The Engagement Problem Solved: Get People Involved First
Worry less about engagement, and do more about involvement
The Engagement Paradox
For most of my career, leaders have asked me what it takes to get their people engaged. They focus on things like driving up meeting attendance, or getting more people into their training workshops, or signing them up for call-nights.
They equate attendance with engagement — which is why we have gotten so worked up since the pandemic because fewer and fewer people even show up to the office!
But does that mean they’re not engaged? Not at all.
It just means that leaders have to shift their approach - and expectations - if they want more people to be more engaged.
And start by focusing on something different.
Forget engagement and focus on involvement
I’m not just splitting hairs here. Ask yourself this: What gets you engaged in something important? Do you show up pre-passionate about it? Intellectually and emotionally charged up — for some unknown but inner reason?
Probably not. When something matters to you, it’s not because you observed it, absorbed it or merely encountered it.
Your engagement is the result of having participated in it.
In other words: You show up because you have become involved.
The same is true for your people - whether they’re leadership colleagues, staff, salespeople or even customers.
Involvement leads to commitment.
What does involvement look like?
When someone is involved, there are usually three critical components:
An intellectual commitment
An emotional connection
An active contribution
When someone is involved, they’re part of the moment. It may be an intellectual connection to a discussion, learning experience or problem-solving. Likewise, it can be an emotional connection that evokes a sense of sympathy with the people or situation: they feel intertwined with the experience. Most commonly, involvement means someone is doing something. They aren’t spectators on the screen or in the room: they’re moving, talking, performing some role in the experience.
An involved person has something to do mentally, emotionally and physically.
Here’s the paradox: Engagement is deeper
But it’s more elusive. When we think of engaged people, in our company, association, culture, or just a meeting, we envision people who are deeply and psychologically committed to some situation. They are fully motivated, and enthusiastic — even passionate — about the task at hand.
So, don't we want our people to be engaged?
Yes, we do. Except that we’re leaders, not psychologists.
Get People Involved First
After 35 years as a motivational speaker, I still don’t know how to get people engaged. Nobody has ever told me the “secret formula” to activate the “motivational switch” in people’s heads. To “energize” their commitment muscles or “turn on” their enthusiasm. Some days, I can’t even do that for myself.
Engagement happens - but it’s not a power exercised by the leader.
What leaders can do - easily, readily, consistently - is get people involved. 👇
PS: Be sure to download the latest copy of the Leadership Handbook — featuring 21 tips for running meetings with better attendance and involvement!
📔 The Leadership Handbook by Matthew Ferrara
Suggestions for what we can do as leaders to get people involved:
We can offer them a role to play in the meeting, workshop, project or goal.
We can give them responsibility and authority to manage the tasks, people or methods of getting something done.
We can ask them to perform specific actions — talk, share, listen, role-play, fill out a screen, demonstrate a skill, learn a behavior — and watch them do it.
We can construct situations where they apply thinking skills (intellectual connection), experience a story (emotional connection) and process the combination (physical action).
Essentially, we can give them something to think about, feel strongly about, and do.
First Steps First
Too often, leaders envision their people going from “not caring” to being “passionately engaged” as if there was a button for unleashing people’s commitment. We try to go from A to Z without doing B, C, D, E, — before we get them involved.
People must participate in something before they can become engaged in it. Relationships, community projects, personal development, careers, you name it. This is why so many “office meetings” fall apart: People show up, and sit, watch, listen. They might talk a little. Even learn something. But overall, they’re passive. They’re not involved.
Engagement won’t occur because there’s a big difference between “knowing about something” and “becoming all-in.”
And too often we measure our people on attendance, rather than participation.
Here’s a chance to rethink your approach to increasing engagement by doing the only thing you can do — increase involvement. It’s up to each individual to make a psychological leap to full commitment.
What leaders do is simply start the process.
Want a salesperson to show up to a meeting? Ask them to lead five minutes of it.
Want a staff person to participate in office culture? Give them the opportunity to lead a contest or social event.
Want your teams and staff to focus more on strategic goals? Create opportunities for them to drive and report on results and reward accomplishments.
Want association members, vendor partners or consumers to get connected to issues facing them (and you)? Stop telling them to “get engaged” and offer them practical ways to do something like fill out a form, write a letter to their congressmen, engage in a discussion or design potential solutions.
Set aside concerns (and even hopes) that people will transition into engagement and stay focused on methods for people to play a part in the event, task, group — and culture.
Think of it like riding a bike: A parent teaches the child how to sit, push the pedals, steer and apply the brakes. The child participates in every step of the process. They can’t just show up and watch.
The parent sets them on the bike, gives them a push, and lets nature take its course.
In a few days, the child is showing off a new sense of balance. They speed around the yard, showing off new abilities, and might even “pop a wheelie.”
By getting them involved, first, they start on the path to becoming fully engaged.
—M
