engagement Archives -

Keep Team Development Momentum Going

by Jani J | 0

You’ve just wrapped up an energizing and motivational day of team development. Now what? How do you keep the momentum going?

Fortunately, there are plenty of opportunities to be purposeful about ongoing team development! Looking for ways to make the most of those opportunities on a regular basis is the key to turning your team into a cohesive, engaged, and collaborative unit. And when you do that, your team members become more competent communicators, problem solvers, decision makers, and innovators. By making team development a priority, you demonstrate that you believe the team is worth investing in. Sustained focus on the team builds on the foundation of trust, communication, and collaboration necessary to achieve peak performance in achieving your organization’s goals.

Here are a couple of ideas to continuously build your group into an effective team:

Include a brief icebreaker activity at the beginning of routine meetings. Even something simple like having everyone share what they were listening to on the way to work that morning can help people feel more connected. Try this activity – it’s easy to do and always energizing! Tailor the questions to make the activity even more relevant to your team and organization.
Plan for more extensive team development interactions at quarterly or six-month intervals to reinforce team values and goals. If your team already meets regularly, set aside time to focus on purposeful team development. You will be amazed at the impact an hour or two of sustained reinforcement will have on the cohesiveness and performance of your team! Here’s an example of a trust-building activity that you might use.

Every step you take is valuable in developing your highly-effective, top-performing team. Team development is a process – it takes ongoing work and commitment. But the outcome is well worth the effort!

What are some of the things you’ve done to develop a peak-performing team? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Capitalize on team strengths –

by Jani J | 0

One tiny lizard in the vastness of nature – and yet an integral part. Being part of a team is like this. Every member of the team is important, each with unique skills and abilities. How can we best capitalize on team strengths?

Think about team that you’ve been a part of. Was there a role you considered less important than others? Imagine for a moment that no one showed up to fulfill that role one day. Would the team be able to function as effectively? On one team you may have a person that has outlandish ideas, one who asks dozens of questions, one who creates a safe environment, one who takes care of all the logistics, one who energizes the group, and one who moves them to action – all work together to make the group highly effective at achieving its goals.

One of the keys to developing a high-achieving team is to learn the strengths of each team member and then find ways to maximize use of those strengths. Doing so benefits both the team as a whole and the individual members, as they have opportunities to further develop their strengths through team efforts.

This goes a long way toward increasing engagement as well. How do you feel when you are working in your areas of strength? Productive? Capable? Confident? Energetic? Focused? Successful? A higher level of engagement means more satisfying work for you and typically a higher level of effort toward achieving team goals. A win for everyone.

Imagine what it’s like to work with a team where everyone has that level of engagement. What kind of highly-effective team experiences have you had?

What motivates us?

by Jani J | 0

Get ready to unlearn what you know about “traditional” methods of motivating people – at work, school, or home. This book by Daniel Pink is another favorite from my bookshelf and a fascinating read about what motivates us, along with the things that demotivate. You may find some of the demotivators surprising – I know I did! For example, rewards and punishments. That’s how we teach behaviors, from childhood to adulthood, and it works, right? Take a closer look and you’ll discover that maybe it doesn’t work as well as you thought.

What Pink helps us understand is the value of intrinsic motivation and how we can encourage it in ourselves and others. Something I found particularly interesting is the impact autonomy has on motivation. We don’t always have a choice in what needs to be done, but humans have an inner drive for autonomy. So the more control we have over a task, the greater our motivation to do it well. I may have a non-negotiable report that needs to be completed each month by the 15^th, but if I can choose things like when and how I will prepare the report, I’ll experience a higher level of satisfaction and motivation, and likely produce a better product.

Pink incorporates recent research in engagement, positive psychology, and Deci and Ryan's Self-Determination Theory to show how our human need for autonomy, mastery, and purpose provide us with an internal drive to succeed.

To Purchase

Team-building’s bad reputation?

by Jani J | 0

Have you seen it? People rolling their eyes when you bring up team-building? Well, maybe not eye-rolling exactly, but perhaps a slight cringe or something else in their body language that says they’re not too keen on the idea. Why is that?

Having had many experiences myself in the team-building arena, I have some theories. I’d have to say first that for me, every one of the actual “team-building” events I’ve participated in was a positive experience at the time. But only a few had any lasting impact. What made the difference? What takes a team-building event from a fun outing or activity to a different level, where it actually results in a team of people moving toward higher functionality and performance? That phrase itself is part of it – “moving toward … functionality and performance.” Because true team development is not a one-shot deal. And while a fun day at the park, beach, golf course – you get the idea – can be an integral part of developing a team, it takes more than that to have a real impact on team dynamics for the long-term.

Think about the team-building events that you may have been part of. Were there clear goals? Did all of the participants understand the goals from the beginning? What kind of follow-up was there to any activities you participated in? Did team members ever talk about their experiences or what they learned?

It takes a skilled facilitator to effectively interact with activity participants so they create meaning from their experiences. Without effective facilitator planning and guidance, a lot of time and money may be spent with no meaningful outcome for the participants or the organization.

A scavenger hunt is a classic example of a team-building activity that is fairly easy to initiate and often incorporated in a conference setting. Have you participated in something like that before? It was probably great fun to work with your team to find and photograph different items. But was your activity designed in a way that maximized engagement and participation; that tied to team and organizational goals from beginning to end; that gave participants an opportunity to gain insights about the way they communicate and interact as a group; that encouraged them to share and make meaning from those insights? These are the kinds of things that can elevate “team-building” to lasting and powerful team development.

What kind of team-building activities have been most effective for you? What made them so?

Friends at work

by Jani J | 2

Yesterday I stopped in at a local chain store to pick up a couple of things. While browsing the shelves, I overheard two employees talking. One of them said, “Remember that question about having a best friend at work – you’re my best friend!” My immediate thought was that they must have recently taken some kind of employee engagement or opinion survey, as one area that’s been shown to influence engagement and job satisfaction is the quality of peer interactions (Harter, Schmidt, Agrawal, & Plowman, 2013; MacLeod & Clarke, 2009).

When paying for my purchase a little while later, I realized what a pleasant experience I’d had shopping at that store. The employees were friendly, helpful, and efficient. No scowling, heavy sighs, or customer-avoidance – those things customers sometimes experience when employees just don’t want to be there. I didn’t give it any more thought at the time, but later connected the dots between these pieces. It’s anecdotal, yes. But here, in a common, everyday interaction, I’d experienced the benefit of doing business with a company that cares about engagement and creates an environment that fosters it.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, research has shown that interpersonal bonds are one of the keys to engagement in the workplace (Fisher, 2013; Tuckman, 1965). While friendships at work have not always been encouraged or even tolerated, those attitudes are (thankfully) changing today. The myth that friendships interfere with getting things done is evaporating – and is rapidly being replaced with a recognition of and appreciation for the value of interpersonal relationships in generating and enhancing group functionality.

Think about a time you’ve been extremely productive at work. How did your interpersonal relationships (dare I say “friendships”?) fit into the picture?

References:

Fisher, D. M. (2013, November 4). Distinguishing between taskwork and teamwork planning in teams: Relations with coordination and interpersonal process. Journal of Applied Psychology, 1-15. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0034625

Harter, J. K., Schmidt, F. L., Agrawal, S., & Plowman, S. K. (2013). The relationship between engagement at work and organizational outcomes (2012 Q12). Retrieved from Gallup website: www.gallup.com

MacLeod, D., & Clarke, N. (2009). Engaging for success: Enhancing performance through employee engagement. Retrieved from Department for business innovation & skills: http://www.bis.gov.uk/files/file52215.pdf

Tuckman, B. W. (1965). Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological bulletin, 63, 384-399. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0022100

What’s the big deal about Engagement??

by Jani J | 0

What is the big deal about engagement? It seems everyone is talking about it. It’s at the heart of nearly every conversation about productivity – and for good reason. Companies spend a considerable amount of money surveying their employees each year to determine how engaged those employees are. Why? Because studies show, again and again, that the level of employee engagement impacts the bottom line, and significantly (Harter, Schmidt, Agrawal, & Plowman, 2013; MacLeod & Clarke, 2009).

Studies such as the Gallup Q12 Meta-Analysis and the MacLeod Re port show correlations between employee engagement and outcomes in areas of:

Customer satisfaction and loyalty
Goal achievement
Safety
Turnover
Employee productivity
Improved working lives of employees

The Gallup Q12 showed that businesses measuring the highest levels of engagement show an 80% probability of achieving above-average performance results. In contrast, the cost of disengagement for US companies is estimated at over $300 billion annually. So, clearly engagement matters. But how does an organization go about creating an engaged workforce? Research has shown that two of the things that influence engagement are whether there is an environment of trust and whether group members are able to function together effectively.

In order to be willing to take risks and invest energy in support of the organization’s goals, people need to be able to trust that their actions won’t be perceived negatively (Schneider, Macey, Barbera, & Young, 2010). When we feel psychologically safe, we are more likely to share our opinions, ideas, or concerns. A trusting, psychologically safe, environment encourages the open exchange of ideas and information and allows problems to surface before they become severe. When we are concerned with being judged it’s easy to become distracted and disengaged as we may be focusing more on what others are thinking than on the task at hand (Kahn, 1990).

Groups that function effectively typically have strong interpersonal bonds. Often these groups are characterized as cohesive. Tuckman’s (1965) model describes the process of a team’s development of connectedness and functionality over time, ranging from the initial stages of group formation to later stages where groups exhibit cohesion and are successful at achieving group goals. At Tuckman’s final stage of performing, interpersonal relationships are a key to successful problem-solving and goal achievement. In my own research, I found that when team members know each others’ strengths and interests, and then aligned tasks accordingly, they were more successful at achieving their goals.

What does engagement look like in your workplace? Do you see these factors at work? Is forming personal relationships with members of the workgroup encouraged or discouraged? Is the environment psychologically safe? How do you think the level of engagement could be improved in your organization? Are there things that you’ve tried or have been thinking about trying? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Also, please join me in the coming weeks to explore more ideas about what it takes for individuals and groups to perform at their best. I’ll also be sharing selections from my bookshelf each Thursday.

References:

Gallup Q12. (2013). https://q12.gallup.com/

Kahn, W. A. (1990). Psychological conditions of personal engagement and disengagement at work. Academy of Management Journal, 33, 692-724. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/256287

Schneider, B., Macey, W. H., Barbera, K. M., & Young, S. A. (2010). The role of trust in understanding employee engagement. In S. L. Albrecht (Ed.), Handbook of employee engagement: Perspectives, issues, research and practice (pp. 159-173). Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc.

Tuckman, B. W. (1965). Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological bulletin, 63, 384-399. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0022100

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