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Transcript
Last time we started talking about why you want your people to take ownership of their work, what that means, and we started off with one very important step that you can take to help your people take ownership, and that step was to build the right culture.
In this episode, we’re going to talk about some more steps that you can take to help your team take ownership of their work, because, again, when they take ownership, they are taking a personal interest, a personal vestment in their work, and then they’re going to put more into it, you’re gonna get better results, and so on.
Model ownership
One of the most important steps that you can take to get your people to take ownership is to model ownership yourself. If you don’t take ownership, why should they?
As a leader, people watch your actions for what you do. You model the behavior you get. It doesn’t matter what you say you want people to do or what your values are in your company or the goals that are supposedly important.
If you don’t model it, if you don’t model those are important, if you don’t live those values out, if you don’t show people what you want people to do with your actions, then people won’t believe what you say.
In fact, I’m in the process of reading a book about Netflix and its culture (No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention). And the chapter I’m in is talking about their vacation policy. They have an unlimited vacation policy. You don’t have to get all this permission. You just take your vacation.
And one of the things the founder said, or one of the founders said was that the reason sometimes those policies fail… and there’s different aspects to it that he leads up to getting to that policy… but one reason it fails when you try to implement it is that the leader doesn’t model the policy. They say you can take this time off, but then they don’t take time off themselves. And what that tells their team is that though they have this supposed unlimited policy, it’s not for real because it’s not being modeled.
And if the team leader, gave an example of a leader of a part of a department or a team, working all the time, they very much didn’t take the vacations. And so it told their team not to as well, because they felt like if they took more vacation than the leader, then it might show them as less of a hard worker, or not as part of the team as other people.
As a leader, if you want your people to own their work, to take ownership of it, then you have to model that yourself. Own the work as your own. Take a personal interest in it. Go above and beyond in it. Initiate. Be innovative.
When mistakes happen and problems happen, don’t blame. Don’t say it’s somebody else’s fault. Take ownership of it and work to solve it. If you want other people to take ownership, you have to start with you doing it.
Give purpose in the work they are doing
Next, to help your team take ownership,
you need to give purpose in the work they’re doing.
We’ve talked about this a couple episodes ago about giving purpose, but to kind of refresh, giving purpose is really why it’s important, the why of the work, what you’re doing.
And when you give work to people, or you can think about yourself, if someone gives work to you, you see no purpose in it. You see no reason for doing it. It’s just work to do work. You don’t have much motivation to do it because it seems pointless.
It’s the same with your employees. If you don’t give a purpose in the work a why, if it just seems pointless, it’s hard for them to take ownership in their work. Make sure that your people see the why and the purpose behind what they’re doing. And that can be a step in helping your team take ownership in what they do.
Involve them in the process
Next, involve them in the process. Involve them in the planning and the creation of what they’re doing.
You may have heard of Jocko Willink and Leif Babin and… because they have a very popular book called Extreme Ownership. Good book. I recommend it.
I believe it was a podcast that Leif Babin was in. It was a video that I saw. I think it was one of the podcasts. Maybe it was just a video he did talking with someone or whatever it was.
Either way, he was talking about their time in Afghanistan when they were doing missions, and he said that when Willink would give a mission that had to be done, he wouldn’t come about with this plan he already created and that this person’s doing this and this team’s doing this and this team’s doing this.
No, he would let them plan the mission. And the thing is, when they were part of planning it, there was so much more ownership from them in the mission. Think about you when you give people tasks or projects they’re supposed to do.
If you just give them details, step-by-step, everything they have to do, there’s not going to be much ownership in that because there’s nothing, no decisions, no part of them in the process. But when you involve them in the process, in the planning, the decisions and things of that nature, when they are a part of it, there’s more buy-in, there’s more ownership in it because they’ve been part of it.
As much as you can, when you’re doing the planning, when you’re discussing with them, involve them in it, so that there’s more buy-in and ownership with it.
Give autonomy in their work
Next is giving autonomy in their work. When you are giving a project, when you’re giving a task, there are set expectations that people must fulfill, whether it’s established beforehand or you work with the person to establish them, there’s probably guidelines and parameters that the person has to operate in. But within those, you want to give autonomy in their work.
They have the what of what they’re supposed to be doing that’s established, and you let them work on the how. They can make decisions within it and choosing how to do this or making decisions within the work that’s related to what they’re doing.
When you give people autonomy in their work, there’s more ownership in it because they’re making decisions within it. And it’s also really motivating because again, they’re taking ownership. They’re able to take ownership of decisions and choices within the work they’re doing.
Daniel Pink in his book, Drive, even talks about how autonomy is one of the main driving forces of motivation for humans. When you give a list of things that people have to do step by step and there’s no choice in it that they can choose of what to do in it, it’s just prescribed everything for them, there’s not going to be much ownership in that because there’s no decisions, there’s no choice for them.
They’re just having to follow a list. They’re just doing what somebody else told them to do. And if it fails, then it’s easy for them to blame somebody because they were just doing what they’re told.
Make sure expectations are clear. Make sure they have the support and training they need. Make sure the guidelines and parameters for the work are there, but then give autonomy in the work they do and it will help build ownership for the work that they’re doing.
Help your team take ownership
Ownership is important.
We’ve talked about building a great culture. We’ve talked about giving purpose. We’ve talked about the importance of modeling it, involving them in the process, giving autonomy. Do those things and it will help your people take ownership of the work that they’re doing.
And if you want to learn more about this topic or even other topics on leadership, you can go to the website, theexceptionalskills.com. I’ll see you next time.
