Ready, Set, Engage!

Over the past several months I have written about the significance of learned and ‘unlearned’ behavior, and more the notion that how we are conditioned as children has unintended consequence on how we behave as adults in our professional lives.

The difference in a child’s excitement and wonderment is even more evident at holiday time.  I recently had the pleasure of spending time with my extended family over the holidays, and it reminded me just how easily children get excited and engaged in something new – and how contagious that can be for all that are around them.   When is the last time you experienced that level of excitement about something at work?

In some ways, as adults, we can tend to be less enthusiastic about getting involved in new things, perhaps as conditioned from past experience.  This, in turn, impacts how we view opportunity and risk, and how comfortable we are in stepping out of our ‘comfort zones’.   In my experience, this presents a danger of people getting ‘stuck in a rut’.   In fact I read recently that as many 26% of employees in US businesses are reported as being ‘disengaged’, with a subset of that being reported as ‘actively’ disengaged.   If that’s true, what are we missing in terms of organizational productivity? Imagine if you had 26% more resource available to accomplish your business objective….for free!  You do, you just have to figure out how to tap into it.

Engaged employees perform better and stay longer, and this, in turn, leads to greater productivity and higher customer satisfaction levels. So, tackling employee disengagement can create a lot of positive energy.  The problem is where do you start?  It’s not easy to get people to feel passionate about their work or connected to their employer, especially in a virtual workforce (an increasing reality for many of us).

Numerous studies indicate that the number one driver of employee engagement – or disengagement as it may be– is our relationship with our immediate supervisor. So improving that relationship, and specifically teaching our first line leaders how to motivate and excite employees to encourage engagement, seems a logical place to start.

You can go further though…I have recently witnessed as an exciting new piece of work drove higher levels of engagement in my team.  Just as importantly as the project, was the nature in which we decided to tackle it -- fast-paced and energetic, with everyone having an opportunity to pitch in using their strengths, regardless of formal role or assignment.   It was as if team members ‘caught the bug’.  Individuals that were disengaged became curious.  Folks that were already engaged became even more so.  Even people that were productive and working on other things, started to look at what they were doing by comparison and to make connections about how their products could be improved.  It seems you can also boost employee engagement by ensuring that they have projects to work on that challenge and inspire them, and by ensuring that you engage them in it fully from the start.

Best of all, these things cost little and not only improve organization productivity, but also make for a happier work atmosphere as well.

So, as we start 2014 remember the path to greater engagement has to be ignited somewhere, and could easily begin with some small steps.  Get your leaders ready, set yourself up for success, and look for opportunities to engage the wider organization more fully.

The power of music - Sing it loud… this holiday season

"....music is the universal language of mankind”, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

It might sound over the top, but the fact is that music is one of the most fundamental aspects of human culture and researchers even think music may have pre-dated language itself.  Music can transcend cultural, geographical and language barriers and, as we know, can unite people.

Whenever humans come together, the chances are that music is there... Significant life events, like weddings or funerals, religious ceremonies, entertainment, even company conferences and events. So, what makes music so compelling to us?

Leonard Bernstein in his Harvard Lectures suggested music may have come about from… The universal word, “mama...”… If you sing it a little faster and a little louder, mama will hear you and come and feed you. In this sense, music had a survival necessity. Beyond survival though, music is about play, storytelling, communication and bringing people together. Not only does it help us to connect and make meaning of things, but it helps us release endorphins and feel pleasure.

For this holiday season blog, I thought it would be appropriate to focus on the significance of music and singing as a medium to overcome cultural or geographical differences.

“Music transcends the limits of language…” Moby.

I guess many of us will have experienced big company events that use music, at some stage, to hype up the audience!? But, there is much more potential than just that. I’ve experienced music used in quite innovative ways at multi-nation events, to communicate a point and get alignment and buy-in. Depending on how it is used; it can be a great motivator and can really help get teams of people engaged together behind a particular message. It can work really well across boundaries and with teams that are not used to working together. I have seen it used very effectively as the ‘glue’ at team working sessions, where language could have been a barrier to communications.

I was reflecting on the power of music the other day after watching a YouTube video forwarded to me by a work colleague… It was of a flash mob event at an airport.  I noticed that I couldn’t tell what nationality the singers were. They seemed to have lost any accent when they sang – and frankly not that it mattered, as what was really interesting was the message!

I’ve included a link to the video.  If you have the time to listen, I encourage you to do so twice.  Hit play the first time and simply listen with your eyes closed.  It will be silent for a few moments as a message (which you will be able to read the second time) is played in text only.  You will then hear the lovely sounds of a traditional holiday carol.   Then watch it the second time.  Not only will the context of the flash mob become clear, but I think you’ll be amazed that the singers aren’t what you would have pictured at all.   What was particularly fascinating to me is that I understood every word they said, whereas had this same group been speaking I would have likely struggled to understand a stronger accent.

Music is a social communication mechanism that has a powerful influence on human feelings and on the interpretation of events. We simply cannot ignore the profoundly deep emotional connection we have to music.

So, why not give some thought to how you might use music in an innovative way to engage your team? Plus, this holiday season make sure you take time to enjoy some music and maybe even join in… 

"...To create and perform music is a human instinct. It is one of the true universals of our species.” Biologist and author E. O. Wilson, essay in Harvard Magazine.