Round up of the Crucial Debates, Part 2: Employee Engagement

This is the second post of a two-part blog on the recent Crucial Debate that ran from the 16^th to the 17^th of March at the Midrand Conference Centre. You can read the first post here. The Crucial Debate Series asks the questions you should be asking in your workplace and aims to influence what we do and how we do it. We throw critical and crucial issues at you to spur thinking and action. We covered both days in a live tweet feed through our account, @IPM4Poeple, using the hashtag #IPMCD. We also produced a Storify Board that pulls all tweets into one feed. Access that here.

What do you have to say? What are you going to do?

Across the globe we see low levels of engagement, and even active disengagement. But we know that employee engagement is essential for productive and happy workplaces. Employees going the extra mile to see things through when times are tough is also what sets out the best organisations from the rest.

Tony Gillham, a global executive coach from Pinoak Consulting, threw us this question in her address at the Crucial Debate: How do you engage a human being? Let us count some of the ways.

Hope in the Future, room to move

Our job is to empower employees for optimal engagement and organisational success. If you give people tools to empower themselves, they can have hope in the future. And central to being engaged as a human being, says Tony, is having hope in the future.

So, leaders, the way you lead is important. Do you, despite everyday challenges and pressures, have hope in the future? And do you convey that? Good leadership removes the obstacles so that others can shine. How do you empower employees?

Leadership should not be about power and perks. For many, that’s shift still to be made. But it can start with each one of us.

Engaged – but in the wrong stuff

Here’s another challenge Tony threw at us: with whom or what are your employees engaged?

Over-engagement in one particular area can pose challenges, as employees may over deliver in that area to the detriment of the rest. You can be engaged at work, but engaged in or with the wrong stuff.

Ensure your employees are engaged with the right stuff. You should have an idea of what that stuff is if you are close to your business, your people and your vision for the future.

Asking the right questions, finding answers together

We need to move from a position of “what we don’t know” to “what are we going to do about it?”. The risk of not doing anything at all could be great. Tony believes strongly from her work and experience that in order to achieve results that benefit us all, we must seek a special type of engagement that is collaborative. We can do this by asking questions together and answering them together.

Tony uses the Houston Method to re-engage those who have lost energy and confidence. This method is all based on asking questions and it forces people to work together and talk to each other.  Given our current context in South Africa and some of the critical challenges we face, a collaborative and growth mindset approach is welcomed.

What do you have to say? What are you going to do?

Give us your thoughts.

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