Employee Engagement–Unravelling the Mystery
Corporations spend thousands of dollars trying to figure out whether their employees are engaged and, if not, how to engage them.
There is an inexpensive, very simple, old-fashioned method for uncovering what your employees want and need in order to be engaged:
ASK THEM!!!
Engage is a verb. It involves interaction with something—a computer screen, a smartphone screen or—hey! Here’s a unique idea: HOW ABOUT A PERSON?
I know you’re super busy so I’ve put together a one-page listing of engaging questions to get you started: The Very Best Employee Engagement Questions
Celebrate National Employee Appreciation Day by Using This Technique
Friday, March 2, 2018 is National Employee Appreciation Day (who knew?). Your employees will feel appreciated every day if you consistently use this technique.
Delegation: a tool to develop the skills of others
Every single interaction with a team member is an opportunity for that person’s growth and their supervisor’s freedom.
Each time you interact with an employee if, instead of answering questions, you ask questions, then you are continually developing them.
Example:
Employee: I’m not sure how you want me to set up this report you requested.
You: What are your ideas for setting it up?
This type of interaction accomplishes three things:
- You get a glimpse into how that employee thinks about work.
- You hear his/her solutions (and one of them may be better than yours!)
- Since s/he was involved in the planning, you gain “buy in.”
This is called the Socratic Delegation Process and results in direct employee development (we used to call it “hands on development” but that term is problematic these days).
For the Socratic Delegation Process template, click here.
Most direct supervisors act as “answer machines” when it comes to interacting with their direct reports. The trap here is that you then become indispensable–and it is a trap.
If your department cannot function without your presence then you can kiss any potential promotion goodbye. Taking you out of the department would be too risky for the overall business or organization.
More importantly, you end up with a team that is “phoning it in” because they’re not engaged–they think that’s your job.
A Shortcut to Meaningful Communication
Whenever I work with organizations on improving Employee Engagement we first explore what they think is behind the problem. High on the list, without exception, is communication. The staff wants me to “fix” the leadership team and the leaders want me to fix the staff.
The 11th Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary defines communicate as follows: communicate . v. 1. Share or exchange information or ideas à convey (an emotion or feeling) in a non-verbal way
For the most part, we pay significant attention to the “share” part of the definition and completely disregard “exchange” and “convey (an emotion or feeling) in a non-verbal way”.
We do love the sound of our own voices, don’t we?
Here is your three-part shortcut to meaningful communication:
Step 1: Ask a question
Step 2: Listen (convey your interest by doing nothing else)
Step 3: Ask more questions based on what you heard during Step 2 (exchange).
A conversation is similar to a tennis match. You cannot anticipate what’s coming because you simply don’t know. You can only wait with curiosity and react to what’s served up. If you’re too deeply thinking about how you’re going to react to a serve or volley that hasn’t happened yet, then you’re likely to miss the ball altogether. Game, set and match.
You will undoubtedly have a conversation very soon after reading this. Try the formula above and consider whether the conversation was more meaningful than usual, i.e., more in-depth.