Questions to Better Engage Your Team

Employee engagement works when there is a strong commitment of both an individual and team to improve their workplace according to the latest article in the Gallup Business Journal.

In the article Stosh Walsh states that both managers and employees need to be involved in the action planning process.  From our experience it is often managers who create action plans for their employees and are frustrated when they don’t fully meet the expectations set out for them.

Why? Because employees feel there has been minimal consultation and poor communication about standards of behaviours and results.  How can you ensure good participation from your team?

iStock Employee Engagement Questions to Better Engage Your Team

Gallup has identified 12 core elements – the Q12 questions that link to key business results. These 12 statements emerged from conducting thousands of interviews in a variety of industries as those that best predict employee engagement and workgroup performance.

By working through the relevant questions with your team, you are more likely to engage with them about how they feel they can best contribute to business outcomes. Stosh suggests that the following five questions provide a practical approach to help managers better engage in a dialogue about engagement.

  • Question one: How do we define each of the Q12 items in our workgroup? For example, are we clear as a team what is expected of us?  How will results be recognised and rewarded?
  • Question two: Now that we have defined each of the Q12 items for our workgroup, what would the ideal look like for each item?
  • Question three: What is the difference between where we are now and that ideal?
  • Question four: As we think about our action plan, which items have the greatest impact on our culture or performance?
  • Question five: What is every person on the team willing to do about engagement?

Send the Q12 questions to your team before your next team meeting and ask them which of the questions are most relevant for the team and then systematically over the next month work through the five questions.

This is a critical first step in understanding what is important to the individuals on your team and how both you and your team can mutually take responsibility for engagement.