Engagement Talk
by Miki Saxon
Engaging your people is a priority these days, but to do it you must foster an environment of trust, where the messenger is never killed and people feel safe saying what they really think. It also helps if you have the kind of ego that doesn’t stand on its dignity.
Here is one approach.
Start with how many times you have said or heard people say ‘should have’, as in “We should have…” or “My boss should have…?”
What if you could harness the creativity behind those thoughts to improve performance in an organization (whether team, executives or somewhere in-between)—the company’s; the group’s; the individual’s; your own?
The idea is to take that “should have’ attitude and make it a constructive function to foster corporate/personal growth and motivation, since the more comprehensive the view of their job and company the more creative people will become.
Drawing in all your people, no matter their level, encourages them to see a larger picture, juices creativity, surfaces ideas from unlikely sources and enhances their sense of ownership, i.e., engagement.
Improvement happens because how they think is the basis for how they perform.
If your MAP makes you the type of manager to whom this appeals then encourage your people to ask
- “Why did she do that?”
- “What can I learn from his decision?”
- “What would I have done differently?”
- Later ask, “Would it have worked?”
Discuss the responses and implement the insights.
For more great stuff on engagement, click over to Becky Robinson’s LeaderTalk for a roundup of articles on engagement from some terrific bloggers.
Image credit: HikingArtist on flickr
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