Three Secrets to Heartfelt Engagement
Pressure invites resistance. Demanding conformity hinders engagement. Don’t use authority and pressure to get what you want.
Find out what they want. Explore their hopes and dreams.
The more energy spent pressuring and convincing, the less relevant you become. But, connection and overlapping vision infuse relationships with energy and engagement.
The best way to get where you want to go
is figure out where they want to go.
The more energy spent convincing, the
less vibrant relationships become.
Natural engagement:
- Focus first on their vision, then on yours.
- Encourage employees to articulate personal vision.
- Spend time exploring vision overlap. The better you identify and highlight vision-overlap the more engagement.
Get over yourself:
A graduating college senior reported they received an offer from every job interview they attended. I asked, “Why are you so successful?”
“I let them talk about themselves. They do most of the talking and I do most of the listening.”
Organizations who are in love with themselves forget success is about others. They use people rather than engaging them.
- Get on their team before asking them to join yours.
- Ask more questions about their hopes, dreams, and motivations.
- Train and provide time for employees to create their own vision statements. Overlap is easier when vision is clear.
If you want employees to love you, love them. Wrong headed leaders want employees to feel fortunate they have jobs.
Successful leaders find overlap between organizational and personal vision.
Broad overlap:
I contacted several employees of a Federal organization in preparation for a presentation I was scheduled to give.
During my calls, everyone told me they feel like they are making a difference. Their personal passion to make a difference helps them find overlap with the mission of their organization.
*Illustration source: Business at the Speed of Now.
What can leaders do to find overlap between organizational and personal vision?
Agreed. Make sure personal goals align with corporate goals but are specific, and value is clear, to each individual. They need to see growth as much as the organizations they work within do.
I often discuss Kouzes and Posner’s Five Practices with teams, which of course includes the practice of Inspire a Shared Vision. Your post today articulates the concept of a truly shared vision beautifully! It brings to mind a session several years ago when one of my participants proposed, “It is much harder to Inspire a Shared Vision than to Shared an Inspired Vision.” So true and so profound! I told him promptly that I was stealing his thought, and I have shared it with groups ever since!
Nice post today, Dan. As usual… : )
I could see it being quite possible that through exploration of an individuals personal vision you may together realize there is a better role they could be filling to ignite their passion in alignment with the company goals.
“Talent shares your goals and fulfills your needs as a natural by-product of fulfilling their own.” -Gary Keller, The Millionaire Real Estate Agent
… so what happens when the employee or clients visions don’t overlap and you have a vision that has to be implemented (as a mgt consultant I try to implement your approach where possible .. the fact is it is a bit of utopia sometimes)
Great post, Dan. It remains true as ever that people will do best with those they like, trust, and believe have their interests at heart. I love the way you word #1: Get on their team before asking them to join yours. Powerful!
In fervent agreement with this post. The truth that an org’s management has to face in its employee engagement strategy is that if the employee is not fulfilled by his role, then his role is soul-crushing. Engagement, then, has to start with listening to the employee’s professional goals and then tied to the org’s needs. If it happens the other way around, then the employee is just being shoe-horned and the results are mediocre for both parties.
The rock star employees are the ones who can relate what they do for an org to their life goals without being engaged. There are very few of these people out there, though, so the investment in listening and documenting employee goals is more important than ever.
Reblogged this on THE STRATEGIC LEARNER and commented:
How does Rockwell do it? He makes important things seem very clear and obvious …
Love your blog, Dan! And this post couldn’t be more timely … our youngest son graduates university in a few months so the topic of ‘What next / what job?’ comes up often. While I know the info is directed to leaders, it seems like it would be extremely helpful for our young adults (and older adults!) to employ this strategy as they interview. We’ll definitely redirect our efforts toward helping him define and articulate his own personal vision and preparing questions that will allow him to listen well and discern the vision of organizations he interviews with. Identifying that ‘sweet spot’ where those 2 overlap is certainly the key to finding job satisfaction and fueling growth. Thanks so much for sharing!
Reblogged this on Bleed Words; Live Boldly and commented:
Since engaging readers is the ultimate goal of every professional writer, this is great for nonfiction work (business, technical, grant writing). Nothing is more powerful than knowing your audience and how to reach its members!
I love this post and conversation…and would appreciate any advice on the topic.
Leveraging your experience, how do you best encourage an individual to express their vision and to engage in vision overlap conversations? One on One? Team setting? What has worked best for you?
“Organizations who are in love with themselves forget success is about others.”
Word “Organizations” can be changed to word “People”
Read Start With Why and connect the Whys. It reay is not any more complicated than that.
Dan knows now Simon is brilliant and his insight into human behavior is epic.
Thing is whatever one wants to call it, whatever strategy they use to get there the magic happens when the Whys connect.
If you are kinda dumb and unaware and not much if a vocabulary you might call “it” all sorts of things.
If you are really sharp you notice stuff like William James. He noticed folks who have vital spiritual experiences all experience the same thing.
But they all stupidly think they have a copyright on God and the experience.
They all want to be special, oh that special ego!!!!!
James found they all basically had the same experience the only thing that differed was the language used to describe it.
Anyway, my two cents worth
SP back to work
The engagement of employees at my workplace is extremely inconsistent. Working in a highly regulated industry, I can see now why this may be occurring, we are demanding conformity. While it is not optional to follow regulations, we need to create an environment which naturally engages the employees. Just stating that these are the regulations and you must follow them will only get us so far.
“Organizations who are in love with themselves forget success is about others.” Great point. What we do depends on people: indeed leadership is impossible when we forget the person.
Dan, love this post!
Overlapping vision is key to buy in. I’m remembering a teaching call with Bob Burg where he was talking about building rapport. He likens rapport to building; know, like, & trust. When leaders genuinely care about their team and desire an overlapping vision for a shared victory, they need to build Know, Like, and Trust in order to obtain and sustain the overlapping vision.
There’s a quote I place outside my office that I think fits with this post as well: “Tell me – I forget, teach me – I may remember, Involve me – I will learn” B. Franklin.
Mark
Lead Yourself & Multiply Others
Dan, a Little late on commenting, sorry about that. I fully agree with you, this the other post from Mark Miller regarding teams as communities are very true. I’m living part of it with our current staff. It has taken some time, but we’re on track. But, the most challenging situation is how to deploy to the rest of the working areas, to the plant floor specifically. How can we overlap their vision (120+ hourly, + Union committee) with corporate? we have excellent communication with the Union, but even they confront the same problem in deploying our vision to all. The bigger the corporation, the bigger the challenge, no? I would love to read your thoughts about this.