Reasons for high Employee Engagement Index
This year the company I work in did their bi-annual Employee Survey powered by Gallup. The company wide numbers came out same or worse then 2 years ago, but my team‘s Employees Engagement Index went up significantly. I was rated very good by the people I lead concerning my leadership skills and they showed way higher engagement values than the rest of the teams in our department.
After reflecting on it and talking to them, I think the reasons boil down to these two:
Take responsibility and give your team focus by making decisions when they need it. We live in chaotic and volatile business times. People need clear direction and managers should be the people giving them what they need. Sometimes you can just say what has to be done in this week, so do that and be open about the „low visibility“. When the visibility gets better, then aim for longer time periods and loosen the „micromanagement“. The worst thing you can do, is to get afraid and try to sit it out. If you do that, the whole team will grind to a halt.
Be authentic and treat your people the way you would want to be treated. I do not believe in the nonsense of „separate your personal and work behaviors“, because I think you would need to be a psychopath to be able to pull that out convincingly. E.g. when you are sick, do you want your boss asking you to join meetings or call you during your sick days? No, you probably want some words of assurance that everything will be taken care of, that you should go offline and have some (chicken) soup. The same applies if you find out that your employe has a sick child, wife has family issues etc. Treat them with respect and speak to them openly about the good things and the improvement points, they will come back to give you 150%.