Great workplaces are a utopia of productivity, collaboration, innovation, and success. The leaders of these workplaces inspire their employees and ignite their passion for greater breakthrough results.
What makes the difference between a leader who tells employees what to do, how to do things without recognition and one who actually shows value of your employee? How productive will your employees be when you connect well with your employees and respect their decisions in getting the work done through their creative thinking?
Today’s businesses are interconnected being fast-paced to the extent that many leaders cannot catch up with one trend before another pops up. Employee relations remain to be a leader in the workplace. It’s no secret that a company cannot operate successfully without productive employees.
“Leaders don’t create followers, they create more leaders.” – Tom Peters
Many leaders are unprepared for the challenges of today and tomorrow. Some take their lead from what they experienced previously. Employees crave connecting with their company leaders. In traditional leadership, most employees are either afraid to say anything to their leader. Employees prefer to avoid the leader as much as possible. Employee thoughts, ideas and opinions don’t mean anything.
Leaders who connect with their employees want to hear from employees. They want employees to voice their thoughts, ideas and opinions. These leaders value their employees.
“Engagement isn’t just defined by employees being engaged with the company’s leaders. Engagement is at its best when employees across all departments and teams work together and create a synergy that perpetuates the organization’s culture and values.” – Paul LaRue
When a leader interact with employees your leadership style impacts organizational culture. In getting to know your employees, allow a team member the chance to be in the spotlight. Allowing an employee the opportunity to lead a team meeting gives the leader the chance to see how employees take action. It also gives leaders the opportunity to get to know your employees better.
A leader who is a connector is confident, courageous, and a risk taker knowing what it takes to create and produce the next breakthrough. Harnessing and maximizing differences in diversity of thought, ideas and solutions elicit ‘out of the box’ thinking that affects change and innovation.
Making connections enables leaders to lead and make decisions for employees with their input as feedback and other suggestions. Communicating openly with your employees improves their engagement and your company’s bottom line.
Brilliant Connector for Creativity
Great leaders don’t just manage employees, they make sure employees are motivated, engaged and inspired when coming to work. Recognize employees for good work, and give them room to grow. Allow them to express their thoughts, ideas and opinions. This in-turn empowers employees to make decisions instead of waiting for supervisors, managers or other leaders on the work that needs to get done immediately.
Ask Open Ended Questions to Create Dialogue
At times to instigate dialogue in order to get people to fully connected helps move your organization through the actions taken by employees. Every time you are in front of an employee you have an opportunity to increase that engagement through dialogue. Asking open-ended questions encourages employees to express their thoughts, ideas and opinions. Listening to this feedback and taking action on these statements shows leadership support. The interest leaders have impact employee productivity.
“Empathy is the connection- before the solution- that leads to solutions!” – Kate Nasser
Employees want to be able to connect with their leader—today more than ever before. Change the way leaders connect with employees significantly improves performance and productivity from the entire organization. Employees will take more pride in the work they do.