• Caring:  Show them you truly and sincerely care
• Challenging:  Make sure they feel intellectually/professionally challenged
• Noticing: Keep an eye on what they are doing by offering real-time feedback
• Appreciating:  Demonstrate your appreciation when deserved
• Going to bat:  Support them broadly and often with others

IT managers interested in developing and maintaining highly engaged teams should consider the following.

Caring

To make sure employees feel you TRULY care about them, find some time when you can give your undivided attention and engage them in a dialog around these two questions:

• How are you doing?
• How can I help/support/enable you?

Challenging

Make sure employees feel challenged by involving them in dialog to understand what they want and how bad they want it.  Then use this insight to:

• Push them (nicely) to learn/do new things that align with your business needs and theirs.
• Give them tough assignments
• Involve them in new projects
• Assign them tasks beyond their comfort zones
• Ask tough questions to make them think
• Provide them with time/space to be challenged

Noticing

In order to notice them, you should pay attention to what they are doing and offer real-time feedback regarding the good and the not-so-good things you notice.  This is basically the “One Minute Manager” approach.  This action area is closely related to the “Caring” one.

Positive feedback:

• Say “good/great” job while you pat them on the back privately and publicly
• Issue iKudos™: use private (no cc:) and/or public (with cc:)  emails IMs, TMs, etc.
• Look them in the eye with a smile and wink of an eye (a powerful non-verbal)
• Give them the “thumbs up” sign

Non-Positive Feedback:

• Ask what happened? (use a “Seek to understand then to be understood” mode)
• Discuss alternative approaches and possible outcomes
• Discuss possible consequences if necessary
• Turn it to a learning moment as often as possible

Appreciating

A lot of IT people have to do crazy stuff.  They work long and sometimes way off-hours.  Showing your sincere appreciation can become a powerful engagement tool.  Humans feel much better when they go all out and someone acknowledges us for doing so with sincere and “significant” appreciation such as:

• Buying them (and significant others) nice lunch, dinner, etc.
• Giving them time off
• Letting them come in late
• Paying an unexpected bonus
• Giving unexpected raises

Going to Bat for Them

You could call this a form of appreciation.  This is when you show support for them in front of peers, subordinates, superiors or even customers.  Here are some examples:

• Let others know how good they are
• Put them in for a pay raise, extra bonus pay, award, etc.
• Stick up for them in a meeting or email discussion

Those are a few ideas to help you build and sustain a highly engaged IT team.  The key to this whole thing is honesty and sincerity.

Keep in mind that you cannot fake these actions or they can back-fire like a bad Chinese Firecracker — OUCH!

The BEST is Yet to Come!

Epi Torres, CEO