Mike Clark's Business Bites: People are capable of so much more

How much treasure could you have buried at work? Photo / Unsplash

How engaged is your team? How do you measure engagement and are you tapping in to the team's full potential?

Have you ever witnessed people watching a sport they are passionate about? Being a country that is crazy about rugby, one does not have to look far to see the energy, enthusiasm and passion people display when they are committed to a team.

From stadium seats to pubs, to sofas in lounges, it is easy to witness people leaping to their feet and cheering on their team (and likewise shouting abuse at the referee when they disagree with decisions). They know the score, they know how the game is played and they passionately want to win.

People like winning.

As a business do you believe you are getting the best out of all your team members? How do you measure the levels of engagement for your team? This is such an important topic a multiplicity of tools has been created to help businesses get a better feel for the level of their team's engagement.

Gallup really brought this to the fore with its excellent study that defined just 12 questions to accurately measure engagement. Its book 12 is well worth reading. Recently the need to have a constant pulse check on a team's vibe has led to apps being created - these include Officevibe and Tinypulse for ongoing measurement and feedback.

In the fluidity and busyness of business it can be easy to see your people as a resource and to treat them more like a machine and a profit centre than a person. The biggest danger of doing this is you significantly reduce your potential return as well as damaging the levels of loyalty and commitment your people show in return.

Early on in my career, when I was a factory foreman, I remember learning this lesson in a hard and humbling way. In Africa (where I'm from) staff levels tend to be very high as it is easier to find people than machinery. I was looking for somebody to manage a project and after many futile months one of my colleagues suggested I asked one of the older press brake operators to help.

I was a bit flabbergasted as I had always just seen this team member as an operator who produced steel hinges and, while very good at his job, I did not see him as capable of much else. My colleague informed me that outside of work that man was the treasurer for the local football club, which has thousands of members, he was a church elder, he was chairman for a number of community groups, and he would be more than capable of managing my small project.

I started to seek out what else people could do, to find out what they wanted to do, what they were capable of doing, and the results amazed me.

A large part of my calling to my current line of work is my deep belief that people are capable of so much more if they are given a chance and the tools. When we seek to help our team realise and reach their potential we can tap into a passionate energy that exceeds our wildest imaginations.

How much treasure could you have buried at work?

• Mike Clark is director and lead trainer and facilitator at Think Right business training company.