Team Health Check Action Guide

QUESTION 5
How happy are you with the relationship between you and your manager?

This question is really about whether people feel supported and valued by their manager. A positive relationship does not mean everyone agrees all the time. It means people feel they can approach their manager, have honest conversations and know that their contribution matters. The useful conversation is: what helps people feel supported here?

Feeling supported at work can mean different things to different people. Strong managers take time to understand their people, listen to what matters to them and create the conditions where they can do their best work.

Key Insights

  1. This question explores whether people feel supported, valued and understood by their manager.

  2. As the measure improves there is a correlation with a drop in safety incidents

  3. Customer care increases because team care has

  4. Response will be 1.5 points higher if an employee feels as though they can approach their manager

Using Strengths

If your team has completed CliftonStrengths, consider who may naturally help improve this area.

The Using Strengths Guide identifies the strengths that may contribute most to this question and includes a coaching question to help start the conversation.

Team Activity to Unpack

At the beginning of each team meeting, start with a question that encourages team members to get to now one another.  Get a different team member to bring a new question each week.  Questions might include

  • Where is a place you would love to go on vacation, and why?

  •  What is one of your favourite movies?

  • What do you enjoy outside of work?

  • What is your favourite type of music?

  • If you were to write a book about your life, what would the title be?

  • What are you most looking forward to this year?

Additional Questions to Ask

  1. What could we do to let fellow team members know that we care about their accomplishments?

  2. What do we do now that shows we care about one another?

  3. Are there things we could start doing to increase the amount of caring we show one another?

  4. Do our internal and external customers know that we care about them?  How do they know?  How do we show it?

  5. Are there other teams in the organisation that we depend on to accomplish our work?  How do we let them know that we care about them?  What more could we be doing to show them we care?

Suggestions for Action

  1. Establish regular 1-1 catch ups, the #1 thing a manager can do to improve the engagement of their team.  Could you use the Check In Template to structure your conversations

  2. Create opportunities for team members to get to know one another beyond who they are at work

  3. During times of change, meet often and actively address team members concerns and questions

  4. CliftonStrengths can help people better understand their own strengths and how they can work effectively with others.