Building Ownership: Individual Connectedness!
By Dr. Jeffrey Magee, PDM, CSP, CMC
Part Four of an Eight Part Series
Executive Summary: People do not care how much you know, until they know how much you care. The leader’s ability to know and connect with individuals on their respective teams will give people a reason to assume ownership and make you look great or leave you hanging!
People assume ownership or those things (projects, tasks, people) that they have an affinity to and seem connected to at any level. As a leader, here are a few ways to determine whether you know enough about the individuals on your team to connect with them on their level.
- Can you write their resume for them?
- With that written, could you write deeper, a second resume with more information?
- Can you detail the jobs, experience, and totality of education (seminars, certificates, non-technical and technical courses, DVD-CDRom, Web-based classes attended, etc.) not on their resume that comprises the years they have been working?
- Can you detail outside interests that each employee (direct report) has past tense and present tense?
- Effective managerial-leaders get this and know this at a much more thorough level than most managers today. You can not connect with a person if you do not know what to and how to connect. From this insight you can give individuals reasons to want to associate with you, assimilate into a team, and assume ownership.
Research indicates that employees seek four distinct variables from the organization they wish to be with and lack of these four will drive them to seek employment at another venue. What do you do to address each?
- Appreciation
- Involved and Valued
- Meaningful work results
- Involved in operation
Another means to conveying to individuals from the outset of their impending employment with an organization the expectations of connectedness is to design an instrument that details the expected behaviors, actions, obligations, expectations of an individual on the team. An instrument that conveys the organizations mission and vision and projects from the outset, the level of ownership individuals are to be held to. This could be the organizations personnel assessment instrument or a separate instrument. Imagine the level of commitment, execution, and ownership individuals would demonstrate if such an instrument were presented and individuals signed them prior to joining a team?
The opportunity for such a dialogue before you even hire an employee would allow you to sense their level of connectedness to your team. This would also allow you the opportunity to generate a meaningful dialogue to learn what their values, mission, and beliefs are and to what level of ownership they have taken and thus demonstrate towards those variables.
Allowing individuals to demonstrate their uniqueness can be great, ensuring that individuals also see their connectedness to the whole and making sure an organization also shares and celebrates the organizations uniqueness will bring the team together in good times and in challenging times--witness SW Airlines, Toyota, Compaq and many other industry leaders that get it!
Excerpted from “Weekly Leadership Moment."