Want Engaged Team Players? Ask!
If you want the people on your team to be engaged and to work together— Well, don’t ask them to be engaged. And don’t ask them to be “team players”? Either of these is likely to accomplish the opposite of what you want.
Do ask, however. Ask hard questions, hard for you, not necessarily for them. Ask the question that are hard because they humiliate you. Ask questions that make you look like you can’t do it alone. And listen to the answers. Most of us don’t listen enough. And that’s the power of asking.
In the past several days, off the top of my head I can think of four different occasions that revealed how wise this is. Some occasions reveal how wise it was to ask and listen. Some, unfortunately, reveal how foolish it was to ignore the answer, or even not to ask in the first place. If you look around, you’ll probably discover the same thing, each and every day.
For example, last night my 7-year-old daughter wanted to watch the Care Bears video. She went to the collection to find it. She came back with one that was not Care Bears. She can read the labels, but she didn’t seem to know what this one was. Maybe it was dim lighting, or maybe she just didn’t remember having watched the video when she was younger. It was the “bus stop” video that comes with some JumpStart-brand educational software.
It wasn’t the video she said she wanted, but she popped it in and watched it and enjoyed it. In other words, it doesn’t matter that the solution she ended up with wasn’t what she wanted, she was on-board with it anyhow, because she got to choose.
If you want your team to be passionate about their work, if you want them to be on-board, just let them choose. Don’t tell them what to do. You don’t have the answers. Your job is to have the questions. So ask them, and then listen.
-TimK
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Comments
Yes, Jim, I agree. Our first reaction—mine especially—is to tell everyone what I think.
I like how Michael Cloud put it. Of course, he was talking about political persuasion, but persuasion is persuasion. I don’t have the exact audio at my fingertips. I believe it was from his “freedom store” speech. It goes something like this:
Let’s say someone states an opinion, a vocal opinion that rubs you the wrong way. Here’s how you respond. First, you say, “Ooh! Tell me more!” After they tear into your heart a second time, then, and only then, you can say, “Ah! Tell me more!” Finally, they finish tromping all over your sacred beliefs, and you can at last tell them, “Oh… Tell me more!” By that time maybe they’ll have talked enough and you’ll have heard enough that you can actually have a constructive conversation with them in language they can relate to, and maybe then you’ll actually have a chance of persuading them to come a little further to your point of view.
Okay. I really butchered Michael Cloud’s exact language. But I trust I still got across his point. 
-TimK
Yes, one of the easiest ways to get someone to do what you want is to get them thinking that they came up with the idea. Unfortunately, ego being what it is, not a lot of people are willing to let others take the credit. I’ve certainly been guilty of this fault.
Good reminder, Tim. Thanks.