Engaging the "Engagers"

[Clare Long]

Engagement results have indicated that our senior management team are less engaged than our employees. Both scores are low, but given the impact of senior managers in raising employee engagement, I'd like to provide a specific focus on raising the engagement levels of this group who themselves play such a vital role in engagement levels of all others. Our CEO and I are hosting a series of workshops to probe further, however, would appreciate any advice from the network on how I encourage this group to be part of the solution.

[David Zinger]

Clare,
This is such a good topic from my perspective. I am busy in workshops for a few days but I will return and make offer some of my thoughts and perspective.
David

[Michael Aitken]

We have had a very similar result in our last survey. This is an absolutley critical issue as we cannot hope to raise the enagagement of the organisation if the leadership team is drifting away. After much discussion we have decided to have externally facilitated focus groups of 6-8 people to really probe the underlying issues. All senior managers (including the CEO and Executive Team) will participate. We are using the analysis of the results to identify areas to probe, but the consultant we are using has a broad brief. The groups will be level specific as we did not want anyone feeling they could not say what they thought because the boss was there. Also, individuals are free to talk to the consultant one-on-one if they wish. We will bring all the results back to the full group and jointly decide an action plan.

[Clare Long]

Hi Michael

Thank you for your response. You might be interested to hear that last week I facilitated sessions where our senior managers were given the opportunity to talk to the MD about what was going on for them. Our MD has regular SKIPs with senior managers, and they're comfortable to open up to him - I used that forum to raise the topic of their own engagement levels and the impact of that on organisational wide engagement. I was keen to engage our guys in solutions, rather than having them focus on the issues - the engagement survey results gave us plenty on the issues. I went into the sessions "armed" with a couple of suggestions so they had some real examples of the types of initiatives we could think about. I think we got to a good outcome, and next step is to form a mgr representative team to refine further what was proposed, implement the agreed initiatives and then track progress by re-surveying on a subset of questions in three months time. (We have our own survey tool so it's very easy for us to do short sharp surveys quickly.)

[Jo]

Lol! Certainly you have your priority clear - enthusiasm is highly contagious as is the lack of it.


I would have thought a straight team building exericse?

[Clare Long]

Ho Jo - thanks for your response.

Over the last 10 months I've delivered a significant program of work that defines the way we lead at my organisation. That's given me the opportunity to engage regularly with our snr mgmt team, and every time I get in front of them I ask the same question "when was the last time you guys got together like this" (ie, as a x-functional snr mgmt team). Until recently, I got the same reply "the last time you facilitated/rolled out/delivered a program".

My role here is to define and lead the cultural identify of our coy to support a diversification strategy. I believe traction will be maximised if I take the approach of creating a "virus". To do that I target key influencers (groups or individuals) who I hope will embody cultural transformation personally, and spread it virally. This approach comes from a strong desire not to "impose change" (your profile, I believe, would support this view). I think this quote from Leandro Herrero, CEO of The Chalfont Project sums up my belief well: "successful change is actually small, human, peer-influencing and viral".

Pleased to report that we're getting traction...our snr management teams in each location have themselves launched peer forums. Agenda is loose, however the objective is clear: to learn about the roles and challenges of their peers. I've planted another seed that I'm confident will be taken up by this key influencer group - to add the question - "what roadblocks are you facing, and how can I/we help you through them".

On the issue that originally launched this dialogue, I've been overwhelmed by the no. of mgrs who have approached me to be part of a manager "Your Voice" team launched to propose recommendations to improve the engagement of this key stakeholder group.

[Jo]

All sounds as if it is going well. Just to clarify, are the managers who are approaching you in the company?

Two resources that might be useful is the idea of appreciative inquiry. Instead of focusing attn on roadblocks, maybe ask about what is good and true, better and possible. Leaders can also be charged with going down to the must junior people in their division to collect their ideas about what works well and should be continued. The positive effect alone should be transformational.

The second resource for team building is Steve Roesler at http://www.allthingsworkplace.com. He is also a member here and incredibly good at OD.

Interesting case. I hope you are keeping notes!

All the best,
Jo

[Clare Long]

Hi Jo

Yes, the mgrs approaching me are internal.

Thanks for the resource tips and your input.

Cheers,
Clare.

[Jo]

We are looking forward to the final report!

All the best.