Sometimes leaders wish that they had stronger teams, but how many examine themselves to ascertain how their leadership style impacts their team’s performance?
There are two sides of the high performance team equation. First, managers must exhibit stellar leadership skills to drive employee engagement. Gallup estimates that managers account for at least 70% of variance in employee engagement scores across business units. In a large-scale study, Gallup found that only 30% of employees are engaged at work. Moreover, over the past 12 years, low engagement scores have barely budged.
In addition to employees being engaged with their organization, they must have strong relationships within teams. An effective way to improve employee engagement is to foster relationships in the workplace. Gallup found that close work friendships boost employee satisfaction by a whopping 50%! The goal is not to develop ‘BFF’ relationships amongst employees, rather to strengthen camaraderie, trust and alignment within teams.
Here are three steps to take in order to increase employee engagement and ultimately, team performance.
- Analyze and capitalize on team strengths. Each team member has a unique personality, skill set and life experience. Leaders can capitalize on an employee’s abilities and strengths only after they have analyzed, measured and discussed them with the employee. If someone is a self-starter, but apprehensive to ask for help, this is an area in which the leader can help her employee grow. When Gallup conducted research of more than 47,000 employees, one of twelve items most poorly rated was: “In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress.” Employees want to hear positive encouragement and feedback about their progress, and doing so enables leaders to capitalize on the individual’s abilities while strengthening the overall team.
- Create a competitive spirit that builds cooperation. Strong teams are composed of positive bonds between team members wherein cooperation comes naturally. In addition, team members feel more comfortable collaborating, taking initiative, dealing with change and inspiring others. Leaders who, ‘Ask questions instead of giving orders,’ which is Dale Carnegie’s 25th leadership principle and, ‘Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly,’ which is the 23rd principle, reinforce these relationship bonds because they demonstrate respect for the employee who in turn will respect and cooperate with other team members.
- Walk the talk. Dale Carnegie’s 28th leadership principle, ‘Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to,’ underscores that it is critical that leaders model correct behavior. If employees don’t believe that their leader acts with integrity and is enthusiastic about the task at hand, why should they be?
Often times, people are promoted to leadership positions based on their tenure and work experience—not because they have leadership skills. Fortunately, leadership skills can be learned to enable leaders to drive a team’s overall performance. Whether you are an emerging leader or a seasoned executive, consider enrolling in the free, two-hour Leading High Performance Teams workshop to take your team to the next level.