Engaging Conversations: Encouraging a Culture of Dialogue

By Barb Krantz Taylor, Executive Coach and Consultant

Employee engagement has become a mantra within many organizations. They seem to be looking for secret insights into how to help workforces become more motivated and more productive. Many professionals at many levels have seen the same research that I’ve seen outlining bottom line improvements (such as enhanced productivity and higher retention) that come from effective engagement.

To those who have asked me to provide some of these ‘secret insights’ to effectively engage employees, here’s my highly strategic recommendation: talk to them.

Sure, companies need an overall engagement strategy that they’re rolling out across the organization, one that helps employees connect with the organization’s mission, become more passionate about their work, and exceed expectations. But in my experience, the best-intended employee engagement plans hit a wall if the company’s managers and supervisors aren’t able to build effective relationships with their employees.

That’s a core issue: many managers simply don’t know how to initiate honest and open conversations with the employees they seek to engage.

Joining Companies, Leaving Managers

The now-popular axiom that employees join organizations and leave managers is amazingly accurate. To address that challenge, organizations need to teach their managers how to have “engaging conversations,” open-ended, non-judgmental conversations with each employee about passions, aspirations and opportunities.

Failure to encourage this kind of open dialogue unwittingly discourages the very people that companies seek to motivate. Organizations where employees are scared to talk to their supervisors and unwilling to share how they really feel about their jobs, are also companies full of “clock-punchers” who feel stuck in their careers. I notice that these are often the same companies in which senior managers openly fret about the lack of “bench strength.”

At The Bailey Group, we define employee engagement as “a personal connection employees have to their job, organization, manager or team that motivates them to excel in their work.” Engaged employees are easy to recognize: they bring their full selves to work, exude positive energy, consistently seek ways to improve, and are upbeat and committed.

For many employees at all levels, engagement comes from within. Some workers will be engaged no matter which organization they work for.  But for many others—more than 50% of the workforce, by most estimates—engagement never happens. Those employees deserve some of the responsibility, of course, but companies can take real-world action steps to help them find that personal connection to their work.

Creating an environment that encourages engaging conversations between employees and their managers is a critical component of any engagement plan. We need to engage employees in conversations about their talent, ask them about their passion, and help them learn how to explore opportunities for job renewal. “It’s as much about the act of conversations as it is about the outcome of those conversations.” (Performance Improvement Solutions, 2005)

A Creative Process, An Organizational Priority

Engagement is not only for those on the front line. One barrier that some companies face is that they charge managers—who themselves may NOT be engaged—with the role of encouraging employees to find passion and meaning in their work. I know of few individuals who can act well enough to inspire their employees when they themselves are just “along for the ride.” This is why employee engagement efforts are most effective when they address the entire organization. CEOs should have regular ‘engaging conversations’ with their direct reports, and so on, and so on.

Setting the ground rules for engaging conversations, and teaching managers the logistics (i.e. where, what, how often) may seem basic, but it’s an important first step. Identifying this process as a top-down organizational priority makes a difference, which means that anyone in an HR or human capital position needs to carry this knowledge and message to senior management to gain appropriate buy-in.

Training managers in some learnable techniques also makes a huge difference in adopting an engaging conversations culture. In many organizations, we have helped teach people skills vital to relationship-based leadership: listening with empathy, being respectful, withholding judgment, and leading with a development mindset.

Setting realistic outcomes is another key piece. This need not be an overly complicated initiative.  The best possible outcomes of engaging conversations are:

  • Managers learn what their employees love doing, and help them find ways to do MORE of it.
  • Managers find out what their employees want to learn about, and help them find ways to learn it.
  • Managers learn what their employees hate doing, and help them find ways to do LESS of it.

There are no absolutes. This is a creative and negotiable process. We can’t all have jobs in which we work outside on nice days, and inside on cold ones. Yet engaging conversations will uncover a few hidden passions, match dreams with opportunities, and help you retain key people by demonstrating to them that your organization is genuinely interested in their future.

Most of all, companies that encourage engaging conversations between employees and their managers do a much better job of balancing talents and needs. And their CEOs spend a lot less time worrying about the quality of their work force.