Activate your engagement Super-Powers

Connection is at the core of being a leader.

Whether you are in retail, financial services, tech or construction, the connection you have with your employees significantly impacts or benefits your success.

Deeper connections improve communication and results. Therefore, I put connection as the first step towards high engagement.

Connection is the understanding and empathy by a leader that leads to alignment between them and their employees. This in turn creates employee effort and business results.

The ability of leaders to understand teams and build rapport is fundamental to motivating them towards goals or a vision. Connecting is a crucial aspect of leadership communication.

If you can’t communicate, I’m sorry but you simply can’t lead.

Activate your Engagement Super-Powers

You don’t need to put on a disguise and go all Undercover Boss to get to know your team better. Every leader has a set Engagement Super-Powers. These enable leaders to fast track connection by understanding employees better. These help leaders to build trust and impact.

Engagement Super-Powers and how to use them:

• Thinking: consider what information employees need to succeed
• Listening: seek employee views, feedback and ideas
• Feeling: imagine how employees feel and the reasons for this
• Tasting: get close to employees and sample their world
• Speaking: explain the team direction and needs of the business
• Giving: give employees feedback, recognition and time.

Collectively these give leaders priceless insights into their team. They allow managers to tailor how to lead and communicate, making their impact and results much more powerful.

Using the super-powers will grow a leaders emotional intelligence: now recognised as a vital skill for effective leadership. By spending more time with employees, leaders grow to understand and recognise their emotional state. This is vital, as emotions convey information, prompts and clues about what is really going on in a team or business.

Understanding your team more will improve how you connect with others, build your confidence and grow trust in you as a leader. As your connection and communication improves, so does your impact and results.

Engagement is connection

And don’t just take my word for it. Daniel Goleman, global authority on leadership and emotional intelligence says “above all, engagement comes down to human connection” which is why using your Super-Powers really matters.

Empathetic leaders communicate better as they can read the emotional landscape of their team. They listen and understand employees. The insights they gain increase the impact of their communication, cranking up team productivity.

A few years ago I looked after my 8-year-old niece for the day. My family said she was an “easy child”, “no trouble” they said. But my experience was different.

I hadn’t spent much time with her previously, so I didn’t know her preferences. I couldn’t predict her responses. I offered her lollies and a trip to the movies to get her to go along with my plans for our day. This bombed and she refused to go.

I should have invested more time asking what she wanted to do and listening to her. Then I would have known she was (and still is) obsessed with going to stables and spending time with horses in mud.

If you want to increase your results, get to know your team by switching on your engagement Super-Powers. Grow your connection and results.

Read Three challenges for high engagement