Right Fit Leading: Leaders, What About Engaging People?

I just read an article about a leader who uses a 3Cs rule where his results drive his decisions, his confidence leads to conviction in his approach, and he clearly communicates his direction and vision.

Those are all great characteristics for a leader, but what about people and engagement? Leaders are responsible for people and they should engage with those people to get things done. The success of those engagements can build trust, shared understanding, motivation, loyalty, performance, and accountability.

You can be successful with any leadership style. There may be challenges or obstacles along the way, but people very often find a way to survive and even prosper. Where they cannot, they often move on to another career.

I offer you two approaches that can be useful here (there are more for the asking).

• Use Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) Theory. LMX helps leaders examine their leadership style in terms of individual relationships instead of dealing with entire groups as if every person were the same.
• Manage leadership controversies. Understand and address the challenges of (1) money as a motivator, (2) the ways in which intrinsic and extrinsic motivation work, (3) the causal relationship between job satisfaction and job performance, and (4) whether to use participative decision making to motivate employees. NOTE: Refers to Latham’s four leadership controversies.

You can build a great organization that people want to be part of for a very long time. Leaders who engage and bond with their people have an opportunity to be rewarded with superior performance, outstanding motivation, and loyalty. My recommendation is to make interacting with your people your priority at all times.