Leadership Best Practices: 4 Ways to Engage and Motivate Employees

Strong leaders know how to engage and motivate employees. They focus on each individual employee to keep them motivated to accomplish goals. This is done through:

1. Focusing on continuous improvement in how the work gets done

Employees want to find better ways to get their work done. Leaders can enable for regular and continuous improvement through providing employees opportunities to take on process improvement initiatives. Consider arranging for regular sub-teams of employees to take on process improvement initiatives within the department. Provide them support and resources needed to be successful in finding better ways to get the work accomplished.

2. Ensuring that each individual team member is using his/her particular strengths

The best team is a diverse team, with a variety of experiences, skills, and expertise. Leaders can nurture individual team member strengths by providing opportunities for employees to utilize those strengths. If there is a problem to be solved, assign those individuals with necessary skills to tackle that problem and develop a solution. If a project requires a particular skillset, seek out those employees with that skillset and enable them to take on a leadership role on that initiative.

3. Enabling for professional and personal development opportunities

Delegate tasks, projects and other initiatives that are challenging for employees to enable them to continue to develop professionally and personally. Working on process improvement initiatives would certainly qualify as a great opportunity for employees to develop their skills. Leaders may also provide opportunities to lead team meetings, facilitate brainstorming sessions or for an employee to work on an initiative in another department.

4. Ensuring alignment of department work with divisional and organizational goals

Be sure that employees understand how the work they do contributes to the divisional and organizational goals. Share a vision that enables them to see how they contribute to the greater good of the organization. Don’t just assign a task; share how that task contributes to meeting the organization’s strategic goals.

What are your best practices for keeping employees engaged and motivated?