Culture to Engage

5 Ways Leaders Build Employee Engagement

August 19, 2009

Leaders have as much "responsible opportunity" to generate employee engagement throughout their businesses as anyone. Keep in mind, that a leader can operate at any level, in any position within an organization. Whether bearing a title of authority or just the ability to influence others, a leader can promote the culture of engagement.

Here are 5 ways business leaders can promote engagement among employees:

Ready, steady attention to management
An effectively engaging business employs a philosophy of management that focuses on seeing that employees engage in what they do, rather than just do it. An effective leader dedicates her attention to how thoroughly and how well managers develop their employees with focus on engagement.

Ready, steady communication w/ managers
In addition to observing the performance of managers as regards engaging their employees, a leader keeps up continuous communication with those managers. This communication is conceptual as well as tactical. The leader seeks information as to the manager's perceptions and measurements of leadership. The leader provides resources to the manager to stimulate greater engagement efforts.

Demonstrate leadership-by-engagement
Engagement demonstrated by leadership stimulates employees' appreciation that engagement is part of the business culture. A leader should not only lead the organization but also give evidence that he supports the practices of employee engagement as fundamental to the culture..

Observe engagement in competitive businesses
Gathering and communicating knowledge from competitors serves the leader, the employees, and the business itself. If a leader truly desires her organization to engage  and achieve greater success, she makes time and effort to study competitors and learn how they achieve such success.

Observe engagement in different industries
Taking that knowledge to a higher level, the leader looks outside the industry to study successful engagement. By understanding how dissimilar businesses achieve higher levels of engagement (and so, higher levels of success), a creative leader adapts that information to innovative engagement practices in her business.

5 Keys to Executives Creating Employee Engagement

For the past few months I've focused on managers' responsibility and opportunity to generate involvement, commitment, and engagement among their employees.

Starting this week I'd like to share that wealth. Every member of a business, whether an executive, a leader, a manager, or an employee, has the opportunity to embrace and to activate engagement. That's especially true in situations where individuals wear the several hats of executive, leader, and manager.

Let's begin with five ways an executive can promote engagement by employees. (The executive is defined as having administrative, supervisory power over an organization.)

Articulating culture.
A dynamic business culture embraces employee engagement as contributing to success. A business that merely attempts engagement efforts on an as-needed basis is less successful. The powerful executive articulates how, what and why engaged employees are critical to the business culture. She conveys the message to her leaders, her managers, and her employees.

Being visibly engaged.
Employees should clearly see executives engage in directing the business. A steady stream of communication -- spoken, written, video'd --  provides this visibility. This may seem accountability, but it is more accurately imprintability. This imprints the desired culture -- engagement -- in employees' minds.

Talking engagement within.
The more the executive talks about engaged employees -- their actions, their successes, their contributions -- the more engagement is understood as a root element within the business culture. Words, stories, examples of engagement  within the business should flow continually from the executive.

Talking engagement without.
As well, the executive should speak of the business's engaged employees to investors, shareholders, customers, and community members. Demonstrating the power of employee engagement to the outside world reflects pride back to the employees and creates a victorious cycle of increased engagement.

Regularly reviewing cultural reality.
The executive must never take his eyes off the specifics of the business culture. Every business adjusts continually to changing realities of economy, market, customer, and employee. Slight adaptations of the culture of engagement, when required, allow that culture to remain strongly active and generate ongoing success.

Tomorrow we'll look at how leaders (a broader base within an organization than just executives) can promote greater engagement.

5 Ways to Make Even Boring Meetings Engaging

Virtually everything that happens in an organization can and should contribute to the organization’s Engagement Culture. My 10 years' focus on engaging employees has led me to realize that.

And, hey, meetings take an inordinate amount of our time, so why not use them as engagement tools?

Here's why you want your meetings (staff, special project, church committee...whatever) to be engaging:

• People arrive more "up" for meetings they know from past experience will engage them.

• “Up” means: prepared, eager, active, receptive.

• When a meeting is engaging, attendees  put forth more energy, thought, and commitment for the meeting's purpose.

• Engaging meetings continue beyond adjournment: after-thought, informal debriefing, added attention/effort to the meeting's content and purpose.

Here are 5 tips to generate more engagement in your meetings.

• Begin the meeting with a thought-provoker relevant to one/all agenda items. This may be a question, a story, a group-share exercise.

• Over time develop the question as integral to all meetings. Build pattern of questions, questions, questions…from everyone, for everyone.

• Insure that meeting attendees engage lively discussion of every agenda item -- especially if it's someone's presentation. Be prepared with questions and "what do you think about that?" prompts.

• Include an agenda item that encourages creative intelligence.

• Rotate responsibility for chairing the meetings. Giving members of your staff the opportunity to set the agenda, invite presenters, facilitate the meeting.

5 Ways Managers Create More Engaged Employees

"It's not up to the manager!" (???)

At the tail end of yesterday's teleseminar (Employee Engagement: Increasing Satisfaction and Motivation during Tough Times), a participant asked me, "What can I say to a manager who feels it's up to the employee to be engaged, it's part of the job expectation that the employee be engaged, and that it's not up to the manager!?"

I was tempted to answer, "Reposition or just replace that manager!"

Instead I considered that maybe, just maybe, that manager just wants some ideas about how to increase engagement among his/her employees.

So whether you have that type manager or not, here are 5 ways you and your manager can boost your employees' eagerness to engage in their work:

Communication: the more (and the more often) managers talk with their employee, the more the employee feels appreciated, cared for, and valuable. Those feelings create the motivation to engage.

Behavior Model. Every employee, from the new-hire to the most seasoned veteran, keeps an eye on his manager for cues and clues to behavior. It's logically better when he sees the manager's full engagement as the behavior to emulate.

Mentoring/coaching. Professional improvement is everyone's desire. Fear of the unknown and fear of failure sometimes block that desire. The manager who takes on a little mentoring or coaching (and who creates a program involving others as mentors and coaches!) helps wipe out that barrier.

Respect. Anyone works more willingly (aka, engages) when she knows her work, her effort, her person are respected. The simple signs of respect knowledge of an employee's background, education, experience.

Personal Appreciation. This takes the above Respect to a slightly more personal level. It never hurts to say, "Happy Birthday!" for example. On the correct date, of course.

5 reasons to engage employees more

Here are 5 reasons to engage individual employees more. (Distinct from yesterday's post -- 5 reasons for more engaged employees).

More engagement means more (personal) investment. By definition, an engaged employee invests her time, energy, creativity, skills, attention and knowledge in the target of her engagement.

More engagement fuels more focus. Engaged employees focus on their work with greater clarity and greater desire. Does not really matter whether engagement causes focus or vice versa.

More engagement gives more enthusiasm. Enthusiasm for one's work equals passion for one's work. Engagement enjoys mutual reinforcement with enthusiasm.

More engagement promotes more productivity. Engaged employees apply greater energy. Their desire for performance improvement results in increased efficiency. Energy applied efficiently generates productivity.

More engagement stimulates more synergy throughout your business. The beauty of a team of engaged employees is that their individuals engagement results in a greater-than-the-sum team engagement.

Aren't all of the results

• Personal investment
• Focus
• Enthusiasm
• Productivity
• Synergy

truly benefits for your business?