Leaders’ and managers' roles in engaging talent are crucial and multifaced. Effective leadership ensures engagement strategies align with the organization's goals and fosters a culture of commitment and motivation. Leaders and managers must advocate for engagement and actively participate in creating and sustaining engagement initiatives and behaviors.

Engaging talent requires intentionally crafted processes and employee experiences, clear communication, and a deep understanding of individual and organizational needs. Providing regular and constructive feedback, enhancing leadership effectiveness, and improving adaptability to rapid business environment changes are essential. Additionally, supporting employees' mental health and well-being and mitigating leadership burnout are crucial for sustained engagement.

Perspectives from Thought Leaders on How to Engage Talent

To provide actionable insights on this crucial topic, we have gathered perspectives from thought leaders who have successfully led their organizations through engaging talent. Their advice highlights the essential strategies and approaches leaders and managers can employ to ensure their teams are highly engaged and motivated.

Anthony Calleo
Founder & Chief Employee Experience Officer at Calleo EX

Knowing your team's and, for that matter, the organization's "ground truth" is vital to shaping your talent engagement strategy. You must fully understand your employees' needs. Create a dialogue with your team. Listen to and hear your employees. Know what they are thinking and feeling. It's about employee listening. As a leader, your role in engaging talent through employee listening is essential. Demonstrating that you value their input, opinions, and experiences will foster an environment where they feel heard and respected. Employees who feel listened to and understood are likelier to be involved, motivated, and committed to their work. Employee listening can take many forms, including surveys, focus groups, one-on-one meetings, and open-door policies. You will gain valuable insights, improve communication, and create a more inclusive and supportive work environment by actively listening to your employees.

Open communication, a fundamental aspect of employee listening, catalyzes positive change. By nurturing a culture that values and welcomes feedback, you create an environment where employees feel safe to express their opinions and ideas, free from the fear of negative consequences. This culture in the workplace stimulates employees to share their creativity and innovation, fostering a more vibrant and thriving organization. Implement formal feedback mechanisms such as surveys, suggestion boxes, or regular upward performance reviews. These channels allow employees to provide feedback on their experiences, challenges, and suggestions for improvement.

Listening to your employees is about more than just identifying organizational issues and challenges impacting employee engagement. It's about taking a proactive responsibility as a leader. By actively addressing these issues and implementing changes based on employee feedback, you demonstrate a commitment to creating a more positive and supportive work environment. This proactive approach is a crucial driver of higher employee satisfaction and retention. It reflects your unwavering commitment to their well-being and success and instills a sense of responsibility and commitment in leaders. Remember, employee listening is about knowing the "ground truth." Any workplace engagement strategy must be informed by understanding employees' thoughts and feelings.

Clint Kofford
President at LeaderWorks

When it comes to engaging talent, it’s all about open, transparent conversations between managers and employees. This means creating the space where employees feel psychologically safe to discuss important topics like work-life balance, flexibility, and career growth. Research has shown that since the pandemic these areas are specific drivers of meaningful work for employees. Employees also need to feel that they can speak up about how their job is structured (think pay, remote, hybrid, etc.) and how their current role aligns with their personal and professional goals. Leaders should encourage these discussions regularly (not just once or twice a year), fostering an environment where employees feel heard and valued. This not only boosts engagement but also helps retain talent by aligning individual goals with organizational needs. It's about building trust through transparency, consistency, and ensuring employees know they have some freedom to shape their roles in ways that motivate them to bring their best selves to work.

Another critical element is encouraging teams to have clear personal and team purpose statements. As a leader ensuring you understand the purpose of your team and the unique purposes of your individual team members gives you additional influence to tie the work back to what matters most to these individuals and teams. By developing and leveraging purpose statements, leaders can help employees see the broader impact of their efforts, and tailor projects and work accordingly. When people understand how their day-to-day actions contribute to something bigger, it fuels engagement, commitment, meaning, and a sense of belonging. Purpose acts as a North Star, guiding employees through their work, especially during challenging times. Leaders should regularly revisit these purpose statements in team meetings, ensuring they are more than just words on a wall—they need to be living, breathing parts of the work culture—and how a manager leads.

Lastly a few other hacks for managers and organizations to help engage talent and help them find meaningful work.

1. One common challenge in keeping employees engaged is ineffective meeting management. Poorly structured or unnecessary meetings can drain energy and reduce productivity, leading to disengagement. The solution is simple but powerful: run meetings with purpose. Every meeting should have a clear agenda, outcomes, and involve only those who need to be there. With Zoom, Teams, and the democratization of meetings, not everyone needs to be in the room (virtual or physical).
   
   
2. Another opportunity is recognizing employees in ways that are meaningful to them. Recognition isn’t one-size-fits-all—leaders should take the time to understand what kind of recognition resonates with each employee, whether it's public praise, a private note, or opportunities for growth. This is nothing new and has always been an age old opportunity. However, in light of the increase in remote and hybrid work and given the speed most organizations operate at, this is something that often gets overlooked and pushed aside.
   
   
3. Finally, organizations must recognize that the quality of their managers is critical. Investing in leadership development and ensuring managers have the tools and resources to do their jobs well is essential, especially in the face of growing workplace challenges. The demands on managers has been steadily growing with more and more self-service tools and expectations heaped on managers. Its ok for managers to ask for help and investment from the organization. Without the right leadership, even the best engagement initiatives will fall short.

Other Articles in the Series on How to Engage Talent

Gaining impactful advice from leaders and managers is crucial, but it is also essential to consider other aspects of engagement. This includes understanding the lessons learned in engaging talent and recognizing the critical cultural elements needed to support this process. These perspectives offer a comprehensive framework for organizations aiming to engage their talent successfully.

Enabling Practices and Resources

Advanced Coaching and Mentoring Practices that Build Structured and Reliable Programs to Enhance Performance.

Embedding coaching and mentoring into operations to guide employees at all levels to support more objective identification of individual strengths and areas of development.

Incorporating Coaching and Mentoring into Performance Management to Better Engage Employees in their Own Performance.

Integrating managerial feedback and coaching with the skills practiced by both external and internal coaches through training, employee feedback, and rewards practices.

Measuring the Impact of Coaching and Mentoring for Tracking Action and Success.

Identifying the most appropriate and useful metrics through careful assessment of the purpose of coaching and mentoring and reliance on best practices in process and outcome measurement.