Feedback - Design Your Life Workshop

I had the pleasure of conducting a workshop entitled "Design Your Life" recently for 30 young participants of St. Blaise Church,  Amboli.  They were initially shy and then warmed up to ask interesting questions and make the workshop more engaging.  Interestingly, we had a few parents who also attended too, and that added an interesting dimension to the discussions.

We covered aspects of planning one's career and life (both are intertwined anyway). 

I shared with them tools such as a Personal Values Exercise, a Personal Brand Exercise, How to identify where they may have talents, how to build flow, how to identify areas of success to work on, and a few more reflective exercises, that would help them make better decisions for their career.  I also spoke about the #PRISM Brainmapping Career Match Report that is great in helping people identify possible career paths. Please call me onn +919820155778 or write to me on ryanbbarretto@hotmail.com to know more about this neuroscience-based tool..

My sincere thanks to Fr. Leon and the volunteers who provided all the necessary support.  Here are some images that depict what the participants are going to work on, and a wordcloud that shows what they felt after attending the session (the range of feelings was expected, as it demonstrates to me that they started to think about designing their careers).

Employee Engagement for All Situations

When people are financially invested, they want a return.  

When they are emotionally invested, they want to contribute

- Simon Sinek

Employee Engagement has been in the conscious mind more and more over the past decade, ever since it was talked about by Gallup's Curt Coffman and Marcus Buckingham in their ground-breaking book "First Break all the Rules".  It has frequently been quoted in HR conferences and HR initiatives along the lines of "X percentage of employees in organizations are disengaged".

Here's a simple definition from Google - "Employee engagement is the extent to which employees feel passionate about their jobs, are committed to the organization, and put discretionary effort into their work". 


And Forbes.com - "Employee engagement is the emotional commitment the employee has to the organization and its goals".


Here's what it looks like:

This means that employees put in more than required effort in their work, because they're not just working for a salary or bonus or promotion, but job satisfaction, transparency, along with fulfilling personal growth goals and other things.

A cursory google search will turn up loads of links on the topic, including definitions, how to do it, things to watch out for and so on.  And this article is not really about those things. This article is about what managers can do to drive engagement.

While we're at it, I would like to clearly state that Employee Engagement has nothing to do with fun activities (birthday celebrations, festival contests, annual day events) run by HR and / or line managers every month / quarter.  These are stress buster activities, nothing more, nothing less.  For those who think that these fun activities are employee engagement, ask yourself - "How many candidates will join my organization or take back their resignation because we are running these fun events?"

In my experience of twenty years in HR across different industries, Employee Engagement comes down to the relationship between the manager and his team. This is applicable to for all departments including HR.  Employee engagement is not the responsibility of HR, but the responsibility of anyone who leads a team, irrespective of organization level or delegation. When you come to think of it, it's also the responsibility of those who don't have teams, but work across the organization.  HR can provide a framework of Talent Management (Hiring, Performance Management, Rewards, Learning), but the actual work has to be done by the manager personally.

Why the manager?
The manager has to set goals for the team, ensure discipline, manage and monitor performance regularly, provide effective feedback, groom and develop his team members, and ensure goals are met.

So how does the manager drive engagement in his team ? (the term "he" is interchangeable with whatever term you like)

• He has to know his team, beyond their resumes.  
• He has to let the team get to know him / her - beyond the designation.
• He has to develop a clear understanding of their strengths and weaknesses.  
• Define the goals
• Monitor and manage performance
• Enable them to understand and use their own motivation in their work.

Some may say - Who has time for all this?  It seems a lot of work, and it definitely does require substantial investment of time from the manager. Unfortunately, there's no shortcut from this time investment.  There is of course, the Situational Leadership Model by Dr. Paul Hersey  (Center for Leadership Studies) which can help the manager do all of this.

Here's an image of the model:

The #SituationalLeadership model will enable you to:

• Allocate the appropriate task to the correct employee
• Adopt an appropriate management style with each employee (not a one style fits all approach)
• Get employees to participate in the planning the execution of the department's work.
• Identify high performers
• Manage low performance
• Develop the capabilities of the team members

In a crisis or in Business As Usual (BAU), a leader / manager has to take frequent decisions in many areas where he and his team have to get things done.  The Situational Leadership model is an excellent guide for doing all the above-mentioned points. 
For Situational Leadership to succeed, the manager must know both his own Strengths and Weaknesses, as well as those of his teams. A tool such as the #CliftonStrengths or the #PRISM Brainmapping Professional (or DISC, FIRO-b, etc) is necessary as a precursor to ensure that the team becomes an engaged, smoothly-oiled unit. A few reflective questions to start  could be :

1. "What do I need from my team?"
2. "How do I support my team so that they deliver what I need from them?"

Of course, Team Coaching and Individual coaching will also help, along with regular conversations which treat the employee as a person and not just an employee.

Want to know more? Leave a note here, or write to me on ryanbbarretto@hotmail.com to set up a call. I can also be reached at +919820155778 for a conversation.

Talent = Competence X Commitment X Contribution

This extraordinary equation came from this article by the HR Guru, Mr. Dave Ulrich.

This was extremely intriguing for me because of my work with strengths and the Clifton Strengthsfinder.  I was reminded of this excellent equation from that phenomenal body of work:

This equation shows how talent is converted into a strength.

Mr. Ulrich's equation says that Talent is an outcome of competence, commitment, and contribution of the individual.

We also use a familiar phrase to describe someone's ability in a particular task as "he / she is quite talented in "XYZ".  So we are actually commenting on the outcome of investment (in the form of contribution of deliberate practice & commitment) and raw talent (Competence). The difference is the nomenclature viz. Talent and Strength.

For me personally, a talent is an unrealized strength, which is yet to be developed and applied effectively. Deliberate Practice (the term created by K. Anders Ericsson), over a period of time, are key requirements for converting a talent to a strength. That's my specialty as a Strengths Strategy Coach - helping my clients (career transition and executive coaching) understand how the 34 Strengths from Clifton Strengthsfinder manifest in their everyday lives as behaviours, and thereafter, how to build them up and consciously call them when we need them.

Working with your strengths is a smart choice as it ensures that you have a more satisfied life, especially if your career is built on your strengths, instead of your weaknesses.

In an organizational context, this means that you and your colleagues are able to collaborate better with each other, simply because people know what you are strong and weak at, and you know the same about them. A lot of time, energy and cost is saved in this manner, especially if you link this to the performance management system of OKR (Objectives and Key Results).

What do you think?

P.S. - If you would like to try merging OKRs with Strengths, call me at +919820155778 or write me a note at ryanbbarretto@hotmail.com so that we can schedule a discussion.