Engaging Employees 101

An important skill all managers must develop is the ability to engage employees – engage them to perform better, to be better focused, and to not impede other workers from performing better. A previous analogy I have used refers to engaging all hands to work together, with the goal of getting the organization’s ox cart out of the ditch and placing it back on the road to recovery. At the simplest level consider the goal of management: to align all decision making outcomes with the goals of the organization. With this kind of thinking, reword the statement for the management of workers.

“Engage all workers to perform in a manner which will produce outcomes that are aligned with the goals of the organization.”

When considering just one worker, you must understand what will motivate him. At a minimum, a manager can discuss this topic during the employee’s performance reviews, but this minimal effort is unlikely to be very productive. MBWA (in an earlier post) is helpful here, but what if the large number of workers prohibits this method? In an earlier post I discussed the importance of the ‘linking pin’ and management of the ‘informal’ social groups which exist in all organizations. Using MBWA (Managing By Walking Around) and/or meetings with identified linking pins is an excellent place to begin. But how will you identify enough different informal group leaders? You do this by:

Using your own trusted social contacts,

Asking your newer contacts developed during your ongoing MBWA efforts,

Talking to all available workers, supervisors, and managers to develop this information, and

Attempting to communicate effectively with the identified informal group leaders.

Unfortunately, if you – as a manager – are not an adept social animal, attempting any of these social interactions will be an iffy proposition at best. It might be useful to identify a management truism at this time: Since the organization lives through the support of informal groups, it will perform poorly unless it can align the goals of those groups with the goals of the organization. Of course, good communication between all groups is of great importance, and what is communicated is a rationale for the informal groups to support management goals.