Everyone needs to be engaged
Why is engagement so important at work? Because it inspires others to follow your lead. But you can’t engage other people unless you are engaged yourself. Here Anthony Landale looks at how you can bring your best to your business in 2009.
What state of mind do your colleagues typically bring to work? Are they full of confidence, raring to go, looking forward to another fulfilling week in the business?
This isn’t irony. It’s our belief at Illumine that all of the above are within reach, and that when people show up at their passionate best it makes an enormous difference to the results that they deliver as individuals, as well as the performance they achieve within their teams.
Although it might be too rare an occurrence for our liking, all of us know exactly what it is like to be engaged by another person and the impact that such engagement has on our spirits and on our behaviour. For example, great customer service often has an uplifting effect on us. It has us feeling good about ourselves. It motivates us to talk about the service and the organisation where we experienced it to our friends. It even inspires us to go back to the person or the business in the hope and expectation that we will get more of the same.
But it isn’t only in customer facing situations where full engagement occurs. Inspiring leaders are typically inspiring not because of their words but because of the level of engagement they engender. How do they achieve this? They believe in what they are saying, they are in touch with their values and they exude authenticity. All this helps them to reach out to others.
The same can be said of presenters who talk from the heart and influence their audiences or any ‘expert’ who brings their enthusiasm and commitment to their work. In all such cases people are engaging, because they care passionately about what they are up to. They aren’t just ‘doing’ a job; they are finding meaning, purpose and satisfaction in their endeavours and transmitting their passion to you or to another person.
Of course many companies recognise that such engagement leads to the delivery of better results. But how can you develop people to be enthusiastic and passionate?
This question reaches to the heart of engagement. If you, as a manager want your team to bring more of their zest to work, then please don’t think you can just command it. You have to invite it. You have to create space for it. You have to coach it out of people because you are committed to them and their success.
And step one of this process – before anyone becomes engaging – is a conversation between you and the individual concerned which focuses on their world. This is a conversation which has them look at what they care about, which helps them get in touch with their values and which encourages them to consider that by being invested in what they are doing, they can find more purpose in their work.
When people are in touch with this purpose then, and only then, can you predict with any confidence that they will bring their energy and motivation to work. And furthermore they will be able to sustain it. Not only because they recognise that what they are doing feels worthwhile, but because they know what actions they can take which are in line with what they believe in.
In this context you can help almost anyone find passion and purpose at work. It doesn’t matter whether they are a civil servant or a private entrepreneur, whether they are in IT services or in front line sales, whether they are manufacturing or selling goods, it’s whatever they find meaningful that makes it so. So it could be about helping people, about wanting to make things better or about improving efficiency. You can’t tell people what makes a job ‘rich’ and meaningful, you have to find out what inspires that person in the first place.
So the challenge for every manager and leader is to start having engagement conversations with their direct reports as soon as possible. The outcome for both parties will be deeper relationships, better job design and improved motivation. And of course once the individual concerned is engaged in their own journey, then they will start to engage others. That’s the way the engagement process works. Once people are inspired by what they are up to, then they will talk about it with more energy, they will naturally transmit their enthusiasm, and they will draw people to listen to them. All it needs from you to start this process is to ask a few pertinent questions and to listen to the answers.
Motivation tips
Tip 1: Discover what it is that your direct report or coachee cares about most. This might mean exploring with them their values or their beliefs or having a conversation about what makes them feel happy or inspired. It also means considering what activities they can be involved in where their values are being met.
Tip 2: Identify the steps that can help them realise what they care about. These don’t have to be huge leaps into the dark; there might be some quite small actions that the individual can take that would make a big difference in finding more purpose and meaning at work.
Tip 3: Ask them to declare what they are up to to someone who they don’t want to let down. This is a great technique for helping them make progress. When making a change it’s all too easy to let the first obstacle distract you; so ask them to find someone whose opinion they value and tell them what they are doing and why it’s important to them.
Tip 4: Ask them to find other people to support and challenge them along the way. These people might be friends, coaches, managers or colleagues. Get them to identify a number of people that they can turn to for encouragement, for advice and especially for that straight talking that they will need to achieve their goal.
Tip 5: Celebrate their progress. Be sure you know exactly what their success looks like, sounds like and feels like and then go out of your way to acknowledge them for the commitment they’ve brought to making a change and the difference they are making as a result.
You can find out more about engagement through our PassionWorks!™ programme. www.illumine.co.uk/motivate/passionworks-staff-engagement.html
Business directory
