PDF Summary:Inspire Greatness, by Matt Tenney

Many leaders struggle to engage their teams, despite understanding that engaged employees drive better business outcomes. In Inspire Greatness, Matt Tenney argues that the solution lies in shifting your focus from self-interest to the growth and well-being of your team members. He explains that leaders who prioritize their team's needs attract dedicated employees who are willing to go above and beyond.

Tenney identifies 14 universal workplace needs that research links to employee engagement and retention, from autonomy and belonging to trust and purpose. He outlines practical steps for meeting these needs through regular one-on-one meetings, soliciting team input, and creating feedback systems. You'll also learn how to implement a four-step engagement system that uses consistent feedback and leadership training to build lasting habits that foster a high-performing culture.

(continued)...

Practical Leadership to Encourage Excellence

Tenney says effective leadership training requires ongoing reinforcement and practice. This training is typically delivered in big portions, annually or biannually, and focuses on sharing information. This method is ineffective because it lacks a strategy to assist leaders in converting the new behaviors into long-term habits. For long-lasting and quantifiable improvement, you need a plan to follow up and convert knowledge into repeated actions that form fresh routines. Although big changes don’t happen quickly, by cultivating a new practice every fortnight for a year that helps motivate outstanding results in your teams, you could achieve amazing growth in your effectiveness as a leader.

The Importance of Repetition in Forming New Habits

Converting knowledge into repeated actions is crucial for forming long-term habits because repetition helps solidify new behaviors. When you consistently practice a specific leadership behavior in the same context, it gradually becomes automatic. This process shifts the behavior from a conscious effort to an ingrained habit, making it easier to maintain over time. By focusing on one new practice every fortnight, you give yourself enough time to internalize each behavior before adding another, ensuring that each new skill becomes a stable part of your leadership style.

Now, let’s explore some leader actions for helping individuals succeed and fostering team excellence.

Leader Actions for Individual Thriving

To assist team members in thriving, Tenney advises holding consistent one-on-one sessions. These quality conversations positively impact team members' careers and personal lives, helping you learn about their specific needs. Regular meetings also save time over the long term because they prevent small problems from becoming big ones. Additionally, they make managing more satisfying and gratifying.

If you're not already conducting one-on-one meetings, begin planning to meet with each team member individually at least once a month for at least 20 minutes. For a monthly meeting, I suggest dividing it in half. Half of the meeting can be about work performance, if needed. Use the remaining time to focus on assisting the team member's growth, both in their career and personal life.

The Pitfalls of One-on-One Meetings

While regular one-on-one meetings can be beneficial, they can also backfire if not handled well. If these meetings start to feel like mini performance reviews, team members may become less honest about their challenges and concerns. This can lead to a breakdown in trust and psychological safety, making it harder to address real issues. To avoid this, make sure your one-on-ones are focused on support and development, not just performance metrics. Create a safe space where team members feel comfortable sharing their struggles and aspirations. Remember, the goal is to help them grow, not to catch them making mistakes.

Leader Actions for Team & System Excellence

Tenney says leaders should encourage the team to contribute their thoughts and make them feel heard. This makes them feel they're contributing, and it helps the organization adapt to change and improve. Employees who interact with customers often have perspectives that leaders don’t. To help team members feel listened to, acknowledge their ideas and thank them for sharing. If you don’t implement a suggestion, explain why. This helps team members feel like their opinions matter, and it helps them understand the organization’s principles and strategy so they can offer better ideas in the future.

(Shortform note: In The Culture Map, Erin Meyer explains that in high power-distance cultures, the more senior person is expected to lead the conversation and make the decisions. Subordinates are generally reluctant to openly challenge, contradict, or even volunteer ideas that could be perceived as questioning the boss, especially in group settings, because doing so may be seen as disrespectful and can cause both the manager and the employee to lose face. In these cultures, asking team members who interact with customers to contribute their thoughts could actually reduce honest input.)

To encourage idea-sharing, request input from team members when you're attempting to find solutions or make enhancements. Ask something like, "What's your opinion on how we should approach this?" or “What improvements would you suggest?” When brainstorming in a group, have your team contribute their thoughts before you give yours. This prevents them from feeling pressured to concur with you. Also, make sure team members feel comfortable expressing their thoughts, even if those thoughts are critiques of management. One way to accomplish this is by publicly praising or rewarding people who share dissenting ideas.

How to Encourage Employees to Speak Up

In The Fearless Organization, Amy C. Edmondson argues that employees often hold back their ideas, questions, and concerns when they fear being seen as difficult or as troublemakers. This suggests that publicly praising or rewarding people who share dissenting ideas could backfire, as it might single them out as “troublemakers” and make others more reluctant to speak up. Instead, Edmondson suggests that leaders should create a climate where speaking up is a shared, everyday expectation rather than a rare, heroic act. This can be achieved by consistently inviting input from all team members, responding appreciatively to all contributions, and modeling openness to feedback and criticism.

The Four-Step Engagement System

Tenney outlines four steps to boost employee engagement. The first action is to remind leaders that their main role is to encourage their team to achieve greatness. The second part is to pinpoint the employee needs that most closely relate to engagement. The third step involves routinely collecting input on how effectively managers fulfill these requirements. The fourth step is to provide training to managers so they can take immediate action on employee feedback and develop habits that help them meet employee needs.

The Relevance of the Four-Step System in Non-Managerial Organizations

Tenney’s four-step system for boosting employee engagement may not be relevant for organizations that don’t have managers. For example, some companies have adopted a “teal” organizational structure, which is a self-managing system where employees have the autonomy to make decisions and take responsibility for their work. In these organizations, employees are trusted to manage themselves and work collaboratively without the need for traditional managers. In such a system, the four-step process of identifying employee needs, collecting feedback, and training managers to meet those needs may not be necessary or applicable.

Let’s examine how you can implement the engagement system in your workplace.

System Mechanics & Implementation

Enabling Consistent Implementation with Technology

Tenney argues that technology can automate leadership development processes and increase their scalability. It can include all the surveys, feedback notifications, and training videos, letting you rapidly reply to input with training in leadership that motivates leaders to act on the most effective behaviors to foster high levels of employee engagement. You can build a sustainable, high-performing culture with a greater influence on the people you help.

Mapping Social Networks to Scale Leadership Development

In The Hidden Power of Social Networks, Rob Cross and Andrew Parker explain how organizations can use technology to map informal networks and identify key influencers. By analyzing data from email, meetings, and other collaborative tools, companies can pinpoint central connectors, brokers, and boundary spanners who play crucial roles in information flow and innovation. This approach allows organizations to focus leadership development and coaching efforts where they will have the greatest impact, enabling scalable leadership support that can drive cultural change across the entire company.

Virtuous Cycle & Impact of Consistent Use

Tenney says consistent feedback and action foster a positive feedback loop that increases trust and engagement. A virtuous cycle is a positive feedback loop where employees give feedback, feel heard, and see action taken on their suggestions. This boosts their confidence in the leaders and their willingness to provide more input over time.

To establish a positive feedback loop, use concise, targeted questionnaires every other week. Surveys should include a question or two about how effectively managers fulfill a specific employee need.

(Shortform note: This approach may not work for very small teams, where anonymity is hard to guarantee. In this case, employees may feel uncomfortable providing honest feedback, which could disrupt the positive feedback loop. For example, if a team of three people is asked to rate how well their manager fulfills a specific need, it’s likely the manager will be able to identify who gave which response. This lack of anonymity could discourage employees from providing honest feedback, undermining the effectiveness of the feedback loop.)