Last month operational excellence strategist, author, speaker and mentor Ishan Galapathy explained that disengaged employees are only seemingly disengaged – they’re actually waiting to be discovered, leveraged and motivated. Now he’s back to talk you through unlocking the potential of your team.
“We’ve worked really hard to reduce the actively disengaged category – the disgruntled, disruptive, disenchanted. Yet the fence-sitting, quietly quitting category has more or less remained the same over the years.
Even though we’ve seen fairly consistent upward trends in engaged employees, it’s the overwhelming volume of the disengaged workforce that signals our greatest source of untapped potential. While you might think these employees only turn up in body, leaving their brains behind, I’ve found that they’re waiting to be discovered, leveraged and motivated.
Below is a three-step framework to unlock the true potential of your team. You’ll be leveraging the few engaged members, involving the majority of fence-sitters and ignoring the disgruntled:
Build momentum
Leverage belief and the trust of your few diligent team members. They are willing to work hard but getting tired, overwhelmed and on the brink of quitting or falling into the disengaged category. Why? They’re the only ones who have to deploy initiatives, solve problems, generate new ideas and deliver the day-to-day results.
- What to do: Involve a few quietly quitting fence-sitters in improvement initiatives led by an engaged team member. Ensure the disengaged are involved in resolving matters – not just sitting idle, like those adding dead weight in our rowing team example.
Gain traction
Expedite results and help the team make faster progress. When everyone gets involved and the team starts to make progress, even the quiet ones will start to feel proud of the team’s contribution.
- What to do: If they follow any structured problem-solving methodologies, chances are over a two-to-three-month period they will deliver exceptional results, surprising even the engaged few. You’re starting to make a difference.
Expand followers
Don’t keep success a secret. Leverage every possible opportunity – townhall meetings, newsletters, bulletin boards, canteen posters, team meetings – to share it.
- What to do: Get the team to present as opposed to you, the leader. You will find progress and positivity is infectious. So, celebrate together. Soon, your quietly quitting fence-sitters cannot not become engaged. Then you can leverage them to lead more initiatives on their own, involving the next layer of fence-sitters.
The secret key to unlocking the full potential is…
Involving the quiet quitters. If you repeat the above cycle each quarter, within a year you’ll notice the ship is turning faster than you expected.
With the fence-sitters starting to become believers, teams will start feeling happier, more productive, better engaged and running on all six-cylinders – their full potential.
