Ep 33 - Three Small Habits to Make Your Team feel Valued

Welcome to this episode of power up your team podcast. This is your free resource to help you build a winning team. The show notes can be found online at Power Up Your Team.com

 You have set your eyes on your vision, have developed your strategic plan and a challenging year over year agenda. You may have funding from your investors or got a loan from your bank. And now you must deliver. Your business no longer a dream. Now it’s an obligation as well. Now there is pressure to deliver.

A along long the way you involved you growing team, kept them in the loop and made sure that new folks are onboarded so they feel welcome and know what to do.

 But sometimes you are wondering if all your employees are truly on board or what they think about your agenda. Are they really in it with their heart and minds? Or, is it a physical presence, only? Are they going to stick around? 

And there are many ways to create a positive culture where a team is motivated and inspired to help you get your business to the next level. They work in concert with each other and there are leadership and structural elements that play into that. Each of my free episodes address an aspect of how you can create a winning team.

 In this episode, I want to chat about three habits that I invite you to wrap into the way you show up as a leader. Make it a part of who you are.  

a.     Asking people for input and use it:

i.      Every touchpoint with your team, as individual or as a group, is an opportunity to invite their input.  Ask them causally about what they think related to business. That can be a decision you just made, a project that was just completed, a new procedure. Ask and listen. 

ii.     Asking input can be a regular behavior and more than an annual event such as  the employee engagement survey. Consider asking people junior to you and people outside your typical contact circle. Show up as the curious leader who wants to genuinely know what other people think.  It will help you check the pulse of your team and guide your decision making over time.

b.     Open and honest feedback

i.      You know, I never liked formal performance reviews. If you have ever worked in a large corporation, you may remember these sort of judgement days. But that doesn’t mean people don’t want feedback. Feedback is an important tool to keep people engaged and help them develop. 

c.     Public recognition for their success

i.      Take the time to recognize individuals and teams publicly. And by publicly I don’t mean a formal stage or the annual Christmas party - even though that would be cool, too. With public, I simply mean more people than the recipient alone. That could be a team meeting where you say “congrats on closing that deal” or “Great job on resolving the issue” 

ii.     Make sure you do the regularly and evenly so that it’s not the same person that being recognized all the time. 

iii.   This sends to messages to your team: you appreciate their contributions and, equally important you know what’s going on. You are dialed in.

Adopting these three habits will make a significant contribution to making people feel valued

Here’s the truth:

When people feel valued, they are more engaged at work. 

They take the extra step such as an extra phone call to make sure a client is all set or a stakeholder is on board. I think that feeling valued leads to more creativity and thoughtful action. 

Your team will show with more bandwidth, more resilience. They are more forgiving to accept changes in direction or changing priorities. I invite you to try it out as you navigate your company to the next level of success. </