Employee engagement that means business
Many people feel their bosses only ever comment on what they are getting wrong. So make a conscious effort to make someone’s day, catch them doing something right. Then congratulate them with some authentic, specific and positive feedback.
Before your next conference, check in with participants to find out what their teams want to hear about. Then they’ll listen more attentively, as you meet their needs at the event, and deliver more effective cascade briefings afterwards.
Maximise the relevance of your message!
How ‘presearch’ helps ensure the relevance and reach of your conference messages
Achieving a balance between what senior leaders want to talk about and what their people want to find out about, is a discussion that all too rarely takes place. That’s a missed opportunity for all forms of communication, especially in the lead up to an annual conference, roadshow or town hall. You can easily avoid this, with some simple advance research, or presearch if you like.
The question you need to answer to maximise the relevance of your messages, help join up the dots for people, or even avoid a total mismatch, is ‘what are you talking about?’ In truth there are better ways to phrase it. Such as, ‘what are the hot topics of discussion in your team?’ or ‘what’s the word on the street?’ or ‘what are people actually chatting about whilst grabbing their coffee?’ And there’s no need to ask everyone, just a representative sample.
Internal social media tools make it possible to quickly capture high level feedback. But to get deeper insights, you need to be asking more probing questions through some short telephone interviews or sounding boards. And experience tells me that folk are more likely to speak candidly when talking to an independent third party. We are certainly seeing an increasing demand for this service.
We conducted presearch of this nature recently, in the run-up to a client’s leadership event. Through this, we identified the top five topics participants wanted to find out about, then found that none of them were covered in the draft agenda. A complete disconnect.
However you conduct your research, it is important to play back the results as early as possible to leaders, speakers and content creators alike. This will help them to shape, align and potentially even fully inform their messages.
Without this research, communicators and conference presenters might be sitting in dark windowless rooms, having dark windowless thoughts about what to cover.
The outcomes of your presearch can shine a new light on proceedings. Speakers can be genuinely more ‘tuned in’, authenticly position their content as meeting the needs of participants, and use examples in their presentations that are relevant to their audience. Although your core messages might stay the same, in the case of regional road shows, there will be more ways to finesse elements of your content to meet local needs.
Investing in ‘presearch’ can really pay dividends for the business, its communicators, speakers and the colleagues they seek to inspire. Miss the opportunity, and you run the risk that your colleagues will be quietly uttering the question ‘what are you talking about?’, but this time of their leaders, reacting to content that doesn’t connect.
Involving informal influencers in shaping and sharing your company’s stories, can be transformational
With the Winter Olympics drawing to a close it has been a great few weeks for stories. The Canadian figure skating duo, Virtue & Moir, melted hearts, with their ice dance to the ‘Moulin Rouge’ soundtrack. The story of their golden comeback, to become the most decorated figure skaters in Olympic history, has been shared worldwide. That’s the power of story.
Fortunately, you don’t need to go as far as The Games in South Korea to secure your own powerfully golden stories. Your precious resource has nothing to do with shiny medals. It has to do with a person. A person called Gold, Bill Gold.
OK, so in your organisation Bill Gold will go by another name but, trust me, you’ll have multiple Bill Golds in your business. And by identifying and investing in them to become one of your chief storytellers, you can get your corporate or change stories to spread throughout your organisation in authentic and inspirational ways.
As luck would have it, I discovered my Bill Gold and his value, early on in my communications career. If you haven’t yet met yours, let me share this precious nugget with you now.
I was at a conference, when I noticed Bill. I didn’t know him but, as a participant, he was hard to ignore because of the enormous influence he was commanding. When Bill agreed with something presented, he nodded – then everyone around him nodded. When he disagreed, he shook his head – then, following his lead, all those around shook theirs.
Subsequently, I asked a senior leader who the guy was. “Oh, that’s Bill Gold,” she said. “If you want something to happen around here you’d better get Bill on-side.”
Bill wasn’t senior management and had no aspirations to be. But with his vast personal networks, he was influencing colleagues at all levels. What I learned that day was the power of getting him, and those like him, on-side. I’ve been doing just that ever since.
The Bill Golds of our world can be prickly, even cynical, so they are often overlooked as ‘official’ communicators. But involving them in shaping and sharing your company’s stories can be transformational.
By embracing them as storytellers, you transform both the story and the teller. The teller becomes an advocate and their story more authentic when shared.
There’s power in story. There’s power in Gold. And, at Axiom, we help businesses harness and develop both, to organically spread their own powerfully golden stories.
In all organisations, you’ll find informal influencers whose voice carries further than the organisational chart would ever suggest.
Partnering with these people can help your messages become more real, more relevant and indeed increase their reach. So how do you recognise them? They are often the ones who ‘hold court’ in meetings, are popular lunch partners and have huge networks. The first one I ever met was called Mr. Gold and with his help we created the Gold standard in communications.
Use this simple tip to ensure ownership of the key messages, and improve the quality of cascade briefings; build a session into your next conference to get participants practicing how they are going to bring the main points to life and make them relevant in their part of the business.
Read more about Axiom’s communication change and strategy.
Great conference facilitation can make or break your event. But who should it be: an independent, seasoned facilitator hired in for the show or a member of staff with enough stage presence to lead proceedings? In fact, recent work suggests a combination of the two can work really well.
How to facilitate a conference shouldn’t become a difficult topic; after all, the definition of the verb ‘facilitate’ is to make easy. And making it easy is what I’ve been doing as a designer and facilitator of conferences and events for over 25 years.
That means making it easy for presenters to play to their strengths, making it easy for CEOs to remain statesmanlike and not have to explain where the restrooms are just before delivering their opening address, making it easy for delegates to become participants and making it easy for the conference producers and technicians to add their sparkle.
And more recently, I’ve been making it easy for staff from the client organisation to step out on stage as conference facilitators themselves.
External facilitators should bring years of unflappable experience to the party. They’ll be able to focus on process, not content, seamlessly link messages with a red thread and summarise key themes in an instant. They’ll be able to call on a wealth of well-rehearsed ad lib lines, be independent and challenging, even add a bit of showbiz polish when the situation demands.
What this delivers, as you can see from this video, is managers who are fired with enthusiasm by live events. You’ll always be in safe hands if you go down this route.
But external facilitators will never be seen as ‘one of us’ and may be treated with suspicion by some delegates. Also, because good facilitators make it look so easy (at least they should do!) audience members can be forgiven for thinking anyone can do it. And then, of course, there’s the perception of cost: “Why are we spending money on a fancy MC when budgets are tight?”
Well-chosen internal facilitators can have instant credibility and rapport with the audience. They’ll better understand the tensions and hot topics that exist in any business, be very familiar with recent events and understand the market. They may even be able to gently poke fun at leaders because they have the insider knowledge. And of course, they’re already on the payroll!
However, they might find it tricky to challenge business leaders because it’s politically difficult, even career-threatening. Their deep subject knowledge can sometimes see them drift towards editorialising, creating the perception of bias or a personal agenda. And when there’s a hitch, as there inevitably is in a big event, it’s the first time they’ve ever dealt with it – and it’s live in front of hundreds of their peers.
But it doesn’t have to be either-or. I strongly believe a combination of external facilitation expertise in the background and internal facilitation up front on the day can be a great route to success. It’s something I’ve helped clients with lately by acting as consultant and coach to their chosen internal facilitators.
This approach is based on two best-practice principles: prepare and rehearse.
In terms of preparation, you’ll need much more than an at-a-glance agenda. Instead, I insist on creating a conference walk-through document. Once signed off, it becomes the go-to source of information about the conference for everyone involved. It contains the purpose and objectives, the key points each speaker will cover, the links, the handovers, the timings, the interactivity, the technical cues and so on.
It also forms the ‘playbook’ for the facilitator; and, when that’s an internal person, it’s the focal point for the coaching I provide. My job then, as the seasoned pro, is to share my experience, tips and techniques to equip and inspire internal facilitators to look good and thrive in a live event.
Then we rehearse and rehearse and rehearse – presenters and facilitators alike – to ‘make it easy’ on the day.
And when that time comes, I’m there for the home-grown facilitator, dressed in ‘show blacks’ and hidden behind the control desk they return to after each session, helping them as the event unfolds, feeding them lines, and keeping them on time, on track and on message.
I really enjoy this role – and it works. It’d be indiscreet to share names and companies, but here’s a quote from the internal facilitator of a recent global event I supported: “Chris made a huge impact and really helped all of us deliver an even better conference. The script and the flow were great and well prepared and made our jobs so much easier.”
The benefits of effective conference facilitation are clear. There’s a neat summary of what it brings in the excellent blog The Competent Collaborator:
Whichever route you choose, it’s our job to do the hard work – behind the scenes in some cases – to make all this easy.
Read more about Axiom’s approach to conference facilitation.
In this blog, Axiom founder Chris Carey explores how to harness the insights and expertise of your very own staff to help you rise to the challenge
I’ve been working in the employee engagement space for 25 years now and many are the times I’ve heard a leader say ‘I know what the problem is – I just don’t know where to start in terms of trying to solve it.’ My response is clear. ‘You already have the answer – you start with the problem – and then engage with your workforce to determine the best way forward to resolve it.’
In truth, leaders aren’t the only ones who know something isn’t as good as it could be. Your people have worked that out too. They might have lost sleep about it as well and the odds are they’ve been talking to each other about how to rise to the challenge. But their passion for excellence and innovation in execution often go unheard by leaders, which actually drives disengagement.
Experience tells me that bosses and the people they lead already share a common goal, for example, to deliver an outstanding customer experience, and between them, they have the insights, experience and expertise to co-create the best possible ways forward.
And what’s more, staff invariably want to contribute; to be heard, valued and recognised, so it seems involving them is a good way forward. In fact, they want to be engaged.
My favourite definition of employee engagement is “being positively present during the performance of work by willingly contributing intellectual effort, experiencing positive emotions and meaningful connections to others”. It’s characterised by feeling positive about a job, working hard to do the job well and feeling loyalty towards colleagues and to the organisation itself.
And so much research shows that engagement delivers better performance. As just one example, the Institute for Employment Studies reports that engaged employees deliver four times more value to an organisation than those who are disengaged. That’s incredibly significant for any organisation, right?
Engaged employees go the extra mile – even when times are tough. Indeed our own research shows the efficacy of engagement, for example in communicating business strategy.
Having acknowledged that leaders are often pushing against an open door in terms of engaging with colleagues to deliver on a common goal, it’s worth exploring five steps to success that have stood the test of time in many sectors and even more organisations.
The better you understand the people you are engaging with, the more likely you are to be able to shape your messages and engage those concerned in what you are all trying to achieve. Put yourself in the shoes of your audience and ask: What do they want or need to know? Why do they want to know it? What do they already know? What might motivate or engage them? What won’t work? And if you don’t know – ask them.
Decide what you want people to think, feel and do differently. Make that the basis of your key messages. In particular, remember the importance of the ‘why’ and ‘so what?’ in engagement. Your messages must answer employees’ fundamental questions: What’s in it for me? Why is this good for my stakeholders / customers? Aim for between three and five key messages; any more, and people will struggle to see the wood for the trees.
Time and again, employees say that their line manager is their communication channel of choice, especially in times of change. The extent of their engagement depends on line managers. You need to upskill your managers so they can communicate with verve (especially face to face) and act as positive role models who truly own the messages they are delivering.
Now (and only now) it is time to start developing a clear plan for how you will make use of a range of communication activities or solutions. These can range from conferences and events to employee magazines and from apps to internal social media and podcasts. The key thing is to create solutions that seize people’s attention, get them involved and encourage them to think and act differently.
One of the best ways of doing this is by exploiting the power of images and storytelling to make a strategy or change convincing and meaningful. They act as catalysts for discussions in which senior leadership and local work teams identify and explore what they need to do to contribute and commit to action.
It’s all very well delivering shiny new communications solutions, but are they making a difference? Are you getting the results you’re looking for, or just moving a lot of hot air? You need to measure whether messages have been received, believed and understood and, ultimately, acted on. If not, you need to do something different.
And once you’ve got the evidence that your engagement is working, don’t keep it a secret. Share it, publicise it, promote it.
Effective employee engagement is positively infectious, disengagement is infectious too and potentially more virulent. Make sure yours is the right kind of ‘catchy’ and you can deliver better performance in your organisation – you might even get a bit more sleep.
For more useful articles and tools to help drive your employee engagement check out:
How to Engage your Staff at Each Stage of the Employee Lifecycle
Engage the app if you really want to know the difference your internal communication is making
What’s your new year’s resolution? How about turning your organisation’s leaders and managers into better communicators?
After all, if you can get them to communicate with skill, confidence and passion, it’s the single best way for you to influence and engage employees.
And right now, we’re offering a 20% discount off our usual rates for all communication skills workshops booked before the end of the year.
Interested? Then read more about Axiom’s array of communication skills workshops on everything from communicating change to running meetings to business writing. Then contact us to make a booking.
SSH was awarded the contract for design and construction supervision for the prestigious Kuwait Finance House in Kuwait City
Partners and managers at leading international architecture firm SSH are presenting with new-found verve after taking part in a workshop from Axiom.
In a two-day workshop at SSH’s main office in Kuwait, we helped 15 senior people learn to give memorable presentations that persuade their clients, colleagues and others to think and act differently.
During the presentation skills workshop, we shot a video of each participant presenting to their colleagues. They received expert and peer coaching and were able to analyse their own performance by watching the video.
The workshop started with an exploration of how to make a personal connection with the audience and get them on your side. It went on to cover other key aspects of giving high-impact presentations, including:
The workshop got rave reviews from participants. Comments included:
SSH is one of the leading architecture and engineering firms in the Middle East and North Africa. The company employs 800 staff and has been involved in many of the region’s premier construction projects.
High-impact: Clear, credible and compelling presentations – Axiom’s popular in-house workshop