How do you improve team engagement and satisfaction?

I agree with you. To improve team engagement and satisfaction, fostering open communication and a positive work culture is crucial. Encourage regular team meetings where everyone can share ideas and concerns freely. Offer opportunities for skill development and growth to empower team members. Recognize and appreciate their efforts and achievements to boost morale. Ensure a healthy work-life balance and show genuine interest in their well-being. Create a supportive environment that values diversity and promotes collaboration.

It's important to understand your team, but it's even more important to understand yourself. Leaders who don't understand their own strengths and weaknesses are a liability to the team. Leadership can make the difference between success and failure on a team.

In my experience the above two steps are fabulous. Despite the few non-believers ; all of this gets many in the team to get involved and test the new tools and ideas available… However for it to be sustainable and weather the storms when things don’t go according to plan in facing VUCA situations ; it is imperative for the leader to have some awareness of presence and connected to their own inner strengths and personal values, where the behavior demonstrated matches and is aligned to the nice process and words…. It’s important it is an emotionally safe environment as well team members can lean into those with strong emotional support skills, values such as respect and dignity is upheld even during the necessary difficult conversations.

Understanding the why and promoting the one goal one team motto, but as leader you must be passionate and believe in your team. To be successful you need to bring the team together along the journey. The team must understand the why but also see an achievable vision. The key message is everyone participation just important as each others. No I in Team

Ask the team - their opinion first. Go around the room. YOU then build/grow the plan. You’re the last one to talk. Thanks - Sheila

Empowering (and let’s reinforce that is also clearly TRUSTING) your team is one of the most important ways to motivate and retain a team - while also growing and developing their skills to get the VERY BEST out of them going forward. This is because the permission to learn by TRYING, DOING, and occasionally FAILING is one of the GREATEST gifts you can give your employer and your function as an incubator of top talent and bolder ideas. The end result is better information, more wisdom, more courage to try BIGGER BOLDER ideas, and more homegrown leaders that shine bright for the company - and this means you serve the greater organization’s goals while also keeping team morale high.

Challenge your team to focus on competency development 20% of the time. Competency development will help them mange processes, policies and things better. Help your team to develop their competency too. Challenge your team to focus on character development 80% of the time. Character development will help you to lead your team a lot better. Help your team to develop into leaders themselves.

One way to challenge the team, depending on the company and what the team works on, is to give them problems to solve. And to follow up on how their solutions may be implemented and make a change.

Having empathy is seeking out opportunities to help others. Think of yourself less, and think of others more. If there is one thing that I have learned over the years when I want to help a person, in any capacity, it is to “Have Empathy.” What does that mean? It means to seek out opportunities to help others. How do you do that? Well, you think more about others than you think about yourself. That doesn’t mean to put yourself down, or think of less of yourself. It means to think about yourself less, but still love yourself. When I say love yourself, I don’t mean that in a cocky or arrogant way. I mean value and respect yourself.

Pay them. Compensate them as well as you can monetarily, emotionally, and verbally, unless they’ve given you reason not to. A principal-level total comp package alone with no interpersonal buy-in motivates well off the clock for quality of life improvement, but does little for the 9-5. Similarly, a thoroughly engaging and positive work environment shines during the day but, contrary to the managerial surmises, doesn’t pay the bills. People need money, and more of it in this day and age. People also need honest emotional engagement that isn’t wrapped in corporate virtue signaling or ten-cent MBA buzzwords.

I am always most inspired by leaders that walk-the-talk and role-model positive values to their teams. Whether its being "real" and transparent with communication, not sending emails over the weekend, logging off at a reasonable hour each day, taking vacation time, or even doing walking-meetings, the team needs to see the leader doing these things to feel good about doing it themselves.

By being the best that you can be provides inspiration as leader ensuring you display all the qualities that you expect your team to display, honesty, integrity, collaboration, teamwork, empathy, good manners and respect this all begins at the top. Don’t talk about simply do it no words need to be spoken.

I believe this can even be simplified. There are four areas that all leaders and managers should ensure they implement and foster within their teams. 1. Expectations 2. Communication 3. Mentorship 4. Recognition As a leader, they will empower you to build up your team, manage effectively, increase productivity, and create an environment that everyone thrives in.

A leader must champion this by always talking about how we achieve success and constantly learn through challenges together. This has to be done in team meetings, individual meetings, and at all times.