Leadership Approach, Motivation, and Engagement

Motivating and engaging our staff is a critical success factor for Senior Directors. These behaviors help us ensure we have high-performing teams, keep staff retention high, and align our teams to our common goals. A key component of this is self-awareness of our leadership approaches and how that may (or may not) motivate and engage the members of our team. This practice activity will have you examine your leadership approach and the impact that it can have on your team members. We will also be using this information to kick off our live session discussion on this competency.

compose the following three sections and articulate your thinking.

Part I

To work this section, you can either use results from an assessment you completed previously (ideally in the last five years), such as StrengthsFinder, DISC, EQI, etc., OR you can complete this free online assessment from Mind Tools.

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/leadership-style-quiz.htmLinks to an external site.

Once you have reflected on your previous assessment results or completed the MindTools assessment, address the following questions:

• • Which assessment did you complete?
  • What were your results (top strengths, DISC style, etc.)?
  • What do the results tell you about your ideal leadership approach? Put another way, how do the results inform you to be the best leader you can be?

Part II

• Revisit the Employee Engagement article from GallupLinks to an external site., an industry leader in assessing employee engagement
• Links to an external site.Continue your response from above by adding thoughts on the following:
  • What were your key takeaways from Gallup's views on employee engagement? Do they complement your historical perspective, or do they add new thoughts?
  • Think of a time recently when you wanted to motivate and engage your team. In a sentence to two, describe what you did to engage one or more team members. If you were to go back, what might you do differently to motivate them now that you have this information from Gallup?

Part III

Please take a minute to reflect on your responses in Parts I and II. Last respond to the following applications:

• We have very diverse teams with different backgrounds, perspectives, and styles. How can you intentionally use empathy to understand your team better and adjust your style to what might better motivate or engage them?
• What have you done to get to know your team and understand their uniqueness, diversity, and backgrounds? How does your leadership style help or hurt in these situations? How does this play out in both individual as well as team settings?

Submit your responses to the seven questions as a written or video response with the Submit button at the top of the page.