A couple of months ago, I was invited to be part of a panel at our contact center operations leadership summit. It was a wonderful experience! I was especially delighted to see former contact center representatives, whom I’ve met during my rotation in 2018, who are now in leadership roles.
Me and two other leaders from different areas of the organization got an opportunity to answer questions in front of hundreds of supervisors. One of the questions I was asked was:
“How do you stay engaged and motivated for your team?”
My response boiled down into three D’s – Disconnect, Development, and Drive.
#1 Disconnect
The first ‘D’ is disconnect. To me, disconnecting means making a point to disengage from work—physically, mentally, and emotionally. We all get to play different roles as adults—we’re colleagues, bosses, entrepreneurs, coaches, spouses, parents, sons, daughters, and role models. We need to understand the distinctions of the different roles and we need to play those roles well without the (negative) influences of the other roles affecting the other.
It’s important to know how to turn off your alter ego at work—be what you are outside of work—and then be back (at work) refreshed and engaged. (Todd Herman talked about this extensively in his book, “The Alter Ego Effect: The Power of Secret Identities to Transform Your Life.”)
Do an activity you enjoy doing or relaxes you. Activities can be as engaging as training for a sport or competition, or as low-key as reading or taking a solid nap. What you do when you disconnect is up to you!
Back in 2004, I got to serve our organization’s branch operations network as a field trainer and test specialist. Part of my job we take calls from branch offices around the world. We help them with technical and procedural issues. It was important work, but doing this for long stretches can feel repetitive and exhausting.
Fortunately, there’s another part of this role that helped me and my colleagues ‘disconnect’ from the day-to-day phone support of the job. Every other month, we get to travel to different part of the U.S. and even overseas. We would visit existing branch offices to do training and procedural reviews, and we also supported the opening of new offices by training their leadership team and their staff.
The two totally opposite functions of this job—sitting at our desks on the phones and being on-the-go traveling—helped make us be fully engaged with both functions of our job. When we get back to the office to do the phone support, we’re refreshed and energized to take calls and help solve issues over the phone.
Not all jobs have that type of dynamic, so as leaders we need to be intentional in disconnecting from our jobs to ensure we’re refreshed and energized to remain engaged. It can be as simple as leaving your work phone in a place in your house you don’t have easy access to. If you work from home, be sure to do a process of logging out and leaving your laptop and other work devices in your home office.
Another good activity while disconnecting is working out. Some would argue that this can also fall under the next “D” – Development – and wouldn’t disagree. Being the best version of ourselves physically is always a good thing. It’s much easier to be an engaged leader if we’re physically healthy.
#2 Development
Find time to sharpen your skills and gain new ones by constantly engaging in development opportunities.
Researchers in the 1970s, Richard Ryan PhD and Edward Deci PhD, talked about the Self-Determination Theory (SDT). SDT is a framework that identifies these three main drivers of motivated behavior: Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness.
Competence pertains to a level of mastery that makes an individual feel motivated and engaged because they know that their effective and can deliver a net positive impact into the work they do.
Development = Learning
We need to be learning leaders. We can’t just rely on what we know now and expect to take our team (and our own careers) to the next level. We are fortunate to have access to an enormous number of books and materials authored or based on leaders from the past and the present.
Read. Read. Read.
A new book costs would cost around $20. Not a bad price to pay for years (or even decades) of experience, research, and knowledge from the brightest thought leaders. On average, I read one book a week. As you can imagine, it can get pricey. Unless I wanted to read a new release, I try my best to buy used books.
I get my used books from Thriftbooks.com. You can get a book, that would usually cost $29 brand new, as low as $3.99 used from this website. You can also earn rewards for free books as you build your library by using the website.
(WARNING – SHAMELESS PLUG] Click HERE to sign-up, so we both get free books!
Okay. I’m obviously a book nerd, but you can still learn from formal classes, conferences, videos, and from mentors.
#3 Driver
To remain engaged and have the drive for your team, you need know what the drivers of your business are. Is it sales? Portfolio growth? A certain service-level agreement (SLA)? What are the key performance indicators (KPIs)? Or depending on the type of business you run, you may have to know your key risk indicators (KRIs). Whatever the driver is, know it and understand the factors affect it.
To be fully aware of the drivers of your business, you’ll need to have a solid means to monitor the progress like a dashboard or a daily status report. Remember the quote from Peter Drucker, “You can’t improve what you can’t measure.”
When you’re aware of your drivers, you can easily communicate the implications your team’s efforts have on the ‘bottom line’ of your business. This is a big factor in ensuring your constant engagement with your team and the business your team is part of.
Most of us don’t have that ‘master switch’ that activates our engagement with our team. The best we can do is to place ourselves into situations and prepare ourselves mentally, physically, and emotionally, so that our environment and our mindset are conducive for us to be fully engaged at our work, our personal life, and for the folks that rely on us as leaders.
Crowdsourcing FTW
How do you stay engaged and motivated for your team? Do you agree with my “Three D’s”? I’d love to hear how you stay engaged and motivated. Please share in the comments below.