Engaging your Team: Part 2
Friday, July 2, 2010 at 3:17PM Leaders want engagement from their teams because it leads to more active participation, increased ownership, and higher performance. Engagement is much more than simply expecting someone to do their job because you are paying them a salary or wage. Leaders regularly ask their teams to put in more time and effort to meet critical goals and milestones.
In my experience, too many leaders fail to remember that engagement is a two way street. Asking without giving in return undermines the level and quality of engagement. Going to the well too often drains it dry. To get engagement, the leader needs to invest in their team and show them that their investment is meaningful and important.. In last month's newsletter I talked about the RCI Model and how establishing relevancy is an important step in engaging team members. In this edition, I will cover the second foundation of the model; cost.
Cost
There is no such thing as a free lunch. To accomplish great things one must be willing to take risks and make sacrifices. While the leader needs to model this behavior, they must also get others to follow them in making commitments and sacrifices. Too many leaders ignore, minimize, or underestimate the costs that others pay to accomplish something. Other leaders throw one demand after another at people because it produces results and that is all they know. They practice what I call the demand spiral which ultimately generates burnout and employee flight. Leaders can also overestimate the value of the rewards or compensation that they give. Team members can feel insulted or undervalued as a result.
Costs can be thought of either as expenditure (time, effort, energy) or as loss (i.e., a long-standing benefit goes away or an opportunity is lost). People conduct a personal cost analysis on what leaders ask them to do. They think of the sacrifices they will have to make versus the rewards that they will get. They basically ask, "what is it going to cost me and what will I get in return?" They evaluate whether or not the ratio is more tilted towards the cost side or the benefit side. They evaluate whether or not costs are equally distributed across the organizational hierarchy. They evaluate your ability to deliver on the promises you make.
Perceived cost is uniquely individual and can be emotionally charged. If what you are asking for involves investing a lot of extra personal time or losing something that is valued, people may feel threatened and openly resist acting on your request. People will tenaciously try to hold onto things of value to them. They will defend these benefits and react negatively if they perceive that you are trying to take away things they value. They may also resist in a more subtle, passive manner. The perceived cost can also be related to opportunity cost. For example, what you are asking for may not involve a lot of time but it may compete with or prevent them from spending time on tasks that are higher in value to them.
Faster leaders understand that people attach their own subjective costs to commitments. These leaders make dealing with those costs a priority because missing the connection can lead to lack of commitment, outright rebellion, and a dramatically slower organization. They also understand that leadership is not exempt from costs and they make a concerted effort to ensure they experience their share . Faster leaders treat the interaction between costs and achievements as a type of negotiation. To address cost, I suggest the following things:
- Don't take performance and engagement for granted
- Develop an understanding of the perceived costs to any action
- Build an accurate justification for the costs- connect them to a worthy goal or endeavor
- Create an environment where costs can be openly talked about
- Distribute costs equally. Make sure that management sets an example and takes its share.
- Minimize the cost whenever possible
- Concentrate costs so that the organization can deal with them and move on rather than stringing them out over time
- Clearly identify and communicate the benefits/cost linkage
- Develop a realistic sense of the rewards you can provide
- Provide incentives to balance out the sacrifices
Arlen |
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