It is our responsibility

“Leaders own the job of creating engagement”

– Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic; Professor of Business Psychology at University College London, Columbia University faculty

This should not be new to any leader: it is our responsibility, often our main one, to ensure that the workplace is a thriving environment composed of individuals with high morale and engagement. Unfortunately, many leaders have forgotten that this responsibility lies entirely with them, assigned it to someone else, or believed it was a separate matter. When you are the leader, it is your responsibility to keep the team going, determine how they will sustain that momentum, and create the environment that facilitates that growth. While it may seem like a shared responsibility, the sole responsibility lies with the person at the top. There are too many examples of leaders ignoring this responsibility and the resulting downfall of their companies.

This is what you want to do:

• Create a culture thriving off cooperation and mutual engagement

•  Encourage collective thinking and brainstorming

• Celebrate team accomplishments openly

• Unify diverse teams

But first, you need to fully develop your vision as a leader and clarify where you see the company going. Decide what the company's objective and goal are and how, as a unified team, they will be achieved. Ensure that everyone understands the difference between the objective (the shorter-term, measurable actions used to achieve the overall goal) and the goal (the achievable outcome, broad and longer-term). The next step is to create a timeline for each stage of progress toward the objective and goal. The key to remember here is that the overall goal is to create a positive work environment for the long haul, not to appease in the short term.

Your next step will be to clearly communicate the developed vision and your expectations to the team, something leaders often fail to do. I have seen this aspect of creating a good environment fail when a leader understood the vision and communicated it but did not consider how it would be perceived. Leaders should communicate the vision and timeline expectations at the beginning. These items should always be revisited and reiterated at regular intervals. If your team is not delivering, you need to look at your leadership and how it delivers information – communication should always be clear, consistent, and concise.

Important to remember about communication:

• Team culture may appear difficult to change once established, but it CAN be changed through effective communication

• NEVER assume that everyone is on the same page; just as individuals learn differently, they perceive and receive communication differently

• Always clearly state expectations

• State or spell out non-negotiable items

• Team culture is based on what is emphasized and ignored – if you accept poor workplace behavior by doing nothing to counter it, and if you are silent about it, you are complicit in keeping it going; also, if you are unaware of negative workplace behavior, you are still helping it flourish.

The third step is to foster a ‘team-first’ environment. I believe that in many Westernized societies, emphasis is placed on individuality rather than the collective. In my view, this should be changed to ‘collective – then – individual.’ No one is self-made. There is, and always will be, a collective group of people who help others get to where they are in terms of work and success. Especially in American society, the praise of self-made individuals needs to stop. You are the leader because a group of people decided that you should be. You are the leader because of the efforts of many teachers, parents, support groups, classmates, and mentors – see how big this list is getting. Therefore, as leaders, we need to see the team first as the whole entity, then as individuals. As leaders, we should also ensure the team understands this view. Team members need to understand and be acknowledged as part of the bigger entity.

Leaders should make the following a daily practice:

· Ensure that daily language, thinking, and communication are grounded in the team's perspective

· Ensure that everyone knows their responsibilities and the importance of their contributions to the team; team members should also be able to communicate their responsibilities and roles

· Remember that all team members need to share common workplace values, drivers, and motives, and genuine care for one another as co-workers

· Understand that fostering genuine care among team members will encourage them to raise their performance for one another

· Focus on the team's successes and functioning

The fourth step is to develop and establish agreed-upon operating principles as a team. This sets the workplace rules, guidelines, values, objectives, and goals. Ensure the operating principles are behavioral and tactical, and that they provide specific direction for actions. The team, including the leader, also needs to create an agreed-upon system of accountability. This could be a routine monthly audit of processes, goals, and related areas. It is vital to remember the following points about operating principles:

·         It needs to be included in the agendas

·         Needs set reminders

·         Needs to be reiterated

·         For board postings, all team members, including leadership, need visible signage for everyone and consistent revisits and revisions

The last step is acceptance. Leaders have to accept that they won’t have a team composed entirely of Level-A team members. I explained ‘Level A and B’ team members in my previous Leadership Blog post; please visit for further details. Unlike your school grades, your team members’ abilities at work are not under your control. When mentoring and coaching, be aware of and acknowledge the strengths of your Level-B team members, as they are an invaluable part of the company as a whole. As leaders, it is part of the job to recognize and understand that our teams are comprised of individuals with different strengths. We need to appreciate how they complement each other. Leaders need to assemble, organize, and direct these strengths into effective components that keep the collective growing, thriving, and flourishing, because it is our responsibility.

By Nick Higgins