TL;DR: Team engagement isn’t built through occasional activities or initiatives. It develops through the everyday experience people have at work. Leaders can strengthen engagement by creating clarity, listening to their people, giving them meaningful ownership and helping them understand how their work contributes to the organization.
Most leaders want an engaged team. They want people who care about the work, contribute ideas, take ownership and are willing to do more than simply complete the tasks in front of them. The challenge is that engagement isn’t something a leader can simply ask for. Telling people to be more engaged rarely changes much, and an occasional team-building event won’t compensate for an everyday work experience that leaves people disconnected or frustrated.
If leaders want greater engagement, it helps to look at the conditions they’re creating for their teams every day. Do people understand where the organization is going? Do they know how they contribute? Are they given opportunities to share ideas and take responsibility? The answers to those questions can tell us much more about engagement than the number of activities on the company calendar.
Start with Clarity
It’s difficult to feel engaged in work when you aren’t clear about where the organization is going, what the priorities are or what is expected of you. Leaders sometimes underestimate how much context they have compared with the people on their teams. A senior leadership group may have spent hours discussing a new direction or priority before communicating it to employees. By the time the message reaches the rest of the organization, leaders have already had time to understand it, question it and become comfortable with it. Employees are hearing it for the first time.
Creating clarity means helping people understand not only what is changing or what needs to be accomplished, but also why it matters and how their work contributes. It also means continuing the conversation rather than assuming one announcement or meeting was enough. At X5 Management, we talk frequently about alignment because people are better positioned to contribute when they understand where they’re going and how they fit into the bigger picture.
Give People an Opportunity to Contribute
Engagement grows when people believe their ideas and perspectives matter, which means leaders need to create opportunities for people to contribute to the conversation. That can be as simple as asking better questions: What are we missing? What’s making this harder than it needs to be? What would you change? Where do you see an opportunity to improve how we’re doing this?
The important part is what happens after those questions are asked. If employees are regularly invited to provide input but never see anything happen as a result, they’ll eventually stop offering it. Sometimes an idea can be implemented, sometimes it needs to be adjusted and sometimes it simply isn’t practical. Closing the loop helps employees understand that their input was genuinely considered, even when the answer isn’t yes.
Create Ownership, Not Dependence
There is an important difference between asking employees for input and giving them ownership. If every decision still needs to come back to the manager, people can become dependent on the leader rather than developing confidence in their own ability to move things forward. Leaders can create greater ownership by being clear about the outcome that’s needed and then giving people appropriate room to determine how to get there. Employees still need expectations, resources and support, particularly when they’re taking on something new, but they don’t necessarily need their manager making every decision along the way.
This is where delegation becomes an important leadership capability. Effective delegation gives someone responsibility while making clear where they have authority to make decisions and when the leader needs to be involved. Over time, that can build confidence, capability and a stronger sense of ownership within the team.
Pay Attention to the Everyday Experience
When engagement becomes a concern, organizations can be tempted to look for a new initiative to fix it. Sometimes a larger initiative is appropriate, but it’s worth looking first at what employees are experiencing every day.
Consider:
- Do people understand what is expected of them and how their work contributes to the team’s priorities?
- Are they comfortable raising a concern or offering a different perspective?
- Do managers provide useful feedback and recognize meaningful contributions?
- Are people given opportunities to learn, develop and take on greater responsibility?
- When employees provide input, do they know what happened with it?
These aren’t complicated ideas, but they do require consistency. Engagement is influenced by how leaders communicate, listen, provide feedback, handle disagreements and involve their people in the work of the team.
Different People Engage Differently
One lesson that remains relevant from the shift toward remote and hybrid work is that people don’t all work, communicate or connect in exactly the same way. Some employees value regular face-to-face interaction, while others prefer more independence. Some will readily contribute ideas in a group meeting, while others may provide much better input after they’ve had time to think.
Good leadership requires understanding those differences rather than assuming one approach will engage everyone. That doesn’t mean creating completely different expectations for every employee, but it may mean adjusting how you communicate, provide feedback or involve people in discussions. At X5, this is part of what we mean by Leading Others: understanding the people you lead and adapting your approach while maintaining clear and consistent expectations across the team.
Engagement Is Built Over Time
Team engagement is the result of many small experiences that tell employees whether their work matters, whether their ideas are valued and whether they have an opportunity to contribute. Leaders have a significant influence over those experiences through the clarity they create, the conversations they have, the responsibility they give people and the opportunities they provide for development.
That doesn’t mean every employee will be equally engaged all the time. People will have good days and difficult ones, and circumstances outside of work will sometimes affect what they bring to the workplace. The goal isn’t constant enthusiasm. It’s creating an environment where people understand what they’re working toward, know how they contribute and have meaningful opportunities to take ownership.
Developing Leaders Who Engage Their Teams
Engagement is closely connected to how people are led. X5 Management works with leaders to strengthen the capabilities that shape the everyday employee experience, including communication, listening, delegation, coaching, feedback, accountability and conflict management.
Through Leadership Development Coaching and leadership training, we help leaders better understand themselves, strengthen how they lead others and put those capabilities into practice with their teams.
Looking to strengthen leadership and engagement within your organization? Let’s talk.
About the Author
Kris Schinke, MBA, is VP Integration and a Leadership Coach with X5 Management. She works with leaders and teams to strengthen leadership capability, improve communication and turn development into practical action. Her coaching focuses on helping leaders build greater self-awareness, strengthen how they lead others and develop the capabilities they need as their responsibilities grow.
