3 Ways to Engage Your Team

Being a leader is much more than simply being the boss. One of the most important qualities of a good leader is the ability to engage their employees. How you lead impacts both your staff and the business. As a leader, your goal is to have a team that is able to follow direction and use company processes and procedures with effective results. A leader lacking the ability to inspire and motivate will have low-achieving staff. Not only will business suffer but an entire group of people will fail more often than succeed with deadlines, sales and project completions. 

Here are three leadership strategies that will keep your team engaged and focused on success.

1. Be Clear With Your Communication

No leader can be effective without first being able to give clear direction. Giving partial or unclear direction is like expecting your staff to know what is needed by telepathy.  It leads to frustration, guesswork and costly time-consuming do-overs. Don’t wait for your team members to point this out to you, via their numerous “I am clearly lost here” questions. Cross check your instructions before holding that meeting or sending that email.

2. Be Open To Innovation

Be different. Find a better way of doing things and open up new opportunities by seeing things from a perspective not visited before. The creation of new solutions can benefit business by meeting and exceeding requirements and accomplishing more. Innovation is also on par with efficiency and should be encouraged with others. Being the leader doesn’t mean you’re the only one with ideas. That kind of thinking squashes creativity among the staff and hinders business in the long run. Consider and accept creative suggestions from your staff and challenge them to find solutions to problems. Sometimes a few thoughts outside the trusty box of ideas is all you need to accomplish more than you thought possible.

3. Have a Positive Attitude

It’s quite easy to become wrapped up in the day-to-day work and lose overall focus. It’s even easier to be negative rather than positive when things get tough. One thing trusted, effective and well-liked leaders have in common is a positive attitude.  When sales or productivity are down, a cranky boss isn’t likely to help much. Remember, as a leader, it’s your energy and attitude that filter down to everyone else. When you’re defeated or angry, everyone else will be as well. If you choose instead to display a can-do attitude and encourage, rather than tear down, your inspirational energy becomes contagious.

No matter how long you’ve held a leadership role, or how many qualifications obtained, there is always more to learn.  If you’re willing to grab the opportunities that come your way with both hands, while implementing the above advice, you’ll be the kind of inspirational leader everyone admires and appreciates.  Your business will flourish as your team’s achievements rack up and failures are few and far between.