5 Engaging and developing your followers

Engagement

As previously discussed, there are many benefits to a strong relationship between employer and employee, and there is significant commentary about how to build and boost those relationships.

In their research, MacLeod and Clarke (2009) set out four enablers of employee engagement:

1. Leadership
   • Leaders provide a strong strategic narrative which has widespread ownership and commitment from managers and employees at all levels.
   • The narrative is a clearly expressed story about what the purpose of an organisation is, why it has the broad vision it has, and how an individual contributes to that purpose.
   • Employees have a clear line of sight between their job and the narrative, and understand where their work fits in.
2. Engaging managers
   • Managers are at the heart of this organisational culture – they facilitate and empower rather than control or restrict their staff.
   • Managers treat their staff with appreciation and respect, and show commitment to developing, increasing and rewarding the capabilities of those they manage.
3. Employee voice
   • Employees’ views are sought out; they are listened to and see that their opinions count and make a difference.
   • Employees speak out and challenge when appropriate.
   • A strong sense of listening and of responsiveness permeates the organisation, enabled by effective communication.
4. Integrity
   • Behaviour throughout the organisation is consistent with stated values, leading to trust and a sense of integrity.

These themes are reflected throughout this course. For example, in Week 4, you explored common mistakes, and possible solutions that focused on a clear vision, good communication, developing your team and leading by example. In Week 6 you’ll look at some common challenges for every leader that also reflect the value of motivating and developing your team.

Development

Looking from the followers’ perspective, Kelley (1988) suggests that while leadership training and development is undertaken by most organisations, few focus on training their followers. He outlines topics for a potential training programme as follows:

• Improving independent, critical thinking
• Self-management
• Disagreeing agreeably
• Building credibility
• Aligning personal and organisational goals and commitments
• Acting responsibly towards the organisation, the leader, co-workers and oneself
• Similarities and differences between leadership and followership roles
• Moving between the two roles with ease.

As well as providing suitable training and development opportunities, there are several other ways in which you can support and encourage your followers:

• Allow them to take responsibility and lead on different elements of the work.
• Give them praise and encouragement, acknowledging their work and taking a step back yourself.
• Give them the confidence to be innovative by allowing them to implement changes without fear of repercussions.
• Use your knowledge and experience to coach your followers. If you don’t have time for all of them, select some key individuals who can cascade your knowledge to other team members.

Professor Jean Hartley adds her thoughts in the following video.

Download this video clip.Video player: lf_1_video_week5_hartley_c.mp4

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JEAN HARTLEY:

The second element is to make sure that people are clear about the task and where their contribution to that task is, as well. It can be quite difficult in high-energy teams to make sure that people stay focused on the task. And part of a leader's job is to be clear about what the task is, to check that people understand the task, to ask them if they've got any better ideas about the way that the task may be carried out, or whatever. But, really, that sense of purpose is very important.

And then thirdly, a very important part of a leader's role with their team is to help manage the context within which that team is operating. So, there will be a wider context for that team. You might be a small team in a big department or a team within an organisation or a team that's working across a set of organisations. So there's always a wider context.

And part of the way of developing and engaging your team is to help them understand enough of that context to enable them to see where their work fits, but also to protect them from too much context that actually might be distracting or distressing or, in other ways, make it quite difficult. If we see our own team in the context of the huge, wider world, we can feel really insignificant and it's not worth doing. But if you can see where your work fits in a bigger picture without that picture being too huge, then it can be very helpful indeed.

There's a story told at NASA in America, the space science group, that a visiting dignitary was talking to a number of people and he talked to a cleaner at the NASA base. And then the cleaner said, my job is to help put men on the Moon. And I think that's a really good example. It may be apocryphal, I don't know. But it's a really good example of where people know what their own job is, but they know where it fits- the bigger purpose. And that in itself can be incredibly motivating for people.

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Looking at this from the opposite perspective, followers may be reluctant to be developed if they feel you are asking too much of them. For example, they may argue that they aren’t paid enough to take on more responsibility or resent you delegating tasks that they aren’t interested in. Development planning should include discussion with your followers, giving them a voice and allowing you to explain the business needs that must be addressed.