Secret to Greater Employee Engagement

In this Mike on the Mic episode of The Better Leadership Team Show, I challenge the way most organizations think about employee engagement. Engagement isn’t something you measure or delegate to HR—it’s something leaders create every day through how they engage their people.

I share six practical, immediately actionable ways leaders can increase engagement by changing their own behaviors—from accelerator sessions and stay interviews to purpose-driven conversations and career planning. If you’re tired of surveys without results, this episode will change how you lead.

Thanks for listening! Connect with us at mike-goldman.com/blog and on Instagram@mikegoldmancoach and on YouTube @Mikegoldmancoach

Transcript

Speaker 0:02

it sounds crazy simple, and it is simple, which doesn't mean it's easy, but if you want more engaged team members. You need to engage them more. Stop trying to force people to be engaged and actually engage them. Let's turn it into a, you know, a verb where we're actually engaging people instead of describing them as either engaged or not engaged. Shifting that is just at the heart of, of how to solve this problem for your company.

Mike Goldman 0:47

You made it to the better leadership team show, the place where you learn how to surround yourself with the right people, doing the right things. So you can grow your business without losing your mind. I'm your host and leadership team coach, Mike Goldman. I'm going to show you how to improve top and bottom line growth, fulfillment, and the value your company adds to the world by building a better leadership team. All right, let's go.

Speaker 1:22

I don't know about you, but I am so sick and tired of hearing about the Gallup employee engagement survey, every year it comes out. Every year people complain about employee engagement. It's always around one third of, one third of employees are truly engaged in the work they do. We've got this big problem. It's been stuck there for years and we're spending. You know, literally, you know, across industries, millions of dollars on engagement surveys and HR programs and perks. And no matter what people do, those engagement numbers are still terrible. And what I really want to talk about is a way to reframe this problem. And it is a problem. I'm not. I'm not saying for a second, employee engagement isn't a challenge for us and an opportunity for us, but engagement is not about a survey score, a poster. You know, some HR initiative. Engagement is the byproduct of how leaders like you actually engage their people every single day. So my reframe and kind of my core, thesis here or hypothesis here in this episode is that we need to flip the script on employee engagement. if you want, and it sounds crazy simple, and it is simple, which doesn't mean it's easy, but my philosophy is that if you want more engaged team members. You need to engage them more. I mean, that's pretty simple. Stop trying to force people to be engaged and actually engage them. Let's turn it into a, you know, a verb where we're actually engaging people instead of describing them as either engaged or not engaged. and I think that is at the heart that shift in trying to, you know, how do we get people to be more engaged? Shifting that to how do we engage people more is just at the heart of how to solve this problem for your company. You know, traditional efforts to do this fail. They fail because it's typically based on some annual or biannual annual engagement survey, like an employee net promoter score, and there's nothing wrong with doing that. You'll get some great information, but out of that you get a nice report. Maybe a town hall meeting, maybe some nice posters, a new program, but there's little change. To how leaders show up day to day and whether they're truly engaging their people. So instead of trying to fix our people, you know, we need to fix our people to make them more engaged. We need to fix our own behavior, leadership behaviors, leadership systems. we delegate engagement to hr instead of having each leader own how they are engaging their team, it's not fair to, for HR to have some employee engagement initiative. So what I wanna talk about is six ways and it's, this is by no means the only six, but it's kind of, six examples of very real, very practical ways that you could engage your people starting right now, starting this quarter. And the first idea, the first way is something that, that I call an accelerator session. And I'm, you know, shamelessly ripping this off from a coach and a mentor of mine named Keith Cupp. Keith. If Keith, if you're listening, thank you for, for the accelerator session. But the accelerator session is a half day or a one day session. That you conduct with your highest potential next level leaders. And the reason why I like to call it, and it's been called an accelerator session, is this full day or half day session with these high potential leaders, and it could be 5, 10, 30. I've done this with as many of as 50 people in the room. The whole purpose of it and why it's called an accelerator session is it accelerates two things. Number one, I like to do this a few weeks to a month before annual planning that you do with the senior leadership team. But a month before you do this session, it, when I describe the session to you, you'll understand it accelerates your annual planning efforts. That's one reason it's called the accelerator session. The second reason it's called an accelerator session is because it accelerates. Your ability to engage your highest potential people. It accelerates your understanding as to whether they're ready for that next level. When are they, who's got real leadership potential to sit around the senior leadership team table and accelerates their growth? So it accelerates a whole lot of things, but. It's not a training session or just a get together and a thank you session. It's a workshop. It's a workshop where you get these leaders together and depending on how many you have in the room, you may need to set it up as separate breakout groups. When I had 50 people in the room, we had about seven or eight different breakout groups of. Seven people or so each. If you've got 10 people in the room, you can do one big group or maybe break it into two groups of five. But it's a workshop. And it's a workshop where those high potential team members work together to brainstorm. What's most important for the company moving forward? You're getting them to think at a whole different strategic level than they normally think at. And it shows them that their voice matters on strategy, not just execution. And some examples of exercises that I've done with the group. Is, have the group do a SWOT exercise. Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, not for their functional area, but for the company. After all, these are gonna be, this is gonna be a cross-functional group of high potential leaders that, that you are inviting to this. And I didn't mention that before, but that's an important part of this. So you might have them do a SWOT analysis together. Um, I've had them do a start, stop, keep exercise, an exercise where they tell stories about how different people in the company are living the core values and what actions do they need to take as a company to better live their core values and build a great culture. Um, what are the top three priorities that they believe the company should have? For the year. That's all great information to help accelerate the senior leadership team in their annual planning session. But the way I love to do this, that really makes it powerful is, let's imagine you have four breakout groups of six or seven people around the room. Each of them are doing a SWOT analysis, putting it up on a flip chart on the wall. Presenting it back to each other. Each of them are doing a start, stop, keep up on the wall. Each of they're do are doing a core values exercise up on the wall, a top three annual priorities exercise up on the wall. You're getting these folks to work together, cross-functionally, present to each other. And by the way, when I've done this part of it, there are no senior leaders in the room. I as the coach, facilitated these high potential leaders when they were done with those exercises and there were now flip charts all over the room. I brought in the senior leadership team. Who first walked around the room, kind of did a little journey of all the flip charts, walked around the room with a pad of paper, jotted down any notes from what they saw, and most importantly, any questions that they had. We then had someone from each of the groups present their findings, multiple people from each group'cause they were presenting their SWOT and their start, stop, keep, and their top priorities, exercise, etcetera. The leaders then got a chance to ask questions, and my coaching to the leaders was, don't get defensive, don't push back. Thank people for their recommendations, whether you agree with it or not. And the value was incredible, not just in all of that great information, but in getting these high potential team members to think at a more strategic level. And the leaders really started to see which of those folks were really kind of rising to the top, which could think on their feet, which ones answered the questions, which ones really showed leadership potential. So. Simple action. Put a date on your calendar. Identify your top high potential leaders or high potential team members. Figure out how and who's gonna facilitate this session and get it on the schedule. That is a great way to better engage your highest performers to help get them more engaged by engaging them. So number one is an accelerator. Session number two is something that I actually learned from a client. A client came up with this idea, and they called it the Mars team, so. One of the first things I help my clients with when we do our kickoff session with the leadership team is I help them either create or confirm their set of core values, their non-negotiable behaviors that really anchor what culture means and what culture fit means within the company. And one of the exercises I do is called a Mission to Mars exercise, and I did another episode on this. You could look up Mission to Mars exercise, that comes from Jim Collins, but. It. Part of the exercise is, leaders are identifying each leader around the table is identifying five people in the organization that they believe best exemplify what's best, right? Most noble about the organization. Well, you wind up with a list of some pretty highly impactful people that are great models of what you want in your culture. To look like. So what this team did is after we, we, discovered what their core values were, and we talked about some ways to make sure that core values weren't just a poster on the wall, that they were actually living them and breathing them every single day. One of their ideas was to take some subset. Of these folks from this mission to Mars exercise all of these team members that exemplified what's best about their culture. And they created this team of these folks and they started out, I think there were 10 or 12 people on the team, and of course they called it the Mars team, and they empowered the Mars team to take action. To be kind of culture champions across the organization. It was their job to make sure the core values in their culture weren't just nice posters on the wall. They were in charge of actually doing things to help the organization live and breathe those core values. And they had a dollar amount that they can just go spend without asking. Permission over a certain dollar amount. They had to ask. and you know, one of the things that they did kind of on day one, and this may not be the most impactful thing, but it's just them kind of taking ownership is right after the Mars team was created, the day, the next day, the leaders came into the office and the core values were kind of on the stairs leading up. To the office. The next thing they did is they took it upon themselves to create a video across the organization with team members thanking other team members for living specific core values. And it got kind of emotional. But what was great is, is again, it was a way of actually engaging these people to think more strategically about. The culture to get them thinking of ideas to, to strengthen the employee experience and live the core values. So again, creating a Mars team is another idea on how to engage people. The next is something called stay interviews, and the idea of a stay interview is. To make sure you're not waiting until an exit interview to find out one of your highest performing team members left the organization. Exit interviews are fine. You get some great information, but why not do a stay interview before they leave to help make sure that you don't have to do an exit interview with them? The way a stay interview works is you schedule time with one of your highest performing team members. You let'em know what a great job they're doing that you hope that they never leave your company. Ask them what they love about what they do. Brainstorm with them and try to identify ways why identify ways for them to do more of that. Ask them what frustrates them about the job. Brainstorm ways to alleviate that frustration. I've had leaders ask the super scary question, what would it take for you to leave? And I hope you have good, open, honest, vulnerability based trust kind of relationships with your highest performers. And if you do, some of them will tell you the truth. Some of them might say, Hey, I'm saving up for my first house, and if somebody offered me 20% more, I'd probably leave. Or hey, I always wanted to, do more, strategic work with our clients and if I got a new opportunity that allowed me to do that, you know, I might leave. Better find that out now than before. They already, before they leave. And you find out on an exit interview, and again, you could see from a lot of what I'm talking about. I'm stressing engaging your highest performing. Team members and those aren't the only people to engage, but those ought to be your highest priority folks to engage. So identify who are your highest performers, who are your highest performing direct reports, and schedule a 30 to 45 minute stay Interview with them at some point over the next month. So the first idea. It was an accelerator session. Second was a Mars team. Third was stay interviews. The fourth is what I'll just call core purpose conversations. So having a, a conversation with one of my clients who was frustrated that she couldn't quite get. Her team members to care and anywhere near the level she did about the success of the company, about striving to do more and be more. So one of the ideas we talked about is figuring out how to better connect this teams and these individuals on the team, how to better connect their day-to-day work. With the company's core purpose and the impact the company wanted to make, and when I say core purpose, I mean the company's why Not what they do, but why do they do what they do? What impact do they want to have on the world? Now, these aren't one time conversations. These are ongoing periodic conversations to tie what people are doing to the core purpose and impact. People want, meaning not just a paycheck. Now meaning without a paycheck doesn't help people pay the bills, so, okay, you need both. But people just don't want a paycheck. They want some meaning in what they do, and they wanna know how their role makes a difference for clients, for teammates, for vendors, for the world. So. Sit down with your direct reports, and this is, so far I've been talking about high potential team members. this is everybody. Sit down individually with your direct reports and help them make that connection with your team. Share client impact stories in team meetings. How living the company's purpose, how striving to do more and be more is having an impact on the lives of your clients. Ask team members to tell you when they have felt proud in something they've done. That connects with the purpose tie priorities people are working on, projects people are working on. Back to the core purpose. Simple thing you could do is in your next team meeting. Spend 10 minutes talking about one question, and that question is, where did we live our core purpose best in the last 30 days? So the fourth idea is have these core purpose conversations. Some one-on-one, some with a group. The fifth idea is skip level conversations. And if you're not familiar with skip level, it's exactly what it sounds like. If you are the CEO, it means having meetings with not your direct reports, but the folks, that report to your direct reports. And those could be one-on-one sessions and those can also be, and should also be. Group sessions. You know, I had a CEO that I worked with who once a month would take, would do a skip level with a group. Of team members and they would order some lunch in and just spend two hours kind of eating lunch and socializing. But he would just ask them powerful questions about the company and about, their priorities and about their culture and their strategy to get all of their feedback. And it showed these kind of, in, in this case it was middle level managers. It showed them What kind of a priority, the CEO and therefore the company put on them and their feedback and their fulfillment at work. These could be short conversations, whether it's one-on-one with a group. Ask them what's working. Ask them what's not working. Say, if you were me, what would you change? This gives you access to. the brains of a whole separate level of folks that you may not typically be talking to, it's gonna make them smarter and you smarter at the same time. You're gonna have a much better feel for the culture of your organization when you have those conversations periodically and consistently. So put some time on your schedule. Over the next month to do some skip levels combination of one-on-one in groups. You figure it out, but idea number five is skip levels. Idea number six is to have career planning discussions with your direct reports. Engage them by engaging around what's most important, which is them and their career. Sometimes it's not about you. It's not about the company, it's not about your clients, it's about them. Sit down and help them think through where they wanna go in their career and how you and the company could help them get there, either inside the company or for some of them where their goals are gonna lead them, is outside the company, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Help them figure out how to best focus on their strengths and their passions to select the right path for them. Again, inside or outside the organization. You know, people will grow with you or they'll grow with someone else, so provide a path for them to grow. And your best people will stick around. It also just shows people that you give a rip, that it's not all about the company, that you care about them and where they want to go and what their goals are for their career. You could ask them questions like, you know, where do you wanna be in three to five years? And some people may be really fuzzy on that, and that's okay. You know, ask them what strengths they wish, what strengths they think they have. And where they think they could better leverage those strengths. And by the way, they may not know what strengths they have. You may actually be better judge of that. Sometimes you need to hold the mirror up to your team members so they can see their strengths, ask them what skills or experiences they want to build over the next 12 months, and then find out what you could do together to make progress on all that. So with each direct report, an action could be, you know, schedule one-on-ones with them to have a deeper career conversation and kind of maybe co did I just say kind of maybe that's good English and co-create a 12 month plan to help them achieve what they want to achieve. So. I've given you six different ideas, but I'm not saying these are the six ways. There are probably thousands of ways, an infinite number of ways, but we talked about number one, the accelerator session. Number two, the Mars team. Number three, stay interviews. Number four, core process conversations. Number five, skip level conversations. Number six, career planning discussions, and just remember as. I wrap this up. Engagement is not an just an HR metric, it's a leadership team responsibility. Ask yourself, ask your team. Ask your peers on the leadership team, if you're on the leadership team, how are we engaging our people as a team, as individuals? How are we engaging them? And if someone's well, how? How do we get our people more engaged? Cut that crap off. That's the wrong question. How are we currently engaging our people and where could we engage them more and or where could we do a better job of that engagement? If your people are disengaged, start by looking in the mirror. How often and how deeply are you actually engaging them? So pick one of the six or three of the six or 12 of your own ways to engage your people, but go engage your people. If you want a great company, you need a great leadership team. Leadership teams engage their people. Go make it happen.