Engaging Leadership

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Leadership is about enabling full potential in others. It’s about allowing employees to be their authentic selves so they can leverage their strengths and unique perspectives. Employees like to feel valued and appreciated and an engaging leader does just that by appreciating the previously done tasks by the employee and adding on more challenges.

Here are some ways of keeping employees engaged:

1. Be true to your word: Leaders who play mind games lose the confidence of their employees. Employees who are old and are new to the organisation seek help from the seniors as they do not know whom to trust and rely upon within the organisation. It is very important to place priority on the employee’s career and consistently guide them and be true to your own word without playing any sort of mind games. Leaders who encourage learning and team bonding among team members see an exponential growth in the performance of all the team members and there is an affinity and liking towards the leader.
2. Giving responsibility to empower: When employees are placed in roles of position and responsibility it causes greater impact on the performance of the employee. Employees feel most engaged when they feel a sense of responsibility. Delegating important tasks and trusting employees that they will be able to do it makes them feel more confident in themselves and strive to achieve more to make their bosses happy. They also learn things faster and become an integral part of the organisation. But, this requires the leader to be very patient and compassionate towards the employee as he is likely to make mistakes and seek advice again and again.

• Extending the table: It is very essential for a good leader to share the visions and goals of the company with his employees. This encourages active participation from employees and not just doing the work for their paycheck. Employees get more engaged when they realise the part their role has to play at the greater level. Extending your table in terms of including them in the whereabouts of the company helps gain better interest and makes the employee feel important. An honest and sincere appreciation and inclusion from the senior goes a long way. Because as the saying goes people leave people and people work with people as people don’t stay in a company just because of the payment but instead they stay because they like the work culture and most importantly like their colleagues.

• Prioritising organisational health: Effective Leadership includes prioritising organisational health by innovation and talent management. It is very important to provide opportunities for growth to all the employees under the leadership of the individual. Inspiring and motivating people is equally required as employees lose their motivation and get disheartened on not achieving what they want. This affects their performance and curtails their daily job, so it is very essential to keep inspiring and motivating employees time and again by giving them time and attention. It is very important for the leader to maintain a positive environment which brings greater psychological capital i.e self-efficacy, resilience and flexibility.
• Measuring and rewarding engagement of Employees: Highly engaged employees who work against the clock should be rewarded which acts as a reinforcement encouraging engaging behaviours and higher productivity, passion and dedication towards work.

Everybody loves receiving recognition for their work, especially when they have invested a lot of time and effort into a project. In ideal scenarios, an organisation’s employees should receive some form of acknowledgement; the frequency should be at least once a week — and it is not necessary that it should come from senior management. If anything, peer to peer recognition is equally rewarding. Asking an organisation’s employees how often they are receiving recognition, or if they think they are likely to receive recognition is a great way of understanding how they feel about their position within a company. If a company owner wants to grow a culture of recognition and reward, an employee engagement platform is an easy way of encouraging this.

When employees feel autonomous, competent and connected to their peers and co-workers and when they experience that their work is meaningful, they are less likely to suffer from job stress and can tap better into job resources. This energises them and boosts their work engagement. This results in an impact that is beneficial on their job performance, which includes learning ability and innovativeness. On top of that, it appears that the more the basic needs are satisfied, the fewer burnout and boredom at work is experienced. Importantly, engaging leaders affect not only individual employees but the entire team, as they help the team to function better by increasing team resources, thereby fueling a collective sense of team engagement that in turn leads to better team performance. Engaging team leaders also enhance the positive effect of the organisation’s HR policies on the well-being and performance of employees. In that sense, engaging leaders are a crucial link between top management and the shopfloor.