As an owner or manager of a landscape-snow company, your engagement levels are not only influenced by how well your manager (s) does his/her job , but how effectively you, your staff and your systems and processes support others in executing day-to-day tasks. Management behavior has a trickle-down effect.
Q. Do engaged leaders help produce engaged teams?
A. My opinion. ‘YES’!
1. CARING ABOUT PEOPLE: A manager who truly cares is willing to express compassion, affection and kindness towards the team. Making this a part of the way you lead builds a reservoir of trust for your team to draw on when facing the inevitable ethical challenges that come up. When you actively care about your team, you are more likely to listen to their concerns, pay close attention to the challenges they face and be aware of issues before they become a problem. This can only build a stronger team and a more profitable organization.
2. LEVERAGING EXPERIENCE: Every manager comes from a place of experience that gives him or her unique insights into any given situation. Using experience wisely means developing the ability to take information from those circumstances and translate it to something that benefits the company and its people. Alignment of organizational goals and vision must be in the best interests of its people at large.
3. ALIGNMENT WITH COMPANY VISION: When you align with the company vision, it becomes effortless to act in the best interests of the organization. It’s clear that the growth and gain of the company is also the growth and gain of its people. Align the vision and mission of your company and watch how this inspires your team to do the same.
4. BEING OF INTEGRITY: There are times and circumstances when it takes an immense amount of courage to act ethically and with integrity. An ethical manager needs to be able to draw from integrity consistently – without putting concerns of personal consequences ahead of the best interests of the team. It’s not easy to make hard decisions – especially if you know they will be unpopular with team members – however, these decisions must be be based on careful deliberation.
5. REMEMBERING THE GOLDEN RULE: People in an organization develop a strong sense of loyalty when they feel they can trust the company and its leaders to be fair.
Favoritism and inequitable management of resources or benefits will inevitably destroy any manager’s air of integrity. You cannot afford to treat one employee as if he or she is less important than someone else. Moreover, no one appreciates his or her innovative idea being adopted without a nod of appreciation and recognition for their efforts. When you give your team a sense that they’re receiving a fair return for their efforts they are far more likely to have loyalty to the team, company management and the organization as a whole.
You need to remember that in any organization leadership begins at the top. Behavior from the leader affects management and team members at all levels. Managers can positively influence habit and behavior by modeling it and recognizing their influence on the standards and ethics upheld within their teams. When managers model confident authoritative behavior, they strengthen their relationships with individual team members; build trust in the team as a unit and affect growth of the company in its entirety.
The bottom line is that you have to be confident; aligning your strong personal values with consistent action in your own behavior will go a long way to inspiring that same philosophy in your team.
Looking for a good book on the subject, suggested reading;
- The Visionary Leader: How to inspire success from the top down.
- Susan Bagyura (Author), Michael E. Gerber (Foreword), Fiona Dempsey (Illustrator)
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