Culture to Engage

Your (Employee) Engagement Guaranteed! Ask and Answer These 4 Questions

I offer you these 4 communication tools to contribute to your organization's Engagement Culture.

The business Master Mind group I belong to spent 90 lively minutes yesterday sharing our answers to these questions. I suggest you use them in either a staff-meeting or as fuel for sessions with individuals.

What are 1,2, or 3 best things that happened to you in 2007.
Since you'll be using this question in a business environment, it's likely your people will answer from their business experiences in 2007. That's fine, but it's just as fine for them to bring in stories from their home, community or other outside interests.

This question and its answers serve several purposes:

• A way for team members to know one another better.
• A chance for individuals to look back with pride and pleasure at their 2007 engagement.
• An increase in open-minded communication among employees.

Encourage participants not to hurry to find their Top Three. They may savor sampling many good memories. Answering this question gives them the opportunity to reflect positively on what has been fun, festive, frivolous, fortuitous, fruitful...even frenetic!

What is the one thing you'd like to do over? (Does not have to be one of your Top Three. It might be something you just want to get more of...or something you want to do better.)
One beauty of this question is focus on what was so much fun, so rewarding, so out-and-out good, you want to do it again (and again and again..). Another beauty is attention to actions or experiences that might be repeated for the purpose of improvement, better results, greater performance.

Make it clear it's the individual's choice. She can pick that one "do over" for whatever reason she wishes.

This question offers benefits such as:

• Appreciation of past engagement in some specific work element.
• Objective recollection (and evaluation) of what can be improved.
• Actualizing positive past experience in present situation.

What are 1, 2, or 3 things you most look forward to in 2008?
Have your folks note the phrase most look forward to. These do not have to be objectives set for the coming year. (Can be, but don't have to be.) These can simply be what the person wants to experience in the coming year. What's neat is the chance to look ahead, to anticipate the good. And if it triggers specific desires one can concentrate on and begin to manifest, all the better!

Benefits from the easy, simple look ahead the answers provide:

• Pre-engagement from anticipation of something desired.
• Automatic planning "how to" realize or manifest desired results.
• An energizing look ahead thanks to its simplicity.

What is the one thing you are committed to achieving or experiencing in 2008?
This question zeros in. It gives the person answering a chance to take ownership of commitment-to-result.

The individual gets to determine if his commitment is to something he wants to achieve or something he has to achieve. Distinguishing this in discussion of the questions and their answers can be eye-opening. Also mind-opening.

What's psychologically true is that a want to commitment has a greater chance of success than the have to sort. A good manager and an engagement culture help employees operate more from the want to.

What's the good from this final Q&A?

• Projection of numerous potentialities, and selecting one.
• Excitement-generation of what can be experienced in 2008.
• Ownership of the commitment to achieve.

Here's wishing you and your people the happiest 2008 possible. I hope you are coming out of the happiest 2007 possible as well. And it will be great if you can use the good-to-great experiences of last year to fuel great-to-greater experiences next year.

PS I admit my title is a takeoff from Cosmopolitan magazine.

Sticking It to Them

What follows appears as sidebar to an interview with Chip Heath, PhD. at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. Heath authored Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, making salient points about why some ideas (and communicating them) fly...and others flop.

Chip Heath’s research suggests that sticky ideas share six basic traits.

Simplicity. Messages are most memorable if they are short and deep. Glib sound bites are short, but they don’t last. Proverbs such as the golden rule are short but also deep enough to guide the behavior of people over generations.

Unexpectedness. Something that sounds like common sense won’t stick. Look for the parts of your message that are uncommon sense. Such messages generate interest and curiosity.

Concreteness. Abstract language and ideas don’t leave sensory impressions; concrete images do. Compare “get an American on the moon in this decade” with “seize leadership in the space race through targeted technology initiatives and enhanced team-based routines.”

Credibility. Will the audience buy the message? Can a case be made for the message or is it a confabulation of spin? Very often, a person trying to convey a message cites outside experts when the most credible source is the person listening to the message. Questions—“Have you experienced this?”—are often more credible than outside experts.

Emotions. Case studies that involve people also move them. “We are wired,” Heath writes, “to feel things for people, not abstractions."

Stories. We all tell stories every day. Why? “Research shows that mentally rehearsing a situation helps us perform better when we encounter that situation,” Heath writes. “Stories act as a kind of mental flight simulator, preparing us to respond more quickly and effectively.”

For the full interview, visit The McKinsey Quarterly.

Sources:

"Crafting a Message That Sticks: An Interview with Chip Heath," The McKinsey Quarterly, 12/2007; Lenny Mendonca and Matt Miller.

A Vision: Something to Focus On

Recent work with several clients has taught me a lesson. Encouraging leaders and managers to help employees maintain focus on organizational goals and objectives may be premature.

 

 

If the organization doesn't have a clearly defined vision, what is there to focus on?

I offer three quick, simple steps you can use to build a true and clear vision for your organization, your department or your team. For more more information, click here.

1. Articulate. Build your own picture of where you want the organization to go, what you want it to become. Without describing your picture to the extreme detail, share it with your team in clear, everyday language.
2. Allow. Hold several discussion sessions. Invite people to express their perceptions of the vision fulfilled. Ask them for specific examples of what they "see." Encourage them to be more and more specific. (Prepare to ask repeatedly, "What does that look like?)
3. Actualize. Using images suggested by team members, construct a true and clear organization vision. You may translate it to a verbal vision statement. However, a "visual vision statement" will have true value in its visibility. Consider a poster filled with scenes and situations representing the vision achieved. (Bonus: use pictures of your team members in that poster!)

The cost: probably less than $200 for a "visual vision statement". Otherwise, just a bit of your and your people's time.

The reward: increased engagement by the employees who know their foresight contributes to their organizations vision of the future.

Ask. Answer. Listen.

Running in afternoon rain yesterday, I followed my mind through thoughts of tomorrow's retreat with a physical therapy team in (very!) south Texas.

What I offer below is not, repeat, not new information. However, it struck me between miles 3 and 4 yesterday as worth remembering.

• Ask what you do not know. Too often we're told we should know the answer we're looking for. Not so. That frame of mind limits what we can learn. A manager/leader should be just as eager to learn as anyone. In fact, the manager/leader wants to demonstrate the true Questioning Mind behavior if she wants hers to be a true Learning Organization. (And what better way to promote employee engagement than by promoting a continuous curiosity for knowledge?).


• Answer from your heart and from your head. Managers and leaders are thought to have the answers all thought out. You want your answers to have feeling as well. Keep in mind that people enjoy working for/with those who care. Care originates in the heart. Granted, you'll want to do some weighing of your answer-parts to ensure that both your thinking and your feeling are represented proportionately. And that means you may do some editing between the feeling/thinking and the speaking.

• Listen to what you say. You've heard the adage, Think before you speak. It is equally important to listen as you speak. It can be too easy for one's voice to say things not really meant. By listening objectively to what we say, we give ourselves (and our communication partner) great opportunities. These include the opportunity to correct, to add, to qualify, to verify and validate. Perhaps most important is the opportunity to avoid the "Did I say that?! I didn't say that?! Did I...?!"

No denying that communication is the most critical component of the work we do, whatever that work is. Follows that it's a pretty good idea to give time and attention to making that component more effective.

Let Your Weight Down

"One way to make your team feel more trust is to let your weight down."

"What does that mean?"

"You know, just opening up, being authentic, not putting on airs."

Rhonda offered that last week in my team-building workshop at the Texas Hospital Home Health Agency conference. We were discussing ways trust contributes to team success. Rhonda was answering my question about how a manager/leader can generate top-of-mind awareness of trust among team members.

Rhonda suggested the manager always be authentic. Hers was a new metaphor for me. (I do know let your hair down.)

Certainly got me thinking.

Pretty impossible to be part of a successful team and not be engaged in contributing to the team. Pretty impossible for a team to be successful unless its members trust one another.

So, Rhonda's statement is on the money. To be trustworthy you have to be authentic. To be authentic, you may have to let your weight down.

Here are 5 suggestions:

• Share thoughts and ideas. Encourage team members to share what they think and how they think. That helps them know one another. Much easier to trust someone you know. Sharing your own thoughts and ideas demonstrates your belief in the process.
• Share mistakes. Let the team know you own your mistakes. It's a sure illustration of your genuineness to let others in on your mistakes. Also a great opportunity to learn and share learning.
• Request assistance. Ask for help and you admit you cannot do it all yourself. Such an admission is up front authentic. [I don't mean asking a team member to take on extra work. I mean asking for personal assistance with something they may do better than you.]
• Offer assistance. Without micromanaging or taking control from the individual, offer to lend a hand. This demonstrates your commitment to team and team members' successes.
• Expand the talk. When appropriate, allow conversation to move beyond business. Personal experiences, shared memories, lessons learned...all let your weight down.

I love it when I get to facilitate a workshop and learn something. What a blessing.