How to Keep Your Managers Engaged

Engagement is a buzzword right now and continues to be an important driving force for creating teams of excellence. As a leader or manager you must walk the talk of your expectations.

What do you do to demonstrate engagement?

This is part 4 of the 4-part series on Optimizing Your Management Team by Diana Gabriel, Certified Strengths Strategy Coach.

Leaders who optimize their management team find sustainable success and satisfaction in ways that outshine all other strategies. Click To Tweet

Keeping your management team highly engaged is an important aspect of optimization. You, as the leader or manager, cannot expect engagement from others unless you are engaged. Vipula Gandhi sites a significant Gallup finding in the 2018 article, Want to Improve Productivity? Hire Better Managers: 85% of employees are not engaged at their jobs. This translates into dire challenges for you as a leader. As I wrote in an earlier post, if 70% of employee attitudes are impacted by their leaders and managers, then it’s clear that as a leader or manager your engagement is critical.

Few leaders recognize this. Of those who do, many struggle with motivating engagement in others. You need to understand what motivates engagement in your people. The same applies for managers. Everyone wants to be a part of something great. We want purpose, enjoyable relationships, the ability to succeed, and recognition for our achievements. The degree of this desire may be different for leaders, managers, or their people, but similar nonetheless.

Your managers desire opportunity for growth, both personally and corporately. Provide a path for them to achieve it by laying out plans to groom managers for advancement.  This can include challenging projects that call for higher levels of responsibility, technical skills and/or people skills. Experience with overcoming challenges empowers and builds capacity in managers. Cross training is another way to enhance the skills of managers, and leads many to experience a greater appreciation for their organization.

Managers raise their engagement by being informed and included in leadership matters. Let them in on executive plans and visions, and invite participation in activities that are normally above their level. This helps managers feel valued, appreciated, and again, builds their capacity as leaders. With insight from the working end of the operation, they can bring additional perspectives to leadership discussions. Opportunities to create and deliver presentations to higher-level leadership and other departments also increases motivation and gives managers a sense that they have much at stake in their careers.

Make manager and people engagement a priority by including it in performance evaluations. 360 evaluations are most effective, like The Leadership Circle 360 assessment that incorporates anonymous feedback from all levels, including supervisors, colleagues, employees, and customers. See how people really view the manager’s engagement.

Leaders who optimize their management team find sustainable success and satisfaction in ways that outshine all other strategies. Your people with the best managers have the best experiences and the best futures.

How do you pay attention to your engagement? How do you keep your managers engaged? I’d love to hear from you. You can reach me here and on LinkedIn.