Title
Staff who do not take the initiative are very frustrating and time consuming to manage. The less initiative they take, the more time they spend unproductively and the more time you need to spend organising them and keeping tabs on where they have got to with their latest task. Staff who do not take the initiative are often anchors for team performance. You can literally feel your bonus shrinking the longer they remain dependent on you for instructions for every task.
I remember my first staff member who refused to take any ownership and expected me to tell him exactly what he should do through pretty much his entire day. Any problem he encountered, no matter how small, was my problem to resolve and over he came with it. Any decision needed, over he came. It was tiring.
4 Powerful Ways To Energise Staff Who Do Not Take The Initiative
- Use 4 actions to create psychological safety to encourage proactivity
- Align your actions to encourage staff taking the initiative
- 4 actions to develop confidence and capability in staff who do not take the initiative
- How to adapt your management style to encourage initiative
Luckily for me, after about a month, he was very happy to make decisions and take actions on his own initiative. This transformation happened because of the actions I took. These actions will work just as well for you as they did for me.
There are a number of reasons that stops staff taking the initiative. Some are environmental factors which the manager is in a great place to change. Others are to do with the individual themselves. Using a tailored management approach will encourage staff to be proactive.
For each powerful way to energise staff, I am giving you practical actions that you can put into practice immediately. Encouraging staff to be proactive is more a marathon than a sprint. It will take weeks at least. Don’t give up. Keep implementing these actions and you will see positive change happen.
Watch on YouTube
Listen on Podcast
4 actions to create psychological safety for staff who don’t take the initiative
If staff don’t feel safe in making decisions and taking action on their own initiative, they will not be proactive. They will keep asking you to make all the decisions and solve all the problems.
Some of the MANAGER actions that stops staff showing initiative include:
- Publicly criticising staff who are not proactive
- Punishing mistakes make
- Showing disappointment or frustration or anger towards staff who don’t do tasks exactly how the manager wants
- Giving detailed instructions for most tasks to staff who already know exactly what to do
These and similar actions stops staff being proactive. Try to avoid doing them.
The Conditions For Proactivity
Instead, what you should do to create psychological safety within the team are:
- Set expectations really clearly – in writing, verbally and through your subsequent decisions, actions and behaviours
- Give permission explicitly for staff to make certain decisions or take specific actions and focus on the outputs more than how they got there
- Create frameworks for staff to work within. Again focus on outputs more than how they work within the frameworks.
- Be achievement orientated or output orientated. If staff use a different approach than you would have done and it works well, praise them for it.
Create the conditions or the environment for staff to feel safe taking the initiative. You, as manager, create this environment through your permissions, expectations and actions.
2 – Align your actions to encourage staff taking the initiative
Once you have given permission, set expectations and created frameworks, your actions are the most important thing to stay conscious of and align carefully to what you have told your staff.
Employees always pay a lot more attention to what you do rather than what you say. Your actions are critical to transform staff who do not take the initiative.
Do not punish learning mistakes, small mistakes or staff doing things differently or not as well as you might.
When staff members does things wrong – and they will do – take them aside and in private teach and coach them so they know how to do it better next time. Never put them down or make them feel bad because they are taking the risk to try to learn and improve.
Pay a lot of attention to your decisions, actions and reactions. Pay a lot of attention to your non-verbal communication to team members. The more conscious you are of these, the better you will manage yourself. Demand similar behaviour from all team members towards each other
On the positive side, praise loudly, publicly and privately, all the team members who do show initiative. Try to praise at least once per day. Ideally several times a day.
Reward staff who take the initiative.
4 actions to develop confidence and capability in staff who do not take the initiative
A lot of the time individuals don’t take the initiative because they don’t feel confident doing a task or solving a problem. They might be scared of making mistakes, looking bad in front of colleagues, or worried about disappointing you or others.
Make the time to help them build their confidence and their expertise so they know they can do what you ask of them and do it well.
Here are 4 essential actions to achieve this:
- Do your best to match development opportunities to capabilities. The bigger the gap, the more support you should offer to provide a safety net.
- Make the time to teach and coach team members. Teach when they just don’t know. Coach when they know but lack confidence.
- Delegate problems instead of tasks so they build their planning, organising, decision making and problem solving skills. Start with small low impact problems and build from there.
- Use a lot of praise for showing initiative, for effective working practices and for achieving good results.
In short, help staff build skills and confidence and praise to reinforce good working practices
4 – how to adapt your management style to encourage initiative
Match your management style and approach to always push team members a little bit out of their comfort zone but not too far.
For example, if an employee does not take the initiative because they simply don’t know what to do, then delegate the task to the employee and give them a lot of detailed instructions to cover the next step or two of the task. Then next time they do this task, ask questions about what to do next before giving them any instructions. Then you could ask a lot of “what if” questions. i.e. what if xxx happened, what would you do? When you are happy they have a good level of expertise, you could start delegating problems rather than just tasks. You would coach more than teach when they struggled with the problem.
By taking these steps, you are putting more reliance, responsibility and ownership on them, step by step. Avoid taking this away from them. Don’t let them off the hook at any point, unless they truly are stuck.
Use a lot of praise when they do well, take sensible steps, solve problems and deliver results.
Start this process by focusing on small steps and problems. Then build gradually as they take more initiative. Be patient.
The more you take this action consistently across the whole team, the quicker and quicker everyone in the team will start showing initiative in everything they do.
in summary
As a manager, you have a lot of influence over staff who do not take the initiative. You create the environment in which they work. Focus on what you say and do to encourage staff to be proactive.
The hard part is taking the very first step. After this the following steps become a lot easier. You will need to be disciplined and keep focused on all these actions for several weeks before you start seeing noticeable results. Once you get some proactivity, the pace of improvement will keep increasing.
Don’t forget, managing teams effectively is a complex set of interdependent skills and approaches. 10 minutes gives you the basics. Much more depth is needed to enable you to get career changing results. Do visit us at enhance.training and take a look at the resources and courses to build your management expertise a lot quicker and push your management career forward a lot faster.
As are a reminder, the 4 powerful ways to energise employees who do not take the initiative are:
- Use 4 actions to create psychological safety
- Align your actions to encourage staff taking the initiative
- 4 actions to develop confidence and capability in staff who do not take the initiative
- How to adapt your management style to encourage initiative
If you have any questions on 4 powerful ways to energise staff who do not take the initiative, please email me at support@enhance.training and I will get back to you.
Build Management Expertise Quickly
Access all our prize winning management expertise to stand out from your peers, increase your confidence and credibility and take years off your future promotions.
We share a ton of content, e-books, help sheets and more to save you a ton of time and move your next pay rise much closer. Click the link to find out more about the Management Skills Hub
Navigation
