- Be visible. Do not let your employees wonder where you are. Busy executives often unwittingly create silos in their organizations by not carving out time to chat with employees. No agenda is required for this. Just be human and not worry about being a leader every time you walk around. Build connections by asking employees about family or vacation. This helps build a rapport. Employees are more likely to feel comfortable talking with you, making suggestions, sharing ideas or asking questions when there is an established rapport.
- Maintain an ongoing dialogue. Update employees about what’s going on in the company and how it affects the team or the individual. Ask questions. Ask them if they have what they need to be successful. Don’t wait for the annual engagement survey to identify issues. This should be an ongoing dialogue. You will get richer information and context through conversations that are often missing from survey results.
- Create ownership. Involve employees in the beginning. Socialize programs, projects and initiatives with employees before you launch them. Often times, as part of office politics, managers spend a lot of energy socializing programs in the design phase with senior execs. Employees often are left out of the input phase before a program launches. They find out about it upon rollout. Ask employees for ideas and input up front. Involving employees in program or initiative design up front not only creates a sense of ownership, but it also helps organizations manage change more effectively.
- Encourage collaboration. Tools like Yammer or SharePoint enable collaboration, but leaders have to model this behavior and participate often. These tools are great for asking questions, “working out loud,” brainstorming and sparking conversations.
- Celebrate successes big and small. Thank employees. Often. Recognition can come in many forms. Sometimes even a simple hand-written note can go along way to boost morale.
- Have fun. Enough said.