EP 1991 This is one of those tough interview questions that people answering such a boring way. I offer a much more powerful way to answer it that is actually accurate.
This is one of those tough interview questions that's going to be asked of senior professionals with some regularity, and it's a stupid question. If you're asking it, I'm going to debunk the entire thing pretty quickly. And I'll just simply say, the question, "How do you create a team spirit where everyone feels engaged," is nonsense.
You see here the correct answer. I just pulled it from a website and it's not important that I identify it. I'll just simply say it's nonsense along the lines of set a time and method for regular updates. Give employees what they want and need, which includes minimizing resistance, reducing personal anxiety, ensuring clarity of objectives, sharing information or company vision, obtaining clarity, minimizing uncertainty, blend work and play and make it fun to engage. You get the point of where I'm going with this that it's all pretty predictable pablum that HR organizations want to hear. You can look it up using Google.
By the way, just search for this question. ""How do you create a team spirit where everyone feels engaged? Let me tell you the truth here. And this is, I believe, is really the best way to answer the question. Here's how to do it. I can give you the predictable answers that organizations like to hear that and you start to parrot off a couple of these things that come from the Google search.
But you continue on by saying, "but if they worked, firms would not have the employee engagement issues that they will have today. You see, the notion of employee engagement is the statistics haven't changed in 30 years. And we know so much more about employee engagement. And we're not getting results. The numbers are 30% of employees are actively engaged in their work. The remaining 70% . . . You're lucky if you get ambivalent people, because there's a huge group that is actively undermining the work.
"So wha,t does this tell me? And that is this stuff that I could tell you really isn't the solution. I think the better solution is to be more effective with my interviewing and hiring. Thus my statistics have invariably been a start talking about your employee engagement statistics. What do you look for in someone? Obviously, qualifications are important but, to me, one of the hard things to me is it's an impossible thing for organization to interview for is what's euphemistically called "fit." Let me explain why.
When job hunters come on an interview, they're on good behavior. They're trying to show you themselves at their best, right? Well, the truth of the matter is, that's true of you, in the organization. I've never heard of it of an employer saying to a job hunter, "You know, we've got real problems around here. My two predecessors have been fired. I need to hire someone who's gonna save my butt before I join my predecessors." No one ever says that.
They all talk about a great organization with, you know, they talk about all this crap. Heveryone's lying to one another. You can't interview for fit, because they're putting on an act and so are you. You're hiring based upon their act, and they're joining you based upon your act.
So, what you need to do is to be forthright about what your expectations are, what you're going to demand of them, what excellence is going to look like, how you're going to measure success for them. That's what you can do, that and evaluate their qualifications. If they don't want to join based upon that, fabulous.
But the idea is not to fall for the pablum and to, instead, give them an alternative that has worked for you in the past.
