Building Workplace Interest and Engagement
Are you seeking more engagement from your workplace teams? Are you building workplace interest or just rolling through each day?
Things only roll one way, downhill.
Choice of Engagement
Looking at my well used desktop keyboard, I notice that many keys are polished, some even missing the letter representation. Yet there is an entire row of shortcut keys that I have never touched.
Recently, I drove a friend to lunch. He complimented my car. I mentioned that it is just short of ten years old. He thought it was newer. Later I realized that in nearly ten years I’ve never explored all the electronic features.
There are millions of groups on social media channels. Business or pleasure, hobbies or special interests, yet millions of users never engage.
Some people never take public transportation. Some never go to the visitor attractions in their own town.
Why?
Engagement at Work
In the workplace we have similar attention challenges. There is talk about change, what will work better, and how to have less waste.
Yet, many will never engage.
They’ll never touch the shortcut keys, they’ll never check out all the features, and they’ll never get involved in optional groups.
Building Workplace Interest
Workplace leaders often try to push. They use polite forms of force to apply pressure for engagement. Backs turned, there is often little or no interest in doing anything new or different.
The challenge does not involve pushing harder. The challenge is creating a compelling environment where the people are pulled. When you gain more true followers there is more reason to join the movement.
The word spreads. The features work, they make life easier, and the engagement keeps paying off.
Engagement by force is a short-run game.
Building more interest feels harder than applying force. It requires careful thought, effort, and transparency. The risk is different, bad ideas don’t sell.
Illustrating why is much more powerful than commanding why.
-DEG
Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.
