Do you have any people that just don’t seem to engage in your mission, vision, or plan? Do they just seem to listen and then go back to what they were already doing?
Ever see people not paying attention during your meetings?
Chances are if you are in a large organization, you have witnessed this engagement issue. Even if you are under 100 employees, you may have noticed this as well.
There are a lot of reasons why people are disengaged and it slows the organization down. People become complacent and then slowly just show up to collect their paycheck. This starts to suck the life out of the organization.
Lack of engagement is a huge problem! So much that organizations spend millions of dollars booking keynote speakers, sending management into trainings, and still do not gain engagement from the employees. It’s a culture problem and the main solution is found by answering three questions:
Do I like you?
Do I trust you?
How can you Help me?
These three questions are asked in our subconscious every time we interact with others. Our bodies are hardwired to want to know if we like, trust, and can be helped by the other person. These questions have been embedded into our survival since the beginning of mankind. We also are programmed to know if we are safe in an environment, or if we need to run (fight or flight response).
In business, if we are not answering these questions for our employees then why should we expect them to engage? The people that report to us want to know that what they are doing has meaning and that they can like, trust, and be helped by us. This is deeper than just a pay check. These people want to know that we will be there to support them. Otherwise, we are just like any other organization they have worked for that has not cared for them with the only differentiating factor is the size of the paycheck. Enter employee turn over!
I have worked in various industries and business environments. The one thing that is common is that leaders can have all this enthusiasm and charisma, but still have engagement issues in their organizations. People just going through the motions and collecting a pay check. No enthusiasm, no going the extra mile for the team, and just showing up for their hours of work and then leave. No cool game area, sleep pods, or other fun things to do will fix this.
If we want to get engagement and people showing up for a cause, going the extra mile, and willing to charge into battle with us, then we need to make sure we are answering the three questions to each and every employee. We need them to like, trust, and know that we can help them. It’s a two-way street as they have to be able to answer those three questions with us as well. That is hopefully why we hired them.
Start by having a conversation with them and asking questions about what they need. They may not be able to correctly articulate everything they need, but at least they know that you care and you want to help. By showing you care and have empathy for your employees, they will start going the extra mile for you. Then as discussions evolve with employees, together there will be more buy in for the mission, vision, and goal of the organization.
People want to know they matter and that their leadership does actually cares about the employees before they will go all in for the mission.
The next few weeks we will break down the three questions and give you tips on how to actively hit the mark on each of them.
Have a great weekend!
Sincerely,
Kevin Sidebottom
“Businesses wonder why the majority of their sales teams struggle at winning profitable business. I teach your sales team to walk with the customer through the five buying decisions, and in the correct order to generate more sales with high margins!”