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Engaging the Heart of Your Team
by Lee J. Colan
(This report is an excerpt from “Passionate Performance".)
Engaging the heart tends to be more challenging for leaders than engaging the mind. It’s the softer side of leadership, and it’s harder to get your hands around. Traditional leadership development programs don’t emphasize the skills necessary to engage employees’ hearts. As a result, many leaders tend to be less comfortable with this side of engagement because they simply have never learned how or what to do. Since emotional engagement creates an advantage that is very difficult for your competitors to duplicate, it’s worth learning to do well.
The heart represents the emotional side of people that is based on connections. Engaging the heart creates passion. This side requires the art of leadership that focuses on relationships.
We live in a world driven by emotional decisions. Seventy percent of customers’ buying decisions are based on human interactions. Likewise, employees are primarily driven by emotional and personal considerations. When people go to work, they don’t leave their hearts at home. We may live in a high-tech world, but leadership is still a high-touch job.
How often do you hear people speak with envy about companies with “real heart”? Companies like The Container Store, Southwest Airlines, Harley-Davidson, Enterprise Rent-A-Car and Chick-fil-A, to name a few? Outsiders are constantly looking for their “secrets” to success. The secret lies in the hearts of their employees. These companies created connected teams and as a result built dominant businesses.
One of the best strategies to create connections with your team and engage their hearts is to demonstrate your appreciation for them. Aside form the fact that it is the right thing to do, there is a practical reason to do this: we do more for those who appreciate us.
Create Defining Moments
Demonstrating your appreciation for your employees and their efforts can put them on the fast track to ownership behavior. There should be plenty of opportunities since a Harris poll found that 65 percent of the workers reported receiving no recognition for good work in the past year!
Look for moments to acknowledge your team’s efforts and results. This is basic psychology – reinforce those behaviors that you want to see more frequently. Catch them doing something right … and do it often!
Research by the former chairman of Gallup, Donald Clifton, revealed workgroups with at least a 3-to-1 ratio of positive to negative interactions were significantly more productive than those having less than a 3-to-1 ratio. (The same study showed the key ratio for marriages was 5-to-1.) What is the ratio for your team?
Consider tracking your team’s ratio for a week to gauge how well you are appreciating your employees. Don’t worry about showing too much appreciation… as long as it is sincere and meaningful. To date, there are no documented cases of employees feeling over-appreciated!
The good news is that you have complete control over this type of appreciation. No budget limitations or excuses here – there are literally thousands of ways to create defining moments at little or no cost. Here are a few:
Say “Thank You!” (an all-too-obvious yet highly underused form of appreciation.) Allow employees to present their work to your boss. This is a great way to engage employees, and it also shows your boss what kind of leader you are. Offer team members a choice of projects to work on. When employees buy into a project, they will put their hearts into it. Put a sincere acknowledgement in your company or department newsletter. This takes only a few minutes of your time, but creates long-term “trophy value” for the employee. Tell an employee’s story of accomplishment at a staff meeting. Stories are perceived as more interesting, meaningful, thoughtful and memorable. Take a team member to lunch to show your appreciation. Remember to do more listening than talking.
Defining moments also become key stories that comprise your team’s biography – these moments create a rich folklore that is passed on and reinforces your team’s culture of accountability and performance.
Know the People behind your Employees
Appreciate your people, not just their contributions. Learn something new each day about one of your employees. Ask them about their families, hobbies, leisure activities, etc. Then weave this information into your interactions with them. They will return your appreciation with discretionary effort – withpassionate performance.
After an extensive three-year study of the critical variables for leadership success, the Center for Creative Leadership concluded that the only statistically significant factor differentiating the very best leaders from mediocre ones is caring. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. This particularly holds true for employees and their leaders.
Show your team you care by staying plugged in to them. Today’s technology offers many options – Blackberries, pagers, cell phone text messages, instant messaging, voice mail, e-mail. Be cautious of overuse of these communication options – they might cause a power outage instead of a power exchange.
With all of these technology options, it’s easy to find ourselves too busy for face-to-face interaction, but that’s one of the best ways to charge up our teams. We work in a high-tech world, but leadership is still a high-touch job.
Regardless of which communication channels you use, being accessible to them is the key to staying plugged in. Demonstrating that you are available to help your team be successful is quickly exchanged for discretionary effort on their part.
Know your people, not just your employees. You will begin to understand them more fully and be able to more effectively express your appreciation … and sustain their ownership behavior!
When it comes to showing your team that your value and appreciate them, I am reminded of an anonymous quote, "People will forget what you said. They will even forget what you did. But they will never forget how you made them feel."
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To will help you engage the minds and heart of your team… and conquer the competition, attend the Passionate Performance leadership experience.
Are you an Engaging Leader? Take the Passionate Performance on-line profile to find out.
Copyright © 2007 by Lee J. Colan
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