Monday I posted Employee Engagement ... And Then Nothing Happened. Because nothing has happened on a macro level.
However, you can change that. YOU. You, wherever you sit, whatever your title ... YOU can change that.
No. You don't need a budget or department meeting. You don't need PowerPoint slides or presentations. You don't need to check in with HR or Communications. Best of all, you don't need a survey.
What do you need is a willingness to learn and grow. After all, that's the essence of engagement. It's the essence of being engaged in life. It's just for some reason we're encourage to leave that stuff home so we can get work done. Amiright?
Here's how you use that willingness to learn and grow. You say Hi to someone. Then while they stare at you in wonder ... you ask a question. Consider one of these:
- How are you?
- How was your weekend?
- Do you have what you need?
- What's your biggest accomplishment last week?
- What's your biggest obstacle? How can I help remove it?
- What can we do better?
- What are we doing that's not working? How do we stop it?
Do that and BAM you're engaged. Who needs the $1.7 trillion in cash that non-financial institutions have accumulated and who'll likely use it for everything but employees? You don't. Just doing this you've increased your personal engagement by 100%. Doing that you've engaged that other person, raising their engagement levels during that conversation by 100%, too.
Do that every day. Pretty soon I bet other people will do it. After awhile you might have what Arlo Guthrie called a movement
And if three people do it! ... They may think it's an Organization!
And can you imagine fifty people a day? I said FIFTY people a day . . .
Friends, ...They may think it's a MOVEMENT.
And that's the stages you'll go through. If you do it alone, they may think it's odd or interesting or 'nice.' You should pray they don't think it's 'nice.' That means they're not taking you serious.
But if you can get 2 more people to do it ... well, then you have an Organization. It might be just a team or a cadre or a group or a loose confederation of people engaged in conversations ... learning and growing.
But if you can get 50(!) people well then you've got a movement in your own company or community. Learning and growing. That's when the magic starts happening.
But it starts with YOU.
Try it. Let me know how it goes.
In the meantime here's Arlo Guthrie singing Alice's Restaurant. It's a good song for this Election Day.
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