Are you interested in making an impact on 76% of your team today?  How about growing your earnings per share by a factor of 4?   I am betting those two ideas grabbed your attention as much as they grabbed mine!

In today’s modern world of highly distributed work, a team gaining strategic alignment is more critical than ever.   As a leader, your primary responsibility is to set a clear strategy, align your team and then drive the team to achieve those results.   In most businesses today, many things compete with those messages and dilute your team’s focus.  Your ability to quickly and clearly communicate with your team is one of easiest ways to enable your results.

Gallup reported in their 2018 employee engagement poll that 34% of workers today said they feel engaged and valued at work.   These are great numbers and represent some of the highest employee engagement ever reported but what about the other 76% of the team?   How do we get to them and help them connect with the company?

And if your looking for the business case to drive communications and employee engagement, that same poll also reported that organizations who rank highest in employee engagement are also achieving earnings-per-share growth that is 4 times that of their peers.

While driving engagement is a topic of many other posts, I want to take a different look at the issue.   How does your communications systems impact engagement and more importantly, how do you drive results?

Hooking Disengaged Employees

Being the leader

Your job as a leader is to have a strategy, create the steps and tasks to implement, align the team around those tasks and then enable the results.   I am always taken back to a CEO who I  was working with who asked me to not talk about the company’s strategic top 4 initiatives or the company org charts with employees.   He thought it would be confusing and people should just work on their own assignments and leave the top strategies to the leadership team.   People on that team were never able to get a clear understanding of where the company was heading and what their role in that journey was.

In a sharp contrast to that interaction, I was working with another CEO as he established a turn around strategy.   We based the rollout of the turn-around strategy on the concept of “Transparent, Open, Honest communications”.   The team has taken to the strategy and while it is still early in the process, the team understands the top 5 initiatives.   They are the basis for everything the team does.   In fact, employees say this is the first-time they’ve felt  like they are working on something as opposed to for someone.

DOWNLOAD:  The Future of Work and HR

People genuinely want to do a good job.    They care and will work very hard.   It is key that they understand the strategy, can see the steps and know how their efforts today will drive the company results.   It is also key to be transparent about wins and losses with your team.  Help people understand what needs to be done and what specifically you need them to do.   Then show them results, hold them accountable and reward them for wins!

The bottom line is your company culture will reflect how well you communicate.  If you are open, transparent, professional but fun, the team will be comfortable acting that way.   If you think your team is stiff, guarded and cautious, you need to look at your communications strategy first.

I would love to hear your thought on this in the comments below and as always, let me know what you are interested in reading here.