Thousands of articles are written every year on employee engagement and how to build strong teams, and they all say almost the same thing.  

Quit micromanaging, give people the opportunity to share their ideas and be involved with decision making, provide opportunities for growth and development, communicate more effectively.

…you get the picture.  

I’m not saying these aren’t important, what I’m saying is if it was that easy then everyone would be doing it and many of us coaches, consultants and trainers would be out of business.  So if it’s not what I listed above, what is it that makes employees engaged and helps you build strong teams?

Let me tell you a story.

A client I am working with tells me how no one (really no one!) in his organization is accountable.  His teams are not cohesive, he actually used the word divisive; nobody cares about doing a good job and in his words ‘they are here for a paycheck only’.  

His assessment was that he probably hired the wrong people and if he could he would fire them all and start from scratch.  

Okay so he’s a bit dramatic, and he knew that wasn’t realistic but as a senior executive, he had decided what the problem was.  And his solution? He continued to tell them what they did incorrectly, reminded them about what a wonderful opportunity they had and suggested they quit belly aching and go to work.

While he was correct that the company had provided great opportunities for people, compensated well and allowed his team to share ideas and be included in decisions, he was completely wrong about the problem.

It wasn’t that his team wasn’t accountable, it’s that he as the leader didn’t have guts or courage.  

He didn’t have the courage to have the unpleasant and difficult conversations about performance….he assumed telling them again and again what he wanted was enough.  He complained about their behavior (to me and everyone else who would listen) but he didn’t have the courage to sit them down, explain what he wanted from them, and the consequences should it not happen.  

This leader really did have several team members that probably should be terminated for performance but he constantly whined that he couldn’t afford to do that or he’d miss deadlines (which they were anyhow), or he didn’t have the time to interview new people.  This list goes on as to the excuses he made for lacking courage and the guts to do the right thing for the rest of the team, for the company and frankly even for the individuals who weren’t up to snuff.

If you want to engage employees and build a strong team take a look in the mirror and ask you are yourself:

Are you thinking something is the problem (accountability for instance) when the real problem is you don’t have the fortitude to make the tough decisions and you build a list of excuses as to why you can’t?  

If you think that providing career development opportunities and stepping back and letting people do their job build loyalty and engagement then you’re missing the boat.  

Employee engagement is more about having the guts to do the right thing, even when it’s hard, then just treating people nice.  Guts is what it takes to build a successful team and keeping people engaged.

Most of us don’t have the guts to do the right thing… so we don’t take the right actions that will help us to build strong teams and engage our employees.   And still keep we wondering why we keep having the problems we do.