar to nearly $283M, an increase of 33 per cent over Q2 2011.

Whether you run a business, lead a team or manage a group of staff, here are  7 simple yet powerful things that you can do to get the most out of your staff.

Share and engage

I am always amazed by how little employees know of their company’s strategy and purpose. Engage with your people so that they know where your organisation is heading and the ways in which you intend to get there. Tell them how the business is performing in the competitive environment, what changes and developments are afoot. Don’t let them guess!

The more you share, the more valued your employees will feel and will develop a better connection with the business. Help them to see the bigger picture and how their roles contribute to this and the bottom line. Show them the link between their daily efforts and how this contributes to the success of the organisation.

Listen

It is impossible to demonstrate good leadership without listening. Listening builds rapport, trust, better relationships and connectedness.

Your people’s feelings and opinions are as important as yours. Give them the time, space and opportunity to express them. It demonstrates that you value what they say and that they have a voice which is heard. You may not agree with what is being said and will have shown that you value their perspectives.

When staff members have a say, come up with ideas, suggestions and solutions, they will have a vested interest in how these are being used and implemented. This creates a sense of ‘buy in’, shared ownership and engagement with the business.

Practice everyday leadership

Leadership is everywhere around us and is embedded in our daily lives and makes us who we are. It exists in the context of our relationships and interactions with others. Every meeting that you have, staff that you engage with, customers that you speak with are all ways of demonstrating your leadership.

Are you seeing the same behaviours and actions in your staff? You are only leading if others choose to follow and if they are not following you, you may need to look in the mirror and ask what you need to do differently?

Treat each person as an individual

Get to know your staff or team on an individual level. Find out what makes them tick, where their interests and strengths lie and use them for mutual benefits and to maximise potential.

This can be as simple as chatting with them over lunch or a coffee in the staff canteen or even better, take them out for a coffee, away from the office environment and get to know them.

No time? That is another way of saying that this is not a priority or important to me. Just as you make the time to build connections and relationships with your external networks, find the time to do the same with your internal networks and people

Develop your people

Training and development budgets are often the first to be cut in times of an economic dip which is ironic as this is the time when effective leadership, innovation, team work and good customer service are required.

If you cannot afford to send your staff on relevant and appropriate training courses or invest in coaching or development activities, look for new and innovative ways of developing skills and learning.

This could be interventions such as  work shadowing, mentoring , use of free online resources, knowledge exchange in a lunch and learn session, using an action learning approach to solve organisation problems by bring people from different departments or areas together to work on an issue…

Give timely feedback

Feedback on progress helps to spur people on. Give positive and focused feedback all the time. Do it immediately as it reinforces the behaviour you want to see. Focus on specifics and describe the behaviour and its impact. When giving negative feedback ask the team member to assess himself. Get him to diagnose where he went wrong and what he would do differently next time.

Reward  Recognise  Praise

Recognising and genuinely praising staff for their effort and their contribution goes a long in making staff feel valued and appreciated. Rewarding staff for good work does not need to be cheesy nor expensive. Some sincere words, a card with a well written note, a bottle of wine, cinema tickets, fish and chips lunch … are all inexpensive ways of showing that you value the contribution that they make.

What would you add? How do you engage and get the best out of your team, staff, people?

This article was published in the Yorkshire Times on the 19 Nov.

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Vera is a professional coach (MA in Coaching & Mentoring) helping people to progress, make successful changes, be better leaders and communicators, improve performance and team working. She specialises in working with leaders, teams and women through a blended approach of individual and team coaching, training, facilitation and action learning