How do you view your frontline management? Are they there to keep an eye on things, enforce plans and policies, report operational results, and escalate issues or problems?

Or, are your frontline manager people who make decisions, who use judgment and discretion, who develop policies, who contribute to ideas and implement improvements? If you are like the majority of senior leaders your ideas on what a frontline leader's role should be, it is the former. And, if it is, your company is missing out on significant performance improvement and revenue growth.

Companies who make the leap of faith and enable their frontline managers to become genuine frontline leaders feel the positive results. It is a leap. It is a massive change of mindset. A mindset we've held since the industrial revolution!

Companies that make the leap see benefits in flexibility and productivity through increased employee engagement. These generate positive financial returns. While attention to detail and execution of the tasks is important it's not the be all and end all. If this is the sole focus there isn't time to deal with improving quality or production. There is no time for looking at the big picture.

What has the big picture got to do with it?

Surely frontline employees are there to carry out a task, and it doesn't matter what direction the company is going in. You'd be surprised to know that this is completely the wrong tact. There is actually a very strong correlation between frontline employees understanding the big picture and how their job contributes to it and employee engagement.

If you want to get your employees motivated, you need to provide the big picture and how they fit into, no matter how mundane the task they perform. The story that best summarizes the power of this approach is the story of the three bricklayers.

The story goes that three bricklayers were working side by side. When asked, "What are you doing?" the first bricklayer replied, "I'm laying bricks." The second answered, "Feeding my family." The third bricklayer responded, "I'm building a cathedral." It is obvious that the third bricklayer is likely to be the most motivated and productive of the three.

The next key step of enabling your frontline managers to become frontline leaders is to teach them how to coach their team. A successful coach spends a significant time out there on the floor, reinforcing the right behaviors and correcting profit inhibiting behaviors. With a balanced approach to feedback employees become significantly more open to change.

Always look for the good in your employees before dealing with the wrong. It's our nature to be focused on getting things right which as a result means we give an unproportional amount of negative feedback. Be aware of this in yourself, and look to change. Don't let the pendulum swing too far and become a happy-clappy manager, but be balanced in your feedback. These techniques will assist in increasing employee engagement and employee motivation.