Excellent article from the Harvard Business Review on effective ways for leaders to improve team engagement and alignment.
Here are some highlights:
- interpersonal communication is key
- have a “person to person” conversation rather than pushing a series of commands from on high
- shift from a top-down distribution of information to a bottom-up exchange of ideas
- 4 essential attributes of interpersonal communication
- intimacy
- gain trust through simply asking and answering questions rather than issuing orders
- be authentic and straightforward
- stop talking and start listening
- take feedback seriously and absorb both good and bad feedback
- interactivity
- talk with employees, not just to them
- give employees the ability to speak up and (where appropriate) talk back
- communicate in a dynamic, two-way fasion
- inclusion
- include everyone as full-fledged conversation partners so as to raise the level of emotional engagement
- allow employees to serve as frontline content providers
- allow employees to serve as brand ambassadors, thought leaders, and storytellers
- tell stories
- intentionality
- learn from each other
- derive relevant action from discussion and debate
- generate consent rather than commanding consent
- talk extensively about the vision and logic behind decision making
- have open conversations about matching trends with possible solutions
- always encourage!
- intimacy
Photo by Mathias Jensen on Unsplash
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