Leaders have difficult decisions to make about how to deliver on aggressive goals: grow their business, get ahead of the competition, and control spending, among many others. But they don’t have to make the tough calls in a vacuum. 

You’re aware that employees listen to what you say, and pay close attention to what you do. The reality is that when it comes to keeping employees engaged, body language speaks first, and often louder than words.  

There’s no better way to think about how others see you than to visualize that there’s a mirror in front of you all the time. What might others see and pick up on? How might you use your body language purposefully?

If you feel the only way to really know what’s going on at the front lines of your company is to go undercover, there’s something wrong. Leaders should not be in the dark about the interface between their front-line employees and customers.

Here are 4 ways to get to know your front-line employees, what motivates them, and how to get them to be highly valued brand ambassadors:

As leaders, we spend much of our time and effort setting business goals, developing plans to achieve those goals and helping ensure employees understand how they fit in.

With so much going on, it’s all too easy to get lost in the work and detach yourself from the human element of the workplace. 

In a recent post, I talked about why people follow leaders – because of how they make people feel.

The first sure-fire tip to help engender positive feelings about you and your leadership – and get people to follow you – is to paint a picture of the future.

Why do people follow leaders?

Hint: it’s not because of that really great PowerPoint presentation on the new strategy you gave at the quarterly all-hands meeting. Or because of your tenure. Or title.

The simple answer is we follow leaders because of how they make us feel. (And by the way, to be a leader, you need to have followers.)

There's nothing as invigorating or energizing for me as spending time with clients working on some of their toughest internal communication challenges. I spent some time recently training leaders on two-way communication with a focus on how to plan any kind of communication, as well as the six ultimate interpersonal skills needed for a productive and successful interaction. The day was filled with education, lots of interaction, and significant chunks of time dedicated to practicing the critical skills. I celebrated with these leaders as they connected the dots and saw immediate application for what we covered, and I felt their frustration when the perfect moment for empathy during a role play turned into a lecture of a valued employee. 

When you ask employees, they want to be able to connect with their leader—today more than ever before. Employees want to know what you have to say; they also want to know what you stand for.

Here are some tips to help your employees get to know you: