by David Harder
• What kind of employer brand will fulfill our vision?
• What are the values, central competencies, and style of our ideal employees?
• When people hear our organization’s name, how do we want them to envision our people?
• How effective is our workforce with continuous learning? What do they bring to the organization as a result?
• What is the current “engagement state” of our managers and how will we improve that?
• What are the various forms of my own personal bias?
• How will I orchestrate the change and engagement solution in my organization?
This should not be left to accidental success or haphazard failure. We need to design your workplace to fit your values and vision, but if you want productive energy and excitement, you need to push the envelope further. Stand your ground and don’t compromise. Compromising will always result in partial sacrifice of your vision and, essentially, will compromise you.
Exercise: Pull out a clean sheet of paper or open a fresh screen on your device. Give it a title.
Our Future State
Based on everything you have read, what are you inspired to build? Describe the new state as clearly and as vividly as possible. When you finish the initial document, keep it in a safe place. This one will never be finished. It is only a beginning, one that you will want to update on a continual basis.
After the initial overview, answer these additional questions to help clarify every significant aspect of your engagement culture. (These questions are valuable for all members within the culture.)
1. What are the capabilities that would allow every segment of the workforce to execute their own personal change?
2. In order to build a fully engaged workplace, what kinds of changes are you going to need to make in yours and others’ behavior?
3. What happens to your organization when it is filled with continuous learners?
4. What changes and improvements will bring full transparency to your culture?
Now, it is time to assemble the people that will help you. Discuss with them all that you want to accomplish and move forward.
The Book Club
Begin the journey by giving every employee a copy of The Workplace Engagement Solution. Establish several expectations for absorbing and applying the ideas from the book. Here are some examples of how to message the effort to your employees:
• The organization is beginning a culture development process focused on developing the skills of self-change within every employee and establishing a fully engaged culture. This is not just a culture change initiative. It is a commitment to build and expect the best of everyone within the organization. This initiative is about building a culture together that people want to join in order to grow and thrive.
• Ask for feedback from everyone based on the following seven questions:
1. How did you react to the ideas in this book?
2. What do you most want to learn?
3. How do you envision growing the skills within the organization?
4. How could this process impact you personally?
5. Are you interested in helping to organize an effort on this within our organization?
6. Would you be interested in becoming a mentor? If so, why?
7. What do you hope the outcomes of this process will be?
• Have intact teams meet once per week to discuss one chapter of the book. Explore how the views impact each member of the team. If there are questions in the chapter, answer them as well as the questions from the book report introduction.
The Book Club will accomplish a great deal in preparing the organization and setting new cultural expectations. It begins a vital conversation that introduces new concepts, helps team members absorb the ideas, and allows them to begin envisioning the change process within themselves as well as in the organization. It also gives stakeholders real opportunities to voice their points of view about the process. People need time to digest and internalize the concepts and insights. It is a time period that helps natural leaders step forward to voice their enthusiasm and desire to adopt the skills and processes as soon as possible. It also gives the organization indicators about potential mentors. This is about change with others, rather than imposing change onto others.
Implementation Team
Continuing with the theme of “right-sizing” to your organization, the team can be as small as one or two in smaller environments. In larger organizations, the team can include the CEO, chief human resources officer, learning executive, and any other leaders that either have a strong attraction to the engagement solution or who demonstrate most of the skills. The team will be responsible for not only implementation but also with continuity and sustainability. In other words, every aspect of the solution must be built into an ongoing practice to develop the new culture and instill the genuine lasting improvement that is required.
Communications and Policy
All policy communications ought to be delivered by the CEO or business owner. Without this critical element of success, the entire process gets funky and develops a lackluster feel based on the reality of a low commitment level. Depending upon the size of the organization, there will be a variety of individuals who can help with building the process. The communications need to describe the vision and voice the new expectations. The trance, for everyone, is officially over. You are now working together to build an organization that celebrates growth, that continuously learns, and that gives high quality attention to customers, but also to colleagues, vendors, and employees themselves. Convey that everyone owns and is accountable to the new reality and will be required to demonstrate what that means in a personal way.
Self-Inquiry
Continuous self-inquiry, for most people, is extremely rare. Many people have been conditioned to seek outside stimuli and reference points rather than connecting with their own truth. Why? Part of the reason is that the journey inward can bring a certain discomfort. Consequently, we need good role models who can demonstrate how it is done and help to ritualize self-inquiry until it becomes a natural, comfortable part of the culture as well as an expectation for personal development within the organization. Everyone participates.
The self-inquiry processes can be built into notepad rituals and protocols as well as online formats. Exercises should include the following elements.
• Strategic and career development targets (three, six, and/or 12 months)
• Change awareness—developing clarity around beneficial personal and collective change.
• Time value (daily)—using self-inquiry to get the most out of the day ahead.
• Positive action (weekly)—identifying the most valuable actions to take regardless of whether they come easy or with discomfort.
As the workforce engagement solution grows with practice, employees will eventually learn to administer self-inquiry, become mentors to others, and provide oversight to the process.
Learning
Drawing Healthy Attention to Oneself
Teach everyone question-driven consultative sales skills to boost their ability to connect with others’ needs and expectations. Provide presentation skills training broadly so that people can learn how to present in front of others and connect with an audience. Today, presentation skills development ought to include one-on-one, speaker-to-audience, and virtual (on camera) presentations to remote audiences. Each has different needs and success drivers. The training is not to turn everyone into a sales executive, but to instill comfort and skill with varying forms of communication, attention, influence, and persuasion. One of the most important benefits of these presentations is to help each person take greater ownership of their work and apply critical thinking to what it is that they do. The process helps them apply enthusiasm to the role and if they cannot find it, reveal the need to change themselves or change their role.
To significantly boost the benefits of this work, it is relatively easy to establish a Toastmas
ters chapter in your organization, and it is also easy to find one in your neighborhood. By encouraging your employees to attend, their skills improve quickly through practice, feedback, and repetition.
You may opt to build learning programs that are delivered in person or online. Regardless, remember that building skills in this area only comes through practice. Make it a point to give everyone opportunities to step forward and make presentations in a variety of group settings, from one-on-one to small and large groups, and also in video environments. Encourage teams to share opportunities to make presentations at meetings and rotate members so that everyone has regular opportunities to be in front of the group. This is a tremendously powerful professional development opportunity and personal growth experience.
Support Systems and Community Building
Building support is a continuous and ongoing process. One of the best places to begin is in social networking training because this is how people network today. However, you will want a specific type of training. Teach your employees how to identify great leads for their work, their careers, and their learning, and to find new mentors. Show them how to find leads that could become valued assets for the organization. Help them learn how to communicate with far more “high-touch” methods than simply sending a generic note or resorting to high-volume impersonal mailings. Set the expectation that everyone is responsible to find new resources for themselves and the organization. Help them to think for themselves and gain a deeper understanding of the organization’s success equation. For example, whenever we introduce changes to the mission, vision, and purpose, we must also generate and customize new support systems. It’s about making more people capable and responsible for the critical thinking and analysis that goes beyond normal operations.
As mentors are developed within the organization, they will become a resource for developing stronger support systems with the customers and clients of the organization. Mentors will help participants develop support around personal finance, health and wellness, skill-building, mentorship, education, administration, play and leisure, childcare, risk-taking, and fear management.
The bottom line is that you need to make social networking and community building a strong part of the overall culture. With my organization’s work in this area, we find that understanding the value of a strong community of support can be extremely powerful and transformative. Use it to elevate and enhance the process to improve talent acquisition, sales, and business intelligence. Create new and unique strategic partnerships and be on constant watch to identify new opportunities.
The Mentor-Driven Culture
Returning to the model of the AA mentorship culture, mentors are not derived from a caste system. For example, simply being a senior executive within an organization does not necessarily qualify someone as a role model for self-change and engagement. The title of mentor is one that must be earned. Unless the organization has a highly restrictive structure, we advise that you not make mentorship just another aspect of management. This route can corrupt the mentoring process and erase the benefits of pure mentorship throughout the organization. It can also corrupt the standards around “engagement for all.”
Keep mentorship in a special category: an aspirational role that is above and beyond any job description. How many managers in their current state would make good mentors? Of course we want managers and executives with superb mentorship capabilities, but that is not a given. If we award the title without deeper scrutiny, we can compromise the qualities and the recognition that comes from earning the role. Mentoring is an art and a sacred trust. All stand to gain from the deeper exploration of what it means to do it well.
Early Adopters
Depending upon the size of the organization, seek to find individuals who naturally demonstrate many of these skills and naturally understand the concepts within this book as the people to put on a fast track. Regardless, take the most responsible and enthusiastic volunteers. Track their progress and support them in the mentoring relationship directly.
Talent Acquisition and Right Fit
No matter what size your organization, always develop an in-depth employer brand that defines the tribe and a clear understanding of the people who fit into that tribe. No matter what, create a seamless and effective talent acquisition process that identifies ideal fit at every level of the supply chain.
Strive to create an acquisition process that provides quality experiences for candidates and new hires alike. Develop talent acquisition skills throughout the organization. In many cases, hiring managers need training in how to hire to this level of performance. Provide resources that help everyone involved with talent acquisition to identify their own biases. Establish clear objectives regarding what right fit looks like. This becomes the standard. Watch for resistance in the form of old, misguided filters such as “We don’t have time.” Quite candidly, they often don’t have the time because of the dysfunction that occurs from sloppy hiring and talent acquisition practices.
Transparency
It is important to establish full transparency around the process through workplace configuration, policy, technology, and intention. When everyone sees how others are performing it creates a natural competition, establishes baselines for performance, and builds trust. Time and time again, even simple technology upgrades offer immediate improvements with engagement and customer performance. With the advent of the virtual workplace, all types of software have emerged that measures virtually every metric of performance. At a glance, anyone can see how peers, direct reports, and superiors are performing. The spirit behind building transparency is to remove isolation in the physical workplace so that team members are seen and available to each other. Finally, “walk the talk.” When senior management tells people to do something and then does not practice it personally, employees feel patronized and end up “going through the motions.”
The invitation is to create a culture in which there is nothing to hide. If you can’t readily see it, begin by envisioning it, wanting it, or just having the courage to go through with it. If it’s still elusive, then it might be time to examine why. Security and transparency are vastly different issues and both can live peacefully together. Transparency suggests that all of us are practicing behavior and creating value that all eyes can see and connect with.
Feedback
It’s simple. Establish feedback in a variety of areas.
Employee Surveys
Don’t use surveys to measure complaints and criticism. If that is the current state, surveys only remind employees of why they are having so much difficulty with the culture. Use surveys to measure progress! Use them to demonstrate how the learning programs are progressing and to offer opportunities for suggestions on how to better develop your change and engagement initiatives. Use surveys to measure the quality of mentorship and performance, relationships and personal growth, and the ability to change and move forward.
Financial Feedback
Work with your finance professionals to establish straightforward methods that attach profit to engagement, customer involvement, and learning. Even better, demonstrate engagement as a profit source rather than an expense. Here is my promise: in almost all cases, you will witness that profits and customer retention closely mirror increases or decreases in employee engagement.
Measuring financial performance can also lead to much-needed revisions in your compensation structures. Measuring engagement, mentorship capabilities, and improved life skills also supports the building of a thoroughly modern and effective workplace.
Celebrate and Praise
These important drivers of success—acknowledgement, praise, and celebration—are still too often overlooked or underemphasized. You need to establish benchmarks in the growth of your workforce engagement solution. Identify the characteristics you want your employees to develop. When you see it happening, celebrate! Acknowledge everyone. Praise people that went above and beyond the expectations. Never fall into a mindless, predictable routine i
n this area because if someone expects when you are going to say thank you or how we are going to do it, you’ve already lost the special moment as well as the impact. Celebrate creatively and spontaneously. Have a wonderful time. Do it in a way that feeds your soul as much as it feeds the soul of others.
What’s Possible
Let’s return to the facts. Category leaders tend to attract engaged workers. But, if only 13 percent of the world’s workers are engaged, any other organization that hopes to excel must build engaged employees. It will not be enough to simply pay them more because without the culture development, the organization will continue to disengage their talent. For those who roll up the sleeves and do the work, the payoffs will be enormous; the financial, emotional, and spiritual awards beyond generous.
Here is what’s possible.
Tomorrow’s great organizations will be known as much for their employer brand as they are for their customer brand. In fact, consumers will be attracted to and identify with the qualities of the tribe that is built to serve and support them. We are stepping into an era in which a yearning for greater focus on human values is increasing. As artificial intelligence and robotics take over rote and monotonous work, the qualities of wakefulness, connectedness, interest, empathy, enthusiasm, curiosity, creativity, responsiveness, and accountability will not only become the central desire of the consumer, but are the same qualities that make an organization that promotes them a great place to work and build a career.
