Culture to Engage

Culture Eats Strategy Every Day of the Week

OK. The title should be in quotes and accredited directly to Carleen Haas, VP of Human Resources at Humana, the Kentucky-based health insurance company. (Heck, my health insurance company!)

I'm delighted when a senior manager puts culture and engagement together. In her interview with Talent Management, Haas makes clear that leadership at Humana is expected to create a culture of engagement.

My question is how?

What is expected of leaders when it comes to implementing continually a culture of engagement?

How do we want those leaders to engage those expectations?  (Interesting, isn't it, that expectations and engagement are of concern regarding leaders just as regarding front-line employees.)

Humana offers a one-day orientation for employees that touches cultural expectations, values and mission. That's a good start for any organization.

But what's the leader's role in continuing employees' awareness and appreciation of the specific culture? What's the leader's role in maintaining the culture?

I come back to my four components of building the CORE of an organizational culture. These should be on every leader's List of Responsibilities.

Communication: Every leader, every manager must hold herself accountable for regular communication with employees. This communication should, among other things, (re)vitalize the organization's culture. For quite a few postings about communication, click Communication in Categories to the right. 

Opportunity: Every leader, every manager must ensure that specific opportunities are made available for employees to engage in aspects of the organizational culture. An opportunity, by the way, requires a time and place. For examples of opportunities, check this earlier posting.

Resources: Every leader, every manager must see that the resources employees will use to take on effective engagement are made available. Resources include tools, information, mentoring, training, and more. Here's an earlier posting and here's a downloadable pdf.

Engagement: Every leader, every manager must be certain that every individual who supervises employees does so with an "engagement commitment." The objectives of the organization are more successfully achieved when employees are engaged. Managers/supervisors should give ample attention (and encouragement) to employee engagement.

Carleen, I append to your statement: "Culture eats strategy every day of the week to the CORE."

5 Secrets about Expectations and Engagement

As soon as I hit the "publish" icon and posted these "secrets," they were no more...secrets, that is. That is fine with me. The best thing about a secret is sharing it with someone who can benefit from knowing it, using it...and passing it on to someone else.

So, enjoy these ways to help your people get engaged in their work, its nitty gritty, and its relevance to the entire organization. Do that by working with each individual so she knows clearly what she is expected to be engaged in.

That last statement, however, lacks necessary clarity (as so many statements of expectation do). Here are components of expectations:

1. Definition and clarification of what engagement entails.
2. Expression of results desired from the engagement.
3. Assurance that manager and employee have similar perceptions of engagement.
4. Recognition that expectation is not only "top down" but that employees have expectations of their managers.

Your and your employees' attention to each of these components enhances expectation awareness.

One question to ask, then, is how can I generate employee engagement by giving attention to these components of expectations? 

Here are 5 suggestions:

1. Create a How Am I Meeting My Own Expectations? forum. The intention is to keep expectations and awareness of expectations in the front of people's minds. Get team members suggestions for the format and pizazz of a regular opportunity for people to share how they are meeting their self-expectations. You'll find in time that this becomes a great opportunity for people to discuss that they are not meeting all of those expectations. That's when the sharing or ideas and insights and resources becomes so valuable among team members. (Allow your people to help make this forum more than "just a meeting." After-work discussion groups, pizza lunches, talk-and-walk sessions...)
2. Hold Am I Meeting Your Expectations? meetings. This can be the flip side of #3 or it can be completely different in format. The purpose is for people to ask the question, Am I meeting your expectations? And, of course, to receive honest answers. The power of the question removes the threat of unwanted criticism. This becomes, in time, an outstanding trust-building resource.
3. Generate What If We Expect More? discussions. Businesses change. The economy changes. Markets and customers change. Change is the norm. And so expectations change. Often, the change in expectations is that they get bigger, higher, tougher. When such changes occur without time for preparation, they can be tough to take. By asking What if we expect more...? fairly frequently --even when there are no changes on the horizon--your organization can exhibit a more calm and comfortable readiness when changes do appear.
4. State You Meet My Expectations in different, creative ways. Close behind clarity of expectations on the "What Engages Employees" list is recognition by one's supervisor. Couple the two and increase the engagement power of your communication with your people. Carry a notebook with you. Jot down anything, everything that crosses your mind regarding how you might--in a unique, different way--show or tell someone he is meeting your (and the job's and the company's) expectations. Review the notebook regularly. The more you allow yourself to jot down even the most far-fetched ideas, the more you will find ways to use some of what goes into that notebook. For 7 starter-tips...
5. Create YOUR OWN ways to bring expectations to everyone's front-of-mind. Get rid of your inner voice's whispered objections:

• "I don't have time." It doesn't have to take much time, and the more you let yourself do it the less time it will take.
• "My people (should) already know what's expected of them." Your people probably do know what is expected of them. However, continued attention to expectations bolsters the employee's desire to fulfill the expectations. That desire is engagement's start point.
• "My job is to manage." Managing is developing people. People develop (themselves) as they fulfill greater and greater expectations. Developing your own ways for people to think about, talk about, laugh about, and learn about expectations...another good reason to carry that notebook.

Give one or more of these a try. Give yourself an A for your attention and initiative. Give this posting a comment!

Resourceful Engagement

On October 19 (What Happens When...)I listed 5 ways an organization (specifically, its managers) can stimulate and improve employee engagement. (Previous postings for the first 4 can be accessed: 1, 2, 3, 4)

Now let's elaborate on #5:

Tools and resources (including education) are made readily available for the employee to initiate her/his individual improvement.

We start with the assumption that everyone desires to improve performance...continually. Yet we know not everyone fulfills that desire. Each of us knows people who just don't make the effort to improve.

One reason for their stasis: fear of the unknown. Individuals uncertain of what, where, how, and who  may fear taking on performance improvement. Consider someone asking:

• What materials, tools, equipment, instruction, information do I need to improve my performance?
• Where do I find them?
• How do I create time and structure in which to use those resources and improve my performance?
• Who is available to provide coaching and guidance, if/when I need it?

The engaged individual will find answers. She will make time and effort to locate resources. He will manage his time and organizational sphere and apply the resources to fulfill his improvement desire. And if desired or necessary, each will bring the appropriate adviser into the picture. (Engagement does generate performance improvement.)

The flip side applies. The person who is not engaged will probably not pro-actively seek answers to what? where? how? and who? Consequently, that individual's performance improvement desire is likely to be dormant.

I've maintained before that a manager cannot make an employee engaged.

But I do maintain this: a manager can stimulate an employee to(ward) engagement, by making performance improvement resources and opportunities available. Providing these removes the unknown and removes (or lessens) the employee's fear.

So, what can a manager do to provide improvement resources for her staff?

• Build a learning environment
  • Brown bag lunches
  • Guest speakers (not necessarily "trainers")
  • A full-force library (not necessarily only  job/industry related)
  • Informative agenda items (not only "old business" and "new business")
• Engage staff in building that learning environment
  • "What do you want to learn?" surveys
  • Continuous feedback/evaluation of all types of learning by employees
  • Enlist employees as teachers in their expertise
• Demonstrate appreciation for learning
  • Celebrate employees earning certificates, diplomas, licenses
  • Provide access to training and education: on-site, on-line, on demand
  • Make "what have we learned?" a consistent conversation item

And it's pretty obvious we're talking about the manager who is already highly engaged herself, isn't it?

What'd You Expect?

A few postings back (10/19/07) I maintained that an organization's Engagement Culture promotes and increases its employees' engagement. It does this by applying at least 5 practices. I promised techniques/suggestions for each of those practices.

Here's the 3rd of the 5 ways an Engagement Culture builds greater employee engagement:

• An employee is provided clear information of her job's, manager's, and organization's expectations.

First of all, this information is likely already in your "toolbox" and you don't need it.

Second, you have so much on your workbench that seems more urgent than being sure each staff member knows what is expected.

So, third, you may not make the time to use the tools in that toolbox.

Reminder #1: the employee fully engaged in her function, responsibility and job more fully contributes good for the company.

Reminder #2: the engaged employee credits her manager with clearly communicating expectations, while the disengaged employee blames her manager for not clearly communicating.

Here are 3 suggestions that may simplify providing that "clear information of her job's, manager's, and organization's expectations."

• Distinguish types of expectations. For example: performance (accuracy, productivity, etc.), conduct (attendance, punctuality, attentiveness), development (training, education, mentor relationship). Identifying categories of expectations will assist in your clear description and his clear understanding.
• Invite employee's input. The simple question, "What are your expectations  concerning _____?" Fill that blank any number of ways: your job, this project, performance improvement, for example. This provides ample conversation opportunities to clarify more what is expected.
• Create and use an Expectations Scorecard. You and your staff member separately rate her fulfillment of expectations. (How about in separate categories?) Paying attention to expectations as an evaluation tool (informal and formal) increases attention to expectations as an every day practice.

Keep in mind: a little time making sure expectations are known and understood produces big results in employee's engagement...performance...improvement...success.

What to Say?

Let's look at another of the ways an Engagement Culture actually increases each employee's engagement in her/his performance. (From the previous post, What Happens when....) 

• A manager communicates continuously and for a variety of reasons (work and not work) with the employee.

The idea of a manager/supervisor making time available "just to talk" to staff may seem contrary to a less talk, more action policy. But if more talk produces more action towards improved engagement, enhanced performance, greater results achievement, who's to argue? Not I.

Do not equate manager-employee communication with micro-management. While some of the talk will invariably be about work, the conversations can (should) range far and wide and not all be about work, certainly not all about the employee's job or performance.

Here are a few suggestions:

• Ask, ask, then ask some more. One determinant of employee's degree of engagement in his work is the manager's level of interest. That may be interest in the worker, the worker, the worker's outside life, and more. One well-proven way to demonstrate interest in someone is to ask questions. As you and he know one another better, the nature of the questions will change.
• Be ready to answer. Successful communication is two-way. You make it clear that you are truly involved in a give-and-take conversation by inviting questions. You invite questions (and more questions) by demonstrating comfort as you answer them. A manager I reported to 20 years ago  always asked, "What would you like to ask me?" near the end of the conversation. She had truly engaged people working for her.
• Formally schedule informal conversations. The formal part of scheduling is that you assign and announce a time, date, and place. Suggestion: try to find a time convenient for all and make it a regular event, i.e., lunch on first Thursday of each month. The informal part is that these meetings have neither required attendance, set agenda, nor defined guidelines. These are the opportunity to sit down and talk. Over time the confidence to speak up and the quality of content improves.
• Never be 'too busy.' Think of how often you pass someone in the hall, each of you says, "HihowareyouI'mfinethankyou." By the end of the run-on sentences, the backs of your heads are saying goodbye to one another. The extra 15-30 seconds individuals spend stopping, looking one another in the eye, and sharing a few words have human meaning. When either of those persons is a manager/supervisor, the meaning increases.
• Speak with your eyes. Every day early in my commuting days, I purchased coffee at the train station's Dunkin' Donuts. I picked it up from the counter and walked out, saying, "Thank you" over my shoulder. Then one day, Jean-Paul held onto my coffee as I reached for it. I asked why. He commented, "In my country, we say 'thank you' face to face. Not as we walk away with our back turned." Lesson learned.

I know you have communications practices like these in your organization. Very possible some that are better.

Please feel free to hit Comment below and share your successful ideas.