I HAVE always been an adapter. I take pride in doing what I can do to make it easier for the people I work with. It probably helps that I am a people pleaser, and it comes naturally to me to volunteer what I can to make other people’s load easier. I am not being a doormat. I just find that people work easier when they know they are safe with me. It probably also helps that I used to be a teacher, which helped me accept different personalities and temperaments, not to mention talking to parents with different predicaments.
When I became a manager, one of the biggest challenges I faced was keeping my team engaged. Employee engagement is one of the major issues faced by leaders today. It is the discretionary effort put in by an employee that shows their commitment to their deliverables, and dedication to finish more than what was expected. The question of how to make your employees do more than what is required on paper is a balance of sticks and carrots.
As a leader, we can easily get lost in the numbers and think of employees as just statistics. We measure productivity and ensure everybody on the team is efficient and meets their deadlines. Nothing wrong about that. It is actually expected because as leaders, we are charged to be efficient and deliver results. Because of these demands, a leader might face such pitfalls as regarding employees are just statistics and forget that they are also people. There are a number of things I discovered which I can do to improve my team’s engagement without drilling down what is required of them. Here are some of what I have learned.
I learned from previous mentors to think in terms of emotional banks. As you deposit goodwill to your employees, they will do more than what is expected of them even if you don’t ask. You do this by being genuinely interested in their lives.
One of the most unexpected one-on-one discussions I had was with my team member Lisa (not her real name). I noticed she had not been coming in on time, and when she was at work, she seemed to be drawn out and tired. She had not been meeting her deadlines, and it seemed even the quality of her work had become impacted. I decided to talk to her.
In our discussion, we began talking about revisions to her materials and timelines, and I asked her what I could do to help. When I saw that she was distracted, I asked her how she really was—and then she burst out crying. It turned out that her father was in critical condition and her family was having trouble dealing with it financially and emotionally. I set aside our discussion for the meantime and asked her what happened. Between sobs, she told me the trials they had been going through. After that talk, it became easier for her to understand that while we all have personal emergencies, she still also needs the job for her family. It was already enough for her that she was able to share to me her burden. She knew I understood where she was coming from, but she also knew what was expected of her. It became easier talk to her and help her meet her deliverables.
When you show genuine care for employees, it becomes easier for you to ask for help especially during crunch time. Not everyone will have a personal crisis like Lisa, but you can still show you care for them through other means.
One of the most effective methods is bringing food. Filipinos love to eat and my team is no exception. When a project is not yet finished and the team is on the brink of doing overtime, we would buy food as a hint to do overtime—and as a way of acknowledging their efforts. But even if they do not do overtime, I still make it a point to bring food once in a while, because I don’t want them to equate food with overtime. This investment pays off dividends in the end because happy employees make productive employees.
Alongside showing genuine concern, your team also needs to know you’re a human being. Oftentimes as leaders, we project an aura of independence and unyielding seriousness that our people forget we also have emotions. Humanizing yourself to your people does not necessarily mean confiding your darkest secrets. Having lunch or sitting down with them during their breaks is enough to dispel any notion that you only think about the business. It also opens more lines of communication because you get insights into what motivates them. It becomes easier for you to encourage them because you know what drives them. Richard Branson got it right when he said, “Take care of your employees and they’ll take care of your business.”
Taking care of the company also means knowing when to call out team members. Most managers know the principle of “praise in public, correct in private,” which basically means to give people room to save face. In Filipino culture, this is especially important when dealing with our team members. When we talk to them in private, you have to understand that they will not listen to you unless they have a good working relationship with you. They need to understand that you are correcting them for their own good and not to embarrass them. And they will only understand that if they know you mean well. It will help them improve on their own.
But there are also instances when you have to make everyone accountable as a team. When a team member’s work affects the entire team’s deliverables, it becomes a burden for the rest of the team. While you are the leader and the ultimate responsibility rests on you, the other members can share the responsibility. When everyone is willing to help a team member without sacrificing their own deliverables, it becomes easier for the team member to pull his own weight without having to drag everyone down—that is one indicator that your team is engaged.
People do not know how much you know, until they know how much you care. This truism is especially true for leaders. When our team do not see us as leaders who will take care of them, they will eventually look for one. Let us not wait for that to happen. Start talking to your team. You might be surprised what they are willing to do to get the job done.