How do you know if someone is engaged?
What makes someone on a team more engaged than anyone else? An engaged team member is passionate about their job, they will do what it takes to get things done and they are committed to the organization. They are motivated from within and have a growth mindset. They love to learn new things and know that they will figure out what they don’t know.
What if you have someone who isn’t engaged though? They may come to the team with a fixed mindset. It can be a challenge for them to see past the limiting beliefs that they have and they may be more skeptical about what is happening. They don’t believe that things can change or that things will get better, so they accept things as they are.
What is the Leader’s Role?
Your role as the leader is to help them break through those limiting beliefs and see what is possible. Find ways to help them see that these beliefs are just old stories in their head and they can change them at any time. What can help is if you share your own stories where you have been skeptical and how that shifted for you. Stories are one of the most powerful ways to engage a team. They need to know that they can do something different by seeing themselves in your story.
Teams need to deliver results, but that won’t happen if you don’t have an engaged team. Think about the leaders that you have had and how they kept you engaged. What lessons can you take from those experiences and apply to your current team? What does your team need from you to be more engaged? How can you change things up to motivate them differently? Imagine what is possible. This is a time to get creative and think out of the box to drive strong engagement with your team.