Collaborating for Buy-in
What is employee buy-in and why does it matter for strategic leadership?
"Employee buy-in refers to employees' commitment to your company’s strategic goals. It’s critical to strategy execution and can profoundly impact organizational performance." (HBS)
Buy-in and Intrinsic Motivation
Why else does employee buy-in matter? Buy-in is connected to intrinsic motivation. It is one of the three pillars of the Cognitive Evaluation Theory of Motivation. If employees are bought in they have purpose and connection to their work. They will do the work for the sake of doing the work because they are intrinsically motivated.
As leaders, we cannot motivate as a verb. We can focus on strategic actions to get employees bought into the work they are doing. These actions connect and inspire purpose to hopefully ignite our employees' intrinsic motivation.
Buy-in and Engagement
Leaders also need to focus on getting employees' buy-in for engagement. Specifically, activities to drive buy-in on:
The work
The company's vision and goals
Processes
Decisions
Changes
When employees are bought in or committed they are engaged.
Gallup defines employee engagement as “the involvement and enthusiasm of employees in their work and workplace.” Top quartile employee engagement levels show 23% greater profitability and 18% higher profitability in sales (Gallup’s employee engagement research).
Employee engagement is a key signal of high performance.
Actions to Develop Buy-in
What are the strategic actions you can take as a leader to develop employee buy-in?
For this let's turn to a reliable leadership framework: situational leadership. Actions to develop buy-in are in the consensus-building, selling, or asking category of situational leadership. Your team members need to have enough information or skills to discuss the situation at hand. You also need to plan to take the time to have a complete discussion, ask questions, and listen.
The strategic actions you take as a leader to drive employee buy-in are to:
1. Ask questions
2. Actively listen
3. Share observations to confirm understanding
4. Answer questions and provide information
Through these actions, leaders are looking to align on a shared understanding of the current situation and next steps. Discuss and explore until your team members are bought-in enough to be emotionally committed to the work, task, project, or change.
Resources to Collaborate for Buy-in
Read more about intrinsic motivation and consider the impact of collaborating for buy-in.
Explore Situational Leadership for tactics to collaborate towards buy-in.
Watch our podcast on tools for strategic listening for more tactics to collaborate towards buy-in.
About Talent Praxis
Praxis is bridging the gap between theory and action.
We help companies and leaders practice proven academic management theories in the workplace to build results-driven teams.
Management and leadership are not skills you learn once but rather ongoing practices to achieve results.
Talent Praxis offers one-on-one leadership coaching, training in people management, and consulting in performance management to help leaders and companies develop their own strategic praxis.
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