We don’t have enough leaders who are effectively engaged with their employees. That is the primary reason why ‘employee engagement’ remains a hot topic.
How can you expect employees to be engaged in their work if their leaders aren’t effectively engaged with them?
Most leaders are very busy. Strategy meetings; studying spreadsheets; spinning sound bites; self-imposed slavery – fuelled by the demand for micro, macro and metadata analysis made accessible by technology.
Smart engaged leaders have a routine that ensures they stay effectively engaged with their direct reports, and ensure that the routine flows outwards to their direct reports’ next line.
Their routine is based around asking seven questions on a regular basis, and tracking the answers.
The people providing the answers know that the questions will be asked and are prepared with supporting evidence.
Here are the seven questions that the individual leader adapts to suit his and the direct reports’ needs and circumstance:
- How are you going? - Aimed as a general and opening question to rapidly establish rapport.
- What have you achieved since we last met? - To see what has occurred as planned.
- What will you achieve between now and the next time we meet? - To establish the immediate plan.
- What technical or operational issues do you face and what’s your suggested solution?
- What people issues do you face (including if any with me) and what’s your suggested solution?
- What resources do you need for your next steps that you haven’t got?
- What can I personally do for you? - To demonstrate and deliver care and to conclude the session.
By tracking these regular conversations and using them as a basis for coaching by the leader, effective engagement is established; the leader’s knowledge of what’s happening is current; and performance mastery develops, all easily and naturally.
Performance reviews of the annual kind become redundant, as do the usual tensions felt by both the person being reviewed and the leader/supervisor.
How easy would it be to start using these questions?
How could it improve the workplace?
