Engage and empower your people to improve their execution skills

If so, those are just a few examples showing that you feel engaged to your organisation.
Employee engagement is a concept that defines whether your people feel committed to the success of your organisation and whether they can drive the organisation forward.
This particular human capital issue has remained on the top priority list for many companies for several years in a row and it is no surprise that almost every company I know is working towards improving employee engagement.
As employee engagement is critical for any organisation’s performance and success, one of the most determining factors in actualising employee engagement falls undeniably under the line manager’s responsibility.
In part, I’d say that only when employees realise that their line managers and their companies genuinely want to invest in enhancing their skills so that they can maximise their potential and fulfil the organisational direction will they eventually develop engagement towards their companies.
In fact, according to researchers from the American Management Association and Japan’s highly recognised consulting firm BCon, people management is a skill that is strongly essential for line managers to have in order to build employee engagement that will lead to long-term business sustainability.
To make this easier to remember, at APMGroup we call this technique the “E3” – engage, empower and execute.
In detail, engagement is the skill to develop trust, credibility and eventually imprint the employees with the feeling of being on the same team and having the same goals, thus letting them know how their performance and contribution matter to the organisation’s success.
Empowerment, on the other hand, is to let your people showcase their potential without constant and thorough monitoring, but rather to guide them with coaching or mentoring.
Lastly, when people feel engaged and empowered, it will build the sense of ownership in executing their jobs, which will require constant constructive feedback to inform them of their strength, which they should maintain, and their weakness or blind spot, which they should be working on to develop further.
In practice, however, I find that to successfully enhance one’s capabilities, there are several more requirements.
For example, it is necessary for line managers to understand that this is their responsibility, not just HR’s, to develop their people. Thus, their mind-sets as well as their actions need to be transformed and shifted accordingly.
Also, they need to understand that when change is the new normal, to equip someone solely with knowledge will not be adequate for the constant changes happening.
Instead, they need to know how to immediately put that acquired knowledge into practice and essentially turn them into skills.
Lastly, they should be reminded that these days there are numerous learning and development interventions that they can certainly mix and match for the utmost benefit.
Choose them well and the results will turn out right.
So, whatever development tools you decide to implement on your people and whether you’re choosing to train or coach them, the E3 technique can be implemented to ensure that once you engage and empower your people to the right level, their execution will be actualised and your organisational success will be within reach.

Karin Posapiwatana is the executive consultant of APMGroup’s leadership and talent development business unit. He can be reached at [email protected] or www.facebook.com/apmgroupthai.