5 Strategies for Managers to Improve Team Engagement

Is your team feeling flat? Are they going through the motions and lacking that spark of creativity and enthusiasm in their work?

You're not alone.

Many leaders are struggling to keep their teams engaged right now, and it's a growing problem because disengaged employees are less productive and less innovative, and they're more likely to leave too. But it doesn't have to be this way.

Today, we're going to explore the science behind why people become disengaged. Then I'm going to give you five simple strategies to reignite their passion and boost your team's overall effectiveness.

Hey everyone, I'm Doug Howard. I'm a leadership coach and consultant, and I help leaders unlock their full potential by focusing on the human side of management. Here on this channel, we explore leadership through the lens of soft skills, emotional intelligence, and influence. So if you're ready to build a thriving, engaged team, hit that subscribe button for more leadership tips.

Why Do Employees Become Disengaged?

Today's topic is about how to increase team engagement. Before we get started, I want to know what your biggest challenges are with keeping your team engaged. Let me know in the comments below.

Keeping teams engaged is a huge challenge for managers across all industries right now. Managing hybrid and remote teams only compounds this challenge too, but you can't fix a problem unless you understand the root cause.

Let's start by taking a look at what causes employees to become disengaged in the first place.

Have you ever noticed how a delicious meal loses its appeal after you've eaten it a few times, or maybe you've eaten it multiple days in a row? Or think of a catchy song that you used to love at one point. After you've heard it over and over again, it eventually lost its appeal to you, right?

The same principle applies to work. There's a fascinating book called Look Again, The Power of Noticing What Was Always There by Cass Sunstein and Taley Sherratt. It explains the science behind this phenomenon. In short, it's all caused by habituation. If you're not familiar with this term, habituation acts like a mental filter. It reduces our response to repetitive experiences and repetitive stimuli.

For example, the feeling of clothes on your skin. At first, new clothes might feel stiff or they might feel scratchy or abrasive to your skin. But over time, we habituate to that feeling and we stop noticing it altogether. This happens so that we save mental energy for other things.

Habituation is a critical part of our DNA as humans because it lets us focus our energy on important new things in our environment instead of wasting it on meaningless things like your fridge humming or the daily noise from traffic outside your window. By ignoring the constant background noise, our brains can conserve energy for what truly matters.

While habituation helps us conserve energy, it can also lead to complacency and decline in creativity, because our brains get bored with repetition. The book Look Again emphasizes the power of novelty to our brains by referencing a study where people reported greater enjoyment from taking multiple short vacations throughout the year, rather than taking one long vacation each year.

This is because we need new experiences to keep our brains active and engaged. However, once something becomes normalized to us, your brain becomes less active and it actually disengages and turns off in some ways.

The same goes for work routines. Breaking up a routine in the workplace can be the key to rekindling enthusiasm and fostering innovation on your team. This doesn't mean throwing your team into chaos. But it does mean strategically introducing change to keep them stimulated and growing. The key is finding the sweet spot between familiarity and challenge.

Your team needs to feel comfortable enough to excel in their roles, but they also need to be stretched enough to develop their skills and explore new ideas. This is why it's so important to regularly discuss individual goals and aspirations with your team. This helps you identify opportunities for them to stretch their skills and to learn new things without venturing too far outside their comfort zone.

Quick sidebar, pushing people outside of their comfort zone is a delicate balancing act, especially for managers, because if you push them too far, they're going to shut down on you. If you want to learn how to strike that perfect balance, you should check out my episode called Escape Your Comfort Zone.

In this episode, I explain what the comfort zone really is and how you can push yourself and your team into the growth zone.

5 Strategies for Increasing Employee Engagement & Creativity

Now that you're aware of how these relationships work, How do we leverage habituation to fuel creativity and engagement throughout your team?

Create New Roles and Assignments Through Project Rotation

Here are five simple but powerful strategies that you can put into action right away.

Number one, project rotation. Occasionally switch team members on the new projects or different areas within your team.

Doing this exposes them to fresh perspectives and challenges, which sparks creative problem solving and cross pollination of ideas throughout your team. Think of it as a mental vacation that brings them back to their core tasks with a renewed energy.

Encourage Vacation Time

Speaking of vacation, number two is encourage vacation time. You want to discourage vacation anxiety by encouraging your team to use all of their vacation days and all of their PTO throughout the year.

Taking breaks allows your team to return refreshed and refocused and ready to tackle challenges with renewed energy and fresh ideas. Avoid last minute scrambling by scheduling regular check ins with your team to discuss upcoming vacations and help them plan their workload transitions.

One more tip on this one. Make sure you're leading by example by scheduling your own vacation time.

Promote Learning and Development

Number three is learning and development. Learning a new skill, even if it's not directly related to their work, can create new neural pathways, which actually enhances creativity in unexpected ways.

Make sure you're providing opportunities for ongoing learning through workshops, conferences, mentoring, or online courses. Doing this exposes your team to new ideas, technologies, and industry trends, which is going to keep their skills sharp, foster a culture of growth, and also help your team stay ahead of the curve.

When you invest in your team's growth, they're going to invest themselves in your team's success.

Foster Cross-Functional Collaboration

Number four is cross functional collaboration. Break down silos by engaging your team in collaborative projects with other teams.

Start by looking for projects that could benefit from diverse perspectives and expertise from other departments. Then, assemble teams with representatives from various departments who all possess the necessary skills and knowledge that you're looking for. Make sure all team members understand the project goals and their individual roles within this collaboration. Provide the teams with the tools and the platforms they need to communicate effectively and share ideas.

Last but not least, make sure to recognize and celebrate the cross functional teams achievements so that you reinforce the collaboration culture throughout your company. Doing this fosters a sense of community and it exposes them to diverse perspectives and new ways of thinking. It often leads to exciting new solutions and innovations.

Create Internal Innovation Challenges

Number five is internal innovation challenges. Organize internal competitions to tackle specific challenges and to encourage blue sky thinking. This is a powerful way to engage your team, spark creativity, and tackle real world problems within your organization.

Start by identifying a specific problem or a specific opportunity facing your company. This could be anything from improving a current process, enhancing customer experience, developing new product features, or creating a new product altogether.

Encourage participation from all team members, regardless of experience level. Establish a timeframe from the challenge, outline submission criteria, and define how winning ideas will be selected. Consider offering incentives or recognition for the most impactful solutions. The potential for recognition and the thrill of competition can ignite creativity and lead to groundbreaking new ideas.

Make sure to provide opportunities for participants to share ideas, collaborate and build upon each other's concepts. This can be done through online forums, brainstorming sessions, or internal communication platforms.

By implementing these five strategies, you can break down silos, foster collaboration, and keep your team engaged and brimming with creative ideas.

Remember a thriving team environment is built on continuous learning, new challenges and opportunities for growth. But what if you as the leader need to champion these changes and navigate resistance within your organization?

That's where effective influence skills come in. If you want to master the art of influencing upward, downward, and cross functionally by learning powerful strategies to communicate your ideas effectively, build consensus, and gain buy in from all levels of your organization, check out my episode called How to Influence Upward, Downward, and Cross Functionally at Work.

check out my FREE pdf download - “OPTIMIZE ENGINEERING
TEAM EFFICIENCY”

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