Feeling acceptance, knowing engagement

June 29, 8:11 AMHouston Workforce Performance ExaminerTim Wright

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Nurture acceptance

When a member of any team feels accepted, that member more fully engages in the team's efforts.

Doesn't your employee base comprise one or more teams?

Today's 4th of 5 Tactics to support you Employee Engagement Strategy is

Tactic 4. Nurture acceptance.

I suggest offering plenty of attention to four simple yet strong components to nurturing acceptance:

• Trust. Assuming "because they're on the same team, they share a high trust level" can be a mistake. Spending just a little time making trust a frequent topic of conversation prevents that mistake. How about 5-minute meetings starters around questions like: How is trust important to our success as a team? What (else) can we do to build internal trust? What are recent positive 'trust examples' we've witnessed?

• Focus. Acceptance depends upon sharing the team's common focus.  Managers can provide clear opportunities for all team members to know (and focus on) team objectives and approaches. Situations and conditions change; this may require shifts in team focus. Reinforce continual attention to necessary updates and alterations.

• Communication.  Participation in two-way talk about team purpose, team effort, team success, team obstacles and much more generates true membership. Presuming that such communication automatically occurs and involves all team members is risky. Create opportunities for open discussion of what is going on within your team. Include all team members.

• Feedback. Think 360 degrees. Shared opinions of performance and ability, of success and difficulty are feedback. Opportunities to offer and to receive feedback stimulate greater comfort and value derived from the feedback. Use individual employee evaluation surveys. Create informal feedback opportunities in which you give and receive feedback, in which employees give and receive feedback.

These four actions support the nurture acceptance tactic. The more employees experience team achievement, the more they will know their acceptance, the more they will accept. Employee engagement grows with acceptance.