I believe you don't get emotional engagement unless people believe that their ideas are valued and that they're cared about as people.
In the past, whether it was in sport, in business or otherwise, you had a manager or a coach. They were the leader and were often autocratic and insecure. They would come up with all the ideas and strategies and would then distribute their vision to the team for everybody else to follow. This was accepted practice.
Society has now changed. Education has changed. Now, to really get the best out of people, it's a case of sitting down with them, looking at the direction of the organisation and involving them as much as is realistically possible, especially regarding their role and the role of their team. There isn’t always consensus but they're heard. I believe that if you don't involve people in any way; what they think about things and their opinions and ideas, then there isn't going to be an emotional investment from them. They will robotically go through the motions with large parts of their potential untapped.
It comes down to involvement, which builds engagement.
In terms of initiating this involvement, there are different methods to try. Each has its advantages and its disadvantages.
When thinking about involvement, face-to-face meetings seem like a natural place to start. The advantage of coming together, if it's managed correctly, is the synergy it can create. People can provoke ideas in each other, which I think can be very effective and stimulating. Meetings, however, can be very time consuming, especially if they're not prepared and well organised.
Additionally, with face-to-face group meetings, certain people and certain personality types tend to dominate. If I'm a team leader or if I'm a coach, my interest is in making my business or my team as effective as possible. To do this, I have to be able to tap into the intellectual and emotional capital of all my people, whether they want to speak out or not. Sometimes, people who are generally quiet and introverted feel uncomfortable because they don’t want to share their ideas in front of a group, especially if they've not had a chance to reflect first. Others would like to share but are intimidated. This is a loss both in terms of the ideas that could be generated from the team/organisation and also as an opportunity to make these people feel valued.
What I like to do, ahead of time, is send out key challenges or discussion points. This could be an agenda or questions for people to think about and take responsibility for. Then when we do meet face to face or in a group, the members have had an opportunity to prepare and time isn’t wasted. Of course, there are ways of eliciting feedback without actually meeting in person. This can save a lot of time - and technology has helped enormously with this. The key is that these decisions are made consciously.
It's important to having different approaches with different people, so you can get the very best out of each unique individual rather than trying to shoehorn them into a particular process. This requires flexibility and reflection on the part of the leader/manager.
Encourage continuous dialogue, to build long-term engagement
When I worked in America, I was a director of a coaching organisation, responsible for quality control. We were based in 20 different states, so a lot of the time it was hard to know how people really felt and what their emotional connection to the company was. Performance is often simply a function of this connection. Most employees perform very well if they are supported, developed and emotionally engaged in their role and company.
To address this, I set up an online system where an email would pop into the inboxes of about 200 coaches, every 2 weeks. Questions included:
- "What is your current level of satisfaction with the job?"
- "How connected do you feel to the company?
- "How do you feel you're being developed professionally by this company?"
Staff would mark one to five on each of those. There was also a comment section where they could expand further about the company, about their development or anything else that was on their mind.
It was agreed that I was the only member of management that could access the information so there was a strong element of trust in the process. I used to go to the system regularly and see what these 200+ coaches had written. It almost gave me an instant access to their professional and personal mindset at that time. I would often pick the phone up and call employees to discuss worries or concerns. Maybe they had an idea. Maybe they had a problem. Whatever it was, the continuous dialogue meant that I knew what was going on with each person, as an individual and, when something did come up, I could deal with it straight away and they’d know what they’d said was valued. I didn't always agree with them and some of the conversations were quite robust. Nevertheless, they were heard. The structure was created with the staff at the beginning of the year and was carefully constructed.
Employees in the twenty first century have different expectations. Very few institutions have the steep management hierarchies that once existed because they slow up development processes and demotivate modern workers. In a business world that is volatile and rapidly changing, there is a need for dynamic knowledge workers. Workers need to be engaged and connected to the values of the company if that company is to succeed. Organisations that cannot create this environment will fall by the way side.
