Define engagement

- So one day your boss calls you into his office and says he wants you to do a better job
of engaging your team members. You walk away from that conversation asking
yourself, "What does that mean?" Think about the word engagement for a minute. What
pops into your head? I'm sure you can remember a time when you really enjoyed your
work. I bet on that day time just flew by. Or maybe you can remember just the
opposite when you dreaded the day, kept watching the clock and prayed for it to be
over. A professor at Boston University, William Kahn, kicked off the conversation about
workplace engagement in a 1990 journal article. He defined engaged people as
mentally, physically and emotionally involved in their work. Now of course there are
other definitions too. Wikipedia says an engaged employee is someone who is fully
absorbed by and enthusiastic about their work and so takes positive action to further
the organization's reputation and interests. And that's certainly a mouth full. Personally,
I define engagement as the story we tell ourselves about the experience called work. I
use the word story because two employees with identical work experiences can
have two different levels of engagement. My engagement, your engagement and their
engagement has as much to do with how we feel in a situation as it does anything else. I
want you to understand that engagement is both a combination of a person's general
nature as well as the experience or environment which they find themselves in. Nature
and nurture. Of course different workplaces have different engagement
drivers. Engagement working at a coal mine differs from engagement working at an IT
company. Engagement for a 20 year old is different from an engagement for a 60 year
old. In 2000 Gallup began using their enormous survey resources to track world-wide
engagement numbers. Using 12 questions, they focused on three aspects of
engagement, an employee's emotional attachment to the company, the employee's
level of commitment to the company, and their motivation to supply discretionary effort
at work. And I have to tell you, it's not a pretty picture. In every Gallup survey since
2000, only one-third of all employees are considered to be engaged. That means two
out of three people go to work every day simply to collect a paycheck and many hate
their jobs. For these people, work is a life-draining affair. According to Gallup, there's a
direct relationship between engagement scores and several different aspects of a
company including customer ratings, profitability, productivity and turnover. Motivated
by the insights drawn from engagement surveys, business leaders now look to
engagement as a way to increase employee productivity and the value of their
brands. That's why your boss asked you to improve the engagement on your team. No
matter how you define it, engagement is always going to be a combination of how you
feel about a situation and your work environment. Nature and nurture. Given these
learning points, I want you to think about this. What does engagement mean to you and
how can you help improve it where you work?
Find your sweet spot
- I want you to stop and think about two questions for a moment. What are you really
good at, and what do you like doing best. The answers to those two questions will help
you to find your sweet spot at work. Your sweet spot is that place when you do
something well, and you enjoy doing it well. When you're in your sweet spot, you're
more engaged. You look forward to doing that work because it's energy giving not
energy depleting. And I know, that on a days when you're engaged at work, you go
home feeling better about yourself, and that impacts how you treat friends and
family. I'd like to show you a simple exercise that will help you to define your sweet
spot. First, list the five best technical skills you have that relate to your current job. If
you're in the marketing department, you might say something like
blogging, PowerPoint, social media sites, copywriting and Word. If you have a problem
with answering that question, ask yourself what would others say are your five best
skills. Once that's done, then circle the two things you like doing best. Take time to think
about it before you draw your circles. In this example, they might be copywriting and
blogging. Those two circles represent the sweet spot. So the question is, how much of
your time do you spend in that sweet spot right now. You'll hit the career jackpot when
you work in that sweet spot more than half the time. Right after this video, get a pen
and paper, or your phone, and make a list. Write down your five best skills and then
circle or highlight the two you enjoy doing best. I put a sweet spot exercise for you in
the exercise files. Download it and give it a try. This is your life we're talking about, so
take your time. Once you've done the exercise, ask yourself, what's it going to take for
me to spend at least half my time working in my sweet spot. And then make a plan for
how you're going to get there. Then do the same exercise with the people you
manage. Walk them though the process, and talk to them about the results. What can
you do to help them spend more time working in their sweet spot? The more time they
spend doing what interests them, the more they'll be engaged. When you get to your
sweet spot, you'll look forward to coming to work every day. Since you spend more time
at work than anywhere else, it would be crazy not to enjoy what you're doing. And the
same goes for your employees.
Experience engaging leadership
- Do you want to be an engaging leader? Of course you do. When you're engaging
leader, not only is your work more rewarding, but so is the compensation. The good
news is one of the easiest ways to be an engaging leader is to model one. If we're going
to model someone, we have to be clear about why they're engaging and why they're
not. Then we have to figure out how we can model their positive qualities and
actions. I'm sure you can recall working for an engaging leader in your life. Think for a
moment why that person was engaging. When I facilitate this conversation in live
presentations, I get back a similar set of responses. No matter what city I'm in, I'm told
that engaging leaders have specific qualities. They're passionate, they're
inclusive, they're good listeners, inspiring, and more. How many of these qualities were
represented by the leaders you thought of? My guess is at least a few. To a large degree
this is common sense, but not a common practice. What actions these leaders take to
exhibit these engaging qualities? What did they specifically do that was engaging? For
example, did they spend some focus time with you or encourage you to grow in your
career? How can you copy their actions and produce similar results? We can also do a
list of the qualities exhibited by disengaging bosses. That list would of course be the
polar opposite. Disengaging leaders are complacent, exclusive, poor listeners, and
critical just to name a few. What specifically did these leaders do that was
disengaging? Were they overly critical, or micromanagers? Where do you find yourself
engaging in some of these behaviors? If you model engaging leaders and you avoid
modeling disengaging leaders, you'll become an engaging leader. It's really that
simple. Here's an exercise I'd like to see you do. Write down three things you can do to
be a more engaging leader. Think of the who, what, when, and where of doing
them. Now I want you to be honest with yourself and list three things you can stop
doing that are disengaging. If you're having trouble figuring out what they might be, ask
yourself what would those who work with me say they are. When you're clear about
those things, put 'em on a piece of paper, in your phone, or some other kind of
reminder. Then think about moments throughout the day when you can either start
doing the positive things or stop doing the negative ones. Keep your journal for a few
weeks to see how you're doing and have fun starting an intentional engagement
journey. By practicing this simple approach, you'll become the model of engagement
others admire and want to follow.
The value of discretionary effort
- When leaders talk about engagement, they do so mainly because they want
employees to produce that magic pixie dust called discretionary effort. Discretionary
effort is the difference between have to do and want to do. It's about going above and
beyond what's included in the job description. Leaders love the idea of discretionary
effort because it increases productivity and profits with minimal additional cost. But the
type of effort that's encouraged at one company might not be the same as
another. When I use the term discretionary effort, what thoughts come to mind? Putting
in long hours every week? Skipping lunch? Checking e-mails all weekend and on
vacations? Well what do you think of showing patience with a difficult customer, helping
a struggling team member, working overtime without being asked, sharing a cost
savings idea, or treating a busy boss to a take-out lunch? When we talk about
discretionary effort, we have to make sure it's in alignment with the company culture
and values. And while discretionary effort is generally a good thing, it also has it's
limits. Too much effort can generate exhaustion, stress, burn out, and resentment. Fact
is, different employees have different capacity for engagement. You will quickly learn
that managing employee engagement and discretionary effort is a balancing act. If you
push too hard, you'll cause disengagement. Push too little, and mediocrity can set in. So
what can you do to encourage an employee's discretionary effort? First of all, you can
model it. Model exactly what discretionary effort should look like. Second, don't take it
for granted. Acknowledge it when you see it. You don't have to do anything expensive
or complicated, but people who put in extra effort want to be acknowledged for it. I put
a copy of my Going the extra mile form in the exercise files. Check it out. Third, tell
others about it. For example, Southwest is a company that does a great job of
acknowledging the discretionary efforts of employees in it's flight magazine. Remember,
leaders love the idea of discretionary effort because the results fall directly to the
bottom line. If as a manager you could increase your team's discretionary effort, you
become more valuable in the process.
Attracting engaged employees
- Great companies don't have to find engaged employees, they attract them. Companies
like Zappos and KPMG and Southwest Airlines have top quality candidates lining up to
apply. And how do they do it? They make the entire hiring process interesting and
engaging. Let me give you three basic things you can do to help the company start
attracting engaged job prospects today. First, get job prospects to pay attention by
branding the company as an engaging place to work. What does your hiring page look
like? Who's attention is it attracting? Are top prospects excited about your
company? Are they paying attention to your job opportunities because the branding
reflects an engaging work experience? I've reviewed hundreds of company hiring
pages and most of them are boring at best. Your hiring page needs to be
interesting and exciting. Tell stories about doing great work, share video testimonials
from existing employees, talk about opportunity and career growth. A great company
hiring page invites you in. People have lost interest in their current jobs look at these
pages and hear themselves saying, "I'd really like to work there." Zappos is a company
that does this really well and their number one job is shipping shoes in boxes. If they
can brand themselves as an engaging workplace, then so can you, but it doesn't just
happen, it's a choice your company makes. The second thing you can do is to tell job
prospects exactly what you want in an employee. Tell them you want engaged,
enthusiastic and motivated people who want to work at a great company. Tell them it's
part of your company culture. Make it clear you'll not accept mediocrity or the
disengaged. Here's an example of a job posting that does just that. We're looking for
highly motivated employees who bring their all to work every day. We have a high-
productivity and high-engagement culture that's not for anyone seeking a comfort
zone. If you're ready to rock, we're the place for you. Now who wouldn't want to work at
a place like that? The third thing you can do is to apply engagement strategies at job
fairs. Like most hiring pages, most job fair booths are simply informational and
boring. You need to make your booth both fun and engaging. Grab people's attention
with balloons, a popcorn machine or maybe even a fortune teller. Have a Keurig coffee
machine. People line up for good coffee which is exactly what you want them to do and
while they're waiting you can start a conversation. Put up an LCD screen with
pictures and videos showing your people at work. Include testimonials about how much
they love their jobs. Use your creativity to create an engaging experience. Hiring is the
tipping point in the employment relationship. Your goal is to attract employees already
engaged from the start. So I challenge you. Take a serious look at your recruiting
plans and figure out how you can start using these ideas to start attracting top-quality
candidates today.
Assessing the fit of employees
- Have you ever tried to put a round peg into a square hole? Why would you do that? It
wouldn't work very well, would it? It's like that when you're hiring new employees, too. If
you're hiring a round peg to work in a square hole, you're guaranteed
frustration, disengagement and turnover. To have the greatest chance of success, an
employee needs to be a good fit. So test each candidate's skills and assess for their
personality. Disengaged employees are often misfits and without testing and
assessing, you're blindly hoping that someone will be a good fit for the job. There are
some good tools you can use to help evaluate your candidates. The first tools are skills
tests and there's two kinds, substantive and procedural. Substantive testing measures a
person's knowledge. For example, if you're hiring a lawyer, you can test them on the
knowledge of the law they'll be practicing. If hiring a truck driver, you can test them on
their safety knowledge of operating a big rig. I had a client who was looking for a new
CFO. They wanted somebody who could be a star performer and used substantive
testing to narrow down their list of applicants. All of the applicants had solid
experience and seemed well-qualified but several of them scored surprisingly low when
it came to the substantive knowledge of general accounting principles. Procedural
testing measures technical skills. Engineers can be tested on computer-assisted
design software and typists on their word processing speed and accuracy. The truck
drivers can take a driving test. My client who is looking for a new CFO ran their finances
on QuickBooks. So the job prospects were also tested on their knowledge of
QuickBooks, their procedural knowledge. It took two months to find a CFO who tested
in the top 20% of both categories, thereby guaranteeing a highly skilled CFO for that
position. Know this about testing. Half of all applicants will test better than the other
half. Which do you think has the most potential for engagement? The second type of
tool is a personality assessment. Personality assessments measure qualities that form an
individual's distinct character and natural propensities. For example, is the applicant
detail oriented or big picture oriented? Are they outgoing or are they introverted? Are
they rules oriented or highly creative? You don't want somebody who's profiles with a
low attention to detail to be your CFO. Just like you don't want somebody who's very
rules oriented to being in your creative marketing department. There are more than
1,000 assessment tools in the marketplace which means the best assessment tools are
the ones you use. Your number one job as a manager is to create a productive, engaged
team. When you test and assess job candidates, you reduce the likelihood of hiring
misfits along with the frustration, low productivity, disengagement and turnover that
comes along with them.