Engage to Get Engagement

Everyone wants to talk about engagement (noun). How does MANAGEABLE help managers engage (verb) team members? If I walked around your workplace and saw or heard your managers and team members engaging, what would I see or hear? Let’s look at this from the MANAGEABLE Define, Coach and Recognize performance model that flips nouns into verbs.

Define

Gallup and other organizations tell us that most employees are not clear about their manager’s expectations. And if they are not clear, then they act on assumptions which can lead to confusion and disengagement. Not exactly an environment that promotes engagement.

In a MANAGEABLE world, managers meet with their team members and collaborate on the contents of their job descriptions or special projects. We would “see” managers meeting with team members, and we would “hear” conversations like this:

1. “Is there anything listed on the job description that you don’t do?” (because most job descriptions are not current, many times team members will remind managers that they are no longer performing various tasks.) Need to edit the job description.
2. “Is there anything you are doing that isn’t listed on the job description?” (because most job descriptions are not current, many times team members will remind managers that they have been performing certain additional tasks, and in some cases, for longer than the manager remembers.) Need to edit the job description.
3. “Knowing what you do about this role, is there anything else you think you should be doing to add value to our customers?” (it is sometimes uncanny how people think about their work and come up with new ideas or approaches) May need to edit the job description.
4. “I’m asking you to perform a special project.

• Context: Here is how this project relates to our goals/objectives.
• Quantity: Here is how many I need.
• Quality: Here is what success will look like, how you will meet expectations.
• Resources: Here are the resources I can provide you with.
• Time: This is when the project must be completed by.
• No Surprises Clause: At any point while working on this project you begin to think that you will not be able to meet expectations, you must tell me immediately.

MANAGEABLE helps managers meet with team members, ask probing questions, listen for clarity, collaborate, and use specific language to clarify their expectations. This is what I would see and hear managers doing to Define expectations in a MANAGEABLE environment.

The next post will describe how MANAGEABLE helps managers engage team members during 1:1 Coaching sessions.

#trueteamwork #accountability #engagement