It's Blindingly Obvious...

This week I’ve been heavily involved in staff engagement strategy, its importance and impact on an organisation and its objectives, particularly during times of change. As always, I’ve been raising awareness, this time with managers so that they can make positive choices in terms of the strategy they adopt.

Insights on Engagement

The MacLeod/Clarke report to Government 2009 “Engaging for Success” has been a really useful source, and says that engagement: “…at its core is a blindingly obvious but never the less often overlooked truth. If it is how the workforce performs that determines to a large extent whether companies or organisations succeed, then whether or not the workforce is positively encouraged to perform at its best should be a prime consideration for every leader and manager, and be placed at the heart of business strategy.”

Too right it's obvious! Staff engagement can be so simple, yet so often opportunities are missed to create it.

So what is engagement?

The report states that “It is most helpful to see employee engagement as a workplace approach designed to ensure that employees are committed to their organisations goals and values, motivated to contribute to organisational success and are able at the same time to enhance their own sense of well-being.”

So how do we achieve the it? The quote below encapsulates this beautifully:

“Employee engagement strategies enable people to be the best they can at work, recognising that this can only happen if they feel respected, involved, heard, well led and valued by those they work for and with”

Sums up better than anything else I have read what staff engagement actually means. If you respect people’s views and values and involve them in planning and creating strategies, discounting nothing until it has been properly debated by you and them, you create the conditions for engagement. People also need to feel that they have been listened to, by leaders who can adjust their style and approach depending on the task, team or individual they are dealing with and who make sure people know that their work and their views matter.

It’s not rocket science, but too often managers focus only on task and process, not recognising the need to spend time with their people to achieve success.

“Engagement is about creating opportunities for employees to connect with their colleagues, managers and wider organisation”

Professor Katie Truss

If people have the chance to talk to colleagues, to management and to be informed about wider organisational issues, it prevents them becoming disconnected and feeling that things are being done to them, without their involvement.

I’ve been sharing these truths this week, raising awareness among managers about where their priorities really lie, and the choices they need to make. As always it’s about people choosing to approach their work in new ways to create different better results; changing themselves, not others.

So, a different type of awareness, and a different level of choice.

More soon…

Your wish is my command...

As promised an insight from the current Conflict and Difficult Conversations workshops I'm running.

Handling a difficult conversation is partly about choosing the right words, and you can either exacerbate or alleviate aspects of the problem through your use of embedded commands.

Embedded commands, first identified by clinical psychologists and later popularised as part of NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) work like this.

You insert into a sentence words that appeal to the sub- conscious, inviting the listener to take a specific view of the statement you’re making. For example, if I say to you, "What you should feel good about is..." I'm encouraging you to be positive about my next statement.

The problem is that too often, embedded commands send the wrong message. They can encourage someone to reject a statement you make, and exacerbate the disagreement you have with them. Pre-cursing your words with "Unfortunately..." warns the listener that they should treat what you say next as negative and bad news, and encourages them to analyse it for problems.”I'm afraid" suggests that you're scared about what you're about to say next, encouraging the listener to treat it as problematic and potentially valueless. Used in a negative context, "However" can also be read as "and now for the bad news..." To avoid these types of problem, as is so often the case, less is more. Just drop the offending words out of the sentence and avoid encouraging the listener to judge what you're telling them.

Now we can move on to some real doozies, commonly used commands that usually do the opposite of what you intend:

"With all due respect" and its attendant variants warns the listener that the next point you make could be disrespectful, and they should judge it on that basis.

"I'm not being rude but..." Is exactly the same, inviting the listener to conclude that the next point you make is exactly that.

Everyone is aware that if someone says "I'm not a racist but..." people will often act to prevent them making their next statement, knowing that they have just issued a warning about its potential content. Treat all embedded commands in exactly the same way, except stop yourself. Consider if you should be making the point you intended to at all; and if you decide you should, drop the embedded command and just make the point.

Embedded commands can of course be used positively, as in my first example above, and one of my favourites is "For my understanding..." which advises the listener that my next statement or question is just about clarity and knowledge and they shouldn't read anything else into it.

As always, embedded commands are a theory, but I hope what I've offered you here is thought-provoking. Becoming skilled in your choice of words is certainly one of the keys to resolving and taking control of conflict situations. To be honest with you, I think it’s essential. And now you think I might be lying...  

More on conflict next week,

Graham