6 Steps to Engaged Leadership
Whether you are arranging your own life for success, or rallying the
energy and enthusiasm of a team, it is important that you and your team are
fully engaged in the process. According
to Wikipedia, Engage means: 1. occupy or attract
(someone's interest or attention). 2.
Participate or become involved in and
3. (With reference to a part of a machine or engine) move into position
so as to come into operation.
As a leader focused on
achievement of a vision, you will require yourself and your team members to be
interested in the vision, you will require them to participate or be involved
in the active achievement of the vision by moving into an operational position
that will make them fruitful. Engaging people is no easy task as approximately
77% of people are disengaged from their own lives and careers. Getting people
interested and involved is the single hardest task for a leader that never
stops. The six steps to Engaged Leadership is a looped process that will allow
the leader to continually develop his or her own engagement and that of the
team.
The Six Steps to engaged
leadership include:
1. Evaluate: Functioning blind is of no
benefit to any leader. Know where you have come from, know who you are
and know where you want to go! These are the 3 K’s of successful evaluation.
Evaluate yourself, your vision and the team. What should you evaluate?
a. Evaluate
who you are: Know who you are, know your
communication style, know your strengths and weaknesses, and know your values. Be
able to identify when and how you need help. Being a leader doesn’t mean you
must do all the work, it means that you know when to let go and recruit help.
Leaders are learners, and part of that learning is discovering your own
identity and abilities.
b. Evaluate
your vision: Know your vision. Put it through its paces. Know it inside and
out. This intimate knowledge will allow you to sell it to your team with
passion and confidence. Few things get engagement like passion.
c. Evaluate
your Mission. Are you going about achieving your vision in the right way? Don’t
be afraid to make adjustments to mission and goals in order to smooth the path
to success.
d. Evaluate
your team members. Know who they are. Evaluate what they bring to the team.
Know their strengths and weakness, communication style and values. Know how to
inspire each person in your team.
Even though Evaluate is Step 1
in the process, it is important to evaluate frequently, all through the
process, even in the middle of other steps. Effective evaluation will give you
important insights and feedback about progress. Constantly evaluate if you and
your teams efforts are still aligned to the vision. Few things destroy
engagement like wasted effort.
2.
Enlist: If
you are working on your own engagement, you need to recruit your own abilities
and efforts in order to achieve your desired goal. If you are working with a
team, you will have to recruit team members, you will have to evoke their commitment
to the cause. As a trainer and lecturer, a friend with many years of experience
gets course participants and students to sign a Declaration of Commitment at
the start of each course. He uses this Declaration to enlist people’s efforts
and focus onto the course. When people are tired or without motivation and
distracted, he reminds them of the Declaration of Commitment.
Commitment is the sense of responsibility that kicks in when the novelty
of a new opportunity or the excitement disappears. Commitment says ‘I have
bought into the process and will complete it no matter what the cost.’ My
lecturer friend says he gets their buy-in to commitment at the start of the
course when energy levels are still high, as it is impossible to get buy-in
when energy is gone. He then simply reminds them of their commitment by getting
them to look at it again. As a leader you want to enlist your own commitment
and that of the team as soon as possible.
3. Equip:
During the evaluation step, you will uncover weaknesses that need to be
addressed. These weaknesses may be lack of skills needed to achieve the vision.
It may be a lack of resources. The equipping phase is to make sure you, your
team, have everything needed for a successful outcome. As the leader, it is
your duty to ensure that all the resources required are provided. If you are
engaging in your own life, equipping yourself is vital.
Knowledge, skills and abilities
is an investment, whether you are gaining them for yourself, or imparting them
to your team members. The greatest investment a leader can make is to equip team
members or him/herlself. Here is a small
list of universally required skills to train and equip yourself with:
a. Self
Awareness
b. Communication
c. Collecting,
Sorting, Analyzing and using Information
d. Working
in a Team
e. Understand
and use Science and Technology
f.
Organising
and Managing Oneself
g. Cultural and Aesthetic Awareness and
Appreciation
h. Understanding the World as a set of
related systems
4.
Enthuse: Raise the energy levels. Get people
excited about the vision. Your team needs to start as a group (See Group Vs Team), by sharing a common passion. Inspire people to achieve. Tickle their interest
by expanding on the value of the interest. Elaborate on what is in it for them –
what will they gain, how will they be rewarded at the end of the journey.
Inspiring people with no internal
motivation is difficult. Connecting people to values shared with the leader or
with the vision is easier. Use this intrinsic motivation generated by values to
inspire and energise yourself or your team. Be aware, you want energy levels
raised before the hard work begins, to help carry the team through difficult
times.
5.
Effort: Success is not easy and does not appear
by chance. If this was the case, more people would be successful. Achieving
goals and dreams takes work! There, I said the four-lettered word of success –
WORK!
Have goals set to achieve that
provide quick feedback on route to accomplishing the vision. Breaking the work
up in smaller chunks allows opportunity for feedback and evaluation. You want
to be sure you are on the right path. You are going to have to put the effort
in. You will be required to make some sacrifices along the way. You may be
required to put long hours in to achieve your dream. Surely the outcome is
worth the effort?
This step is often overlooked by
leaders to their own peril. Reflection and Recognition Ceremonies are important
to build the confidence of the team and the leader. It is also a powerful way
in which to validate team members’ efforts (See 5 Key Principles a Leader Should Know) and will evoke engagement for future visions and plans. Eliciting engagement is one of those draining and ever ending tasks a leader must carry out. However, when successfully carried out, engagement is the most rewarding task a leader can be involved in. Sure, you are fighting the odds considering so few people are engaged in their own lives, not to mention in their careers, but when the recipe works, and you as leader stand at the Reflection and Recognition party, knowing people have been equipped, people have connected with their potential, knowing people have achieved – it is all worth the effort. Engagement is the greatest effort, and the greatest reward of leadership.
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