Connecting with Your Team to Achieve Goals What Great Leaders KnowAbout Their People
The main reason leaders need to connect with their team is that such a linkage will enhance their people’s engagement, motivation, and productivity. According to Gallup research, teams working at higher levels of employee engagement experience a gain of 21 percent in profitability over less-engaged counterparts.
But how does one become a truly relatable leader? The answer has everything to do with trust, communication, and a common purpose. Here are a few suggestions on how you can connect with your team and realize your goals:
- Be Authentic
Authenticity is the foundation of any strong relationship–that of a leader to their teammates. Be truthful in everything you communicate. Share your thoughts and feelings. Admit your mistakes. Authentic leaders inspire 13% more employee commitment than do other leaders, according to Harvard Business Review.
- Listen Actively
Effective two-way communication requires taking time to listen to your team members and understand their concerns. Acknowledge their ideas, as it seems companies with effective communication practice are 4.5 times more likely to retain top talent, according to a McKinsey study.
- Empathy
Empathy is the feeling that shows a good appreciation for other people’s feelings. Show empathy towards your team and it means you truly care about what they feel and their plight. Center for Creative Leadership performed a study that proved empathetic skills to be one of the most important skills of leadership. According to the study, 91% of those leaders said that their ability to lead successfully depends on empathy.
- Celebrate Successes
Positive recognition of team achievements helps build positive morale and develop a sense of community. When you acknowledge hard work and achievement by your team, you show that their efforts count and you are all working together toward a common objective. A study by Deloitte has found companies that have a strong recognition culture have 31% less voluntary turnover rates.
- Lead by Example
As a leader, what you do speaks much louder than what you say. Only when you lead by example will you be sure that all values and behaviors that you’d like to see in your teammates can apply to their workplace and performance.
In fact, when you walk the talk, you create trust and credibility, and you make your teammates walk behind you. In fact, research by Center for Creative Leadership found that among the topmost leadership practices is leading by example.
By doing so, and by putting in constant efforts to relate with your team, you will be a relatable leader who inspires and motivates your team to realize your dreams. All this can easily be achieved if one shows care, keeps trust building on the way, and communicates very well.
