• PROGRAMME LOGIN

ABOUT

PROGRAMMES

CONTACT

< Return to Insights

Why Spending Time with Your Team is Essential for Happiness and Better Productivity
September 10, 2024

Today’s workplaces are often full of busy people rushing from task to task, each with their own list of objectives to achieve. It’s a race to get everything done on schedule and there is little time to pause and spend time with your team thinking about what you’re doing, let alone work together to bring the best result. Sound familiar?

If this is you, an opportunity may be passing you by. You can be more productive and feel more connected with your colleagues if you invest in your relationships at work.

An influential leader invests time in their team

In our experience of working on the Mind Strength programme with individuals for whom gaining the ‘edge’ for high performance is a priority, the following can increase stress:

  • Feeling a lack of clarity about their tasks or what is expected of them
  • Not being able to aware of and share their organisation’s purpose, nor even an overview of the project, which can make it harder to guide decisions
  • Not being able to feel they can ask for their manager’s time to answer a query or solve a problem

As you know, higher stress leads to an unhappy and poorer performing workforce. This is where you, as a leader or manager, can a make the largest difference. Poor managers are the second biggest cause of stress in the workplace (CIPD Health and Wellbeing at Work Survey, 2020), so there is a huge opportunity to make a difference.

Spend your time with your team. You will find it a worthwhile investment.

  • Listen to their needs – do they have everything they need to get their job done or what obstacles are they encountering? Is their motivation waning?
  • What about them personally? How are they doing? Will you know if they’re under too much stress or if they’re struggling with their mental wellbeing?
  • Can they talk to you if there are problems? Will you spot that they’re thinking of leaving the organisation and can instead support them to stay?

The purpose of spending some time with your time is not only about keeping stress down and looking after each other. Connecting with others allows thinking to flourish and supports the creativity needed to be progressive and strong in your accomplishments (Tan et al., 2022). It also allows better employee morale and engagement, a healthier and more inclusive culture, and lower sickness absence (CIPD, 2020).

A Manager’s Experiment

Let’s use Eva as an example. Whilst completing our Mind Strength for Professionals programme, it emerged that Eva was struggling with finding the time to meet her objectives as well as guide and inspire her team as she wanted to. As the country HR manager, her team looked up to her for guidance and support for dealing with points of uncertainty in their ground breaking implementation of a new processing system. Business Partners also saw her as a source of information. She was receiving emails and phone calls throughout the day that expected immediate responses. It seemed that everyone needed some of her time. Whilst it was a core part of her role to provide this support to others, she found this disrupted her own workflow to such an extent that she wasn’t able to get through her own objectives despite working longer hours.

The Mind Strength programme helped her realise that she should be actively seeking out time with her team to get things done rather than wishing she would be left alone more. It was hypothesised it would be a good investment of her time, so Eva made some changes to increase her and her team’s performance.

She changed her routine.  Each day, the first thing she would do would be to go to her team and spend time listening to them, supporting them with any issues, and sharing ideas. She then would spend the rest of the morning working very productively on her own.  She then went back to spend time with her team again at lunchtime so everyone continued to be connected and informed.

After just a few days, Eva decided that giving her team protected and predicted time was a great success. She could be much more productive and had time to dedicate to her own projects.  She noticed her team were also accomplishing many of their goals and were happy because they felt supported.

When Eva described the impact of this straightforward intervention, her satisfaction and emotional relief was evident. She had ticked off some tasks that had been on the ‘to do list’ for far too long. She felt more in control of her own time. And she could see that her team felt more engaged and had everything they needed to get their own work done efficiently.

This manager’s investment of some time with her team actually gave her back more time for focussed work. The investment paid off multiple times over.

Conclusion

In conclusion, investing time in your team is not just a managerial duty—it’s a strategic approach to enhancing productivity, morale, and overall workplace wellbeing. The experience of leaders like Eva, who transformed her workflow by prioritizing team interaction, highlights the profound impact this can have. By creating a culture where communication and connection are prioritized, leaders can reduce stress, foster creativity, and build a more engaged and resilient team. Ultimately, the time you spend connecting with your team is not a luxury, but an essential component of driving both individual and collective success.