Culture to Engage

It Seems So Simple

The tremendous stir of information, energy, enthusiasm, and ideas regarding "employee engagement" is

1. Exciting
2. Surprising
3. Valuable
4. Amazing
5. Puzzling
6. Enter your word here: _____________
7. All of the above

I wonder, though, if we might be making it more complex than it ought to be.

Below are several related conclusions, drawn from more than 300 hours of research conducted since 2005.

• A manager’s responsibility is to develop high-quality performers among her employees.

• The manager should balance his attention to engagement, performance, and results.

• Employees who are actively engaged in their work perform more favorably, more productively, and more positively.

• Employees' performance produces results like customer satisfaction and loyalty, error reduction, improved candidate recruitment, enhanced employee retention, greater employee satisfaction/morale/productivity.

• Complementary attention to Engagement, Performance, Results requires an innovative approach to management.

• Managers must convey clear job expectations and promote employees’ desire to engage in fulfilling those expectations.

• Managers need to give employees opportunities to engage in continuous development, that they may achieve expected results more readily.

• Managers coach and mentor employee performance; they also support engagement not only in one's job but in related areas such as company objectives, professional and functional networks, career achievement, and community support.

• Managers need continuous awareness of ways to infuse their everyday management tasks with communication, opportunities, and resources that stimulate engagement.

7.5 New Engagement Perspectives

I was just settling into last week's long run and looking to answer this question...

What are some new components of engagement,
new ways of explaining how/why employees choose to engage themselves?

The great joy I get from running is how easy, how often I find a quantity of answers to my questions. Here are my 7.5 observations from that run...(and their connection to engagement).

1. I recalled that I experienced "advance engagement" in my run even before I took the first step. I enjoy how good running makes me feel physically, emotionally, spiritually. (Enjoyment/pleasure)
2. I approached the first hill, already engaged in increasing my effort. (Stress/demand)
3. At the 3-mile point, I checked my time and was pleased to be on pace. I concentrated (engaged) on maintaining that pace for the next 3 miles. (Achievement)
4. As I approached the 3rd and longest/steepest hill, I sucked in deep breaths and reassured myself I could and would make it to the top. (Pride)
5. Atop the hill I ran past a threesome of women on the golf course's 8th fairway. I picked up my pace. I lifted my shoulders. I steadied my breath. I engaged in looking good. (Ego/narcissism)
6. A half-mile farther I saw a mockingbird tugging hard to pull a worm from a just-watered front lawn. No doubt the bird was engaged. The worm as well, I suspect. (Survival)
7. A blue jaw watched from a nearby fence  top. As soon as the mockingbird wrestled the worm free of the ground and took flight, the jay followed in hot pursuit, engaged in swiping the worm. (Survival,  ver. 2)
    
8. (7.5, really) I finished my run, engaged in remembering everything I'd seen/thought, until I got to the keyboard. (Fulfillment)

Take the engagement connectors one at a time. Consider ways you can create opportunities that stimulate motivators for your employees, motivators such as

• Enjoyment...
• Stress (positive)...
• Achievement...
• Pride...
• Ego/narcissism...
• Survival...
• Fulfillment...

10 Hot-n-Heavy Ways Your Stories Can Serve

I've recently given lots of blogspace to storytelling as communication, engagement, and management tools in the past few weeks. I'm even offering an audio conference next week on the topic.

But where do the stories fit in all the communication that management produces? What are the stories to be about and what purpose do they serve?

Ryan Matthews, founder of Black Monk Consulting, has written What's Your Story? Storytelling to Move Markets, Audiences, People, and Brands. He also has a related  article in the May issue of Chief Learning Officer, about storytelling as a valuable management tool.

I believe Matthews' list of possible story functions is the most valuable part of the article. It's the list that can stimulate your and your people's thinking of where the stories can come from. Matthews writes:

Stories can be used to establish, renew or promote brands, help position corporations and build and communicate internal corporate culture. They can scale, too, doing everything from helping individuals demonstrate they’re the right person for a job to selling the value proposition of entire industries.

Storytelling has 10 essential functions or roles, any or all of which have application in the world of business. It can be used to:

• Explain origins.
• Define individual and group identity.
• Communicate tradition and delineate taboo.
• Simplify complex issues and provide perspective.
• Illustrate the natural order of things.
• Overview complex history in a concise way.
• Demonstrate moral and ethical positions and transfer and preserve core values.
• Illustrate relationships with authority.
• Describe appropriate responses to life or model behavior.
• Define rewards and detail the paths to salvation (or success) and damnation (or failure).

Each one of the 10 "functions" reveals how storytelling contributes to awareness and communication of the organization's culture. Such stories personify and personalize the organization.

Culture gives reason(s) for employee engagement. Employee engagement provides the ABC (attitude-behavior-commitment) for performance that leads to results. Results mark the organization's success.

Ready to start working on some of the story areas above? Don't forget to involve your team. Their insights and experiences may be invaluable.  Feel free to join me for my Manage Magic with Stories audio conference next Thursday, 5/22.

 

 

Story, Story. Who's Got a Story?

Uh, everyone! 

Everyone wants to share their story/stories.

Everyone wants to experience success.

Everyone wants to make a difference.

Those three facts definitely link to one another. The stories reflect successes--even/especially stories about failures that lead to later success. And a strong motive for sharing stories is to provide insights to others, to make a difference for them. Do you sense how engaging in a little story-sharing can unleash engagement among the participants?

All you have to do is provide opportunities for you and your team to unleash those desires.

Here is the first example (of who-knows-how-many) ways you can make sharing of people's stories a key part of your organization's culture. NOTE: Story-sharing is a specific form of engagement.

Introduce Story Power to your organization's culture. Here's a simple summary of the process you can follow:

1. Communicate the reasons for everyone having their own story or stories...and being willing to share them.
2. Provide ample time and resources for your people to develop (and become comfortable with) their stories.
3. Offer non-threatening opportunities for team members to share their stories.
4. Celebrate the infusion of stories and story-sharing in a variety of ways.

So, here's a bit more detail on the how-to of each of those 4 steps:

Communicate

• Review the reasons stories and sharing those stories make a difference in an organization.
• Develop your own story and be willing/eager to share it as a lead-off example.
• Invite informal, open-ended discussion from your team about values they know and have experienced from sharing stories with others.

Resources

• Provide every staff member a copy of the Build a Story tips.
• Make how-is-it-going discussion time available for people to discuss their success/difficulty in developing their stories. (A staff-meeting agenda item?)
• Make books and other information about the art and value of storytelling available. You may check this bibliography.

Opportunities

• The Story Hour: once a month hold a one-hour, informal reception in which just a few of your members share their stories. Refreshments are a good idea.
• The Story Magazine: stories can be written and shared as well. Invite members to write their stories, edit them, and submit them to an office publication.
• The Story Celebration: once story-sharing has become an accepted and practiced element of your organization's culture, build to major story-shares. Volunteers might share a holiday story at the holiday party. Individuals might recall and share stories brought to mind by memorable events such as moving to a new location, a change in leadership, the loss of a loved team member. These are only examples; your team's ideas will be much better.

Celebrate

• Encourage continuing reference to the stories shared. (Paul, thank you for sharing your story with us this morning. I've enjoyed reflecting on it.)
• Express thanks that individuals are willing to share both personal and professional stories.
• Offer encouragement to stimulate more story-sharing. ($5 gift cards are good encouragers.)
• Post recognition on bulletin boards. (If you didn't hear Patsy's story about her childhood victory, ask her to tell it to you.)

And b/t/w...next Thursday, 5/22, 4-5:30 EDT, I'm offering my Manage Magic with Stories audio
conference. We'll cover so much more than is here!

Photo source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/aprilbmoore/2266391264/

When Time and Place Become the Opportunity

Working with clients who want higher levels of employee engagement, I've learned...

You can tell your people you need to see more engagement. Those already engaged will satisfy your request. The others will look engaged for a short time, then return to previous levels of engagement (non-?)

You can offer an engagement incentive. Many will actively engage to earn the incentive. Once that's done most will return to previous levels of engagement (dis-?) You can do that over and over and over, but do you want a culture based on incentives...or engagement?

You can threaten to bring performance evaluation into play. You can mark down those who demonstrate less than satisfactory engagement levels. But if you hold your evaluation meetings only at year's end, many will forget your threat. The ones who remember the threat are those you did not need to threaten in the first place.

So you ask, "For crying out loud, what am I supposed to do to engage my employees?"

Nothing.

OK, that's a cute answer and only partly true. You are not supposed to engage your employees because they must be responsible for their own engagement.

You are, however, supposed to make engagement available, attractive, appealing. That's the manager's job: provide situations that make the employees want to engage. By the way, these situations can stimulate engagement while having other objectives: performance improvement, learning appreciation, community respect, for example.

You can provide your folks ample opportunities in which they can experience engagement.

The secret to making an opportunity available is not its topic or theme or content or activity. The real key is the opportunity's timeandplace . Commit to a specific time and a specific place every _____ (fill in the blank with week or month or quarter) that you will dedicate to an engagement opportunity.

When you schedule the Time and the Place, you actually put them "in the way." it will surprise you how quickly ideas about what to do, to discuss, to explore, to engage come to you.

After just one or two repetitions of regularly scheduled Opportunities, you'll discover you can invite your people to suggest content for Opportunities. I/O/W you can engage them in planning Engagement Opportunities. How cool is that? 

A Challenge: Commit to providing one Engagement Opportunity every one of the next six months. Schedule the day/time. Select the place. Then watch the rest of the planning fall into place easily.

Photo Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/10085373@N08/