By Chad Kearns
This edition of Sparked was published and delivered on June 26, 2023.
Sparked is Fired Up! Culture’s bi-weekly email newsletter focused on what drives culture and engagement in the workplace. This newsletter is for leaders who are ready to get intentional about bringing their team together, building engagement, and harnessing the power of culture to drive results.
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Spark your Team by Simplifying for Summer
Wednesday marked the first official day of summer. And while that brings excitement for many, your team members are probably feeling full-than-usual calendars.
Work doesn’t stop.
Kids are out of school.
Social events crop up.
Extended vacations and weekend trips fill the schedule.
For many, summer gets really full, really quickly.
If you’re not feeling that yourself, it’s important to recognize that some of your team members are probably feeling that summer crunch.
Looking to build buy-in and engagement from your team? Simplify the summer months and watch how doing less can actually get more from your team.
Take Action and Simplify for Summer
- Ruthlessly Prioritize: Many of my coaching conversations over the last few weeks circled around prioritization. Helping your team members accurately prioritize what’s urgent and important against what’s not is one of the most important things you can do as a leader. Get familiar with the Eisenhower Matrix. Be ruthless here. Creating extra space by removing or delaying work when appropriate is a massive win for your team members.
- Meet Less: How can you and your team rely more heavily on asynchronous collaboration to still get the job done? Unproductive meetings are an energy drain and a major time constraint. We covered the impact of meeting fatigue in a recent newsletter and the point still stands. I’m willing to bet that the meetings you lead or contribute to can be more efficient, less frequent, or eliminated all together. Challenge yourself to consider how to accomplish the desired outcome of a meeting in a more efficient approach. Yes, easier said than done, but the payoffs are massive.
- Provide More “Normal Business Hours” Flexibility: Be clear on what needs to be accomplished, worry less about how and when it gets done. Especially for parents in the summer months, provide grace and flexibility around what hours they need to be online or on location. Removing the time constraints that many parents feel obligated to work under decreases that pressure. Again, value output and results instead of presence.
Why Simplifying for the Summer Drives Buy-in & Engagement
Simplifying for your team shows that you value their time and that you, as their leader, are invested in helping them balance all that work and life can bring.
When we talk about what leaders need to do to earn buy-in from their team members, it often comes down to a simple idea: people want to feel like they are valued and cared about.
Actively working to simplify shows you care.
As you show how you care, your team members will reciprocate that care for you, your team, and your organization.
Further Exploration on Simplifying for Summer
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