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Design For Ease of Use with Lean CX – Leadership Card 12
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Checking In To Increase Engagement
Imagine if you had a spouse who you loved very much, but you were not allowed to speak to them? You couldn’t check in to see how they were doing, ask how their day was, ask what was troubling them or what brought them happiness in the moment. Chances are, it wouldn’t be much of a relationship, would it?
Checking in regularly with someone let’s them know that you’re important to them. It helps you know how they are doing, and it helps you know if you are on the same path together or on a different planet completely. Just the simple act of checking in can bring you back together or help adjust slightly when you need to.
And it’s the same for your team.
Checking in regularly, at least once a week, to see how each team mate is doing has been proven to increase employee engagement by up to 27%, especially when you treat it like any good relationship, and focus on doing more of what’s right – in this case, focusing on the strengths they bring to the role.
Improving Strengths Gives Greater Rewards
Almost every successful entrepreneur will tell you: Focus on improving your strengths, not your weaknesses. Improving your weaknesses will make you mediocre at best, while improving your strengths can make you absolutely world class.
It’s the same with your team. By focusing on their strengths not only will you get better results and rewards, but you’ll be doing what is necessary for a happy team too.
It’s Just Like A Flight Plan
In the same way that a pilot will have a goal destination in mind before taking off, and then need to adjust their course along the way to get there safe and sound, checking in with your team allows you to see how you are doing and adjust if you need to.
Seeing as most managers don’t have a clear objective (51%) and few check in regularly with their team against those objectives, doing this can have some very serious results and improve things in a lot of different areas.
Having that clarity of what to do and how they are tracking against it really makes sense when you think about it. Simply muddling along with no real meaning will absolutely reduce someone’s drive and happiness, and affect your results too.
So check in with your team members regularly, at least once a week, see how they are doing against your clear objective and clear path to get there, and focus the work you give them on their strengths, not yours. You will see some astounding things begin to happen.
Chat soon – David Mclachlan
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