Many businesses recognize that strong team engagement boosts productivity, ensures better collaboration and improves retention. But it's so easy to lose sight of quite how important engagement is as the foundation for continuous improvement. Engaged teams are deeply invested in the success of the business and their team, making them far more open to collaborating on ways to improve their workflow and deliver greater value to customers.
So, how can managers improve engagement? Here’s my 5-Step framework, designed to help software managers gain a deeper understanding around some key components of strong team engagement.
# 1. Start with You
When a leader lacks self-awareness, the team pays the price.
It’s essential for software people managers to recognize that stepping into a management role is a completely different area of specialization. To truly scale their impact and facilitate the success of an entire team, there needs to be a shift from predominantly technical leadership to mastering team engagement and operational enablement. This means up-skilling in uncomfortable areas such as emotional intelligence, motivation theory, coaching, communication, facilitation, delegation, planning, change management - and many more.
Leadership is a lifelong journey of refining one's approach and actively seeking coaching opportunities. So it's crucial for leaders to carefully consider whether this path will bring them true fulfillment. If it doesn’t, the role can become draining and negatively affect both the leader and their team.
#2. Lay the Groundwork
Creating an environment where teams thrive, innovate and deliver exceptional results starts with a few key elements. The first of which is being intentional about team composition. By designing a team with the right mix of roles, skills and diverse perspectives it’s possible to create an innovative and fulfilling environment. There are also proven engagement benefits to cultivating diverse in teams.
Another, often overlooked, element is establishing clear role definitions and decision-making responsibilities. This isn’t about creating rigid lanes for people to stay in but rather ensuring clarity and strong accountability. When teams lack this clarity, it can lead to over-communication, slower decision making and wasted time as they navigate uncertainty.
And arguably the most important investment is proactively fostering trust and psychological safety in the team. Team members need to feel comfortable sharing ideas, challenging assumptions and making mistakes without fear of repercussion. In practice, this can be done in a variety of ways. For example, by managers facilitating team norm discussions and creating deliberate opportunities for team members to understand each other's communication styles.
#3. Set Direction, Create Alignment
Effective teams have a deep understanding of the organizational purpose and how they contribute to its success. When team members see the impact of their efforts on the bigger picture, it fosters a sense of purpose, motivation and focus.
Leaders play a pivotal role in setting direction and creating alignment. Leaders need to be able to clearly articulate the company's vision, mission and objectives, as well as how that relates to what the team is responsible for. In practice this can take the form of a team strategy, charter or even goals.
The buy-in and a shared understanding created through an investment in this area can be invaluable for empowerment, day-to-day decision-making and prioritization.
#4. Enable Collaboration
High performing teams embrace strong collaboration and open communication because these behaviours amplify the team's strengths, allow people to learn from each other and creates a fulfilling work environment for many. Agile practices naturally support this by encouraging visualization of work, regular connection and open discussions. However there are many ways to create a light structure that enables collaboration.
It's worth noting that a collaborative culture often requires leaders to coach team members to hold themselves and each other accountable. This will create an environment where people challenge each other (respectfully), proactively address issues and hold themselves to a high bar. Related, encouraging candid feedback between team members is essential. While it can be challenging, especially in certain cultural contexts, embracing this practice allows teams to reach their full potential.
#5. Invest in a culture of growth and connection
As a leader, investing in a culture of growth and connection means first understanding each team member's unique strengths and personal goals, while also being fully committed to supporting their growth areas. Providing teams with dedicated time to develop skills relevant to their roles is one way to support growth. Additionally, creating opportunities for knowledge sharing, peer reviews as well as retrospectives can support continuous learning in individuals and teams.
Investing in a culture of growth also means prioritizing recognition and feedback. Taking the time to consistently and authentically celebrate achievements, acknowledge contributions and provide constructive feedback will boost morale and cultivate a culture of continuous improvement.
Finally, creating opportunities for the team to make personal connections at work has been linked to to higher levels of engagement and job satisfaction. While this may be challenging in remote settings, managers should remember that simple efforts to encourage connection can make a significant difference.