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    Engagement Whisperer
    Engagement Whisperer
    Engagement Whisperer
    Ebook103 pages1 hour

    Engagement Whisperer

    By Tracy Stanley

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Many researchers have highlighted the business value of deeply engaged teams.  Indeed a great team is powerful, much more than the sum of its individual people.

    While many things influence engagement at work, and indeed there is complexity -  it isn't rocket science.

    Engagement Whisperer demystifies the science and describes a 'softly, softly' approach to lifting engagement in your team.

    There is already so much noise in an organisation that a quieter approach might just be the right 'cup of tea' (or coffee).

    This book is written for anyone who manages people.  Learning for managers is distilled in thirty delicious and easily digestible bites.  It's designed as a dipper or a flipper.  Simply, you can read a chapter or two at a time on the bus or while enjoying a cappuccino (my preferred option).

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTracy Stanley
    Release dateNov 10, 2017
    ISBN9780648189213
    Engagement Whisperer

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      Book preview

      Engagement Whisperer - Tracy Stanley

      Dedication

      I dedicate this book to all managers seeking to inspire their team to be their best

      Why a Whisperer?

      In a world where we are bombarded by shouty messages, I wanted to write a quiet book. To whisper the simple messages I learnt about engaging your team.

      ‘Whisperer’– as revealed by Google

      whisperer

      noun

      1. a person who whispers.

      he’s a whisperer—you can hardly hear a word he says

      2. a person skilled in taming or training a specified kind of animal, typically using body language and gentle vocal encouragement rather than physical contact.

      he’s reportedly set to quit show business to become a horse whisperer

      Also …

      Whisperer – Definition by the Free Dictionary – www.freedictionary.com/whisperer

      1. Soft speech produced without using the full voice

      2. Something uttered very softly: overheard his whisper

      3. A secretly or …

      Engagement Whisperer

      How many ‘Whisperers’ have you heard of? If you are an over 40, Robert Redford in the movie ‘Horse Whisperer’ may have been the first whisperer to come to mind. A romantic movie with tragedy, horses (of course) and Robert Redford, aka ‘The Horse Whisperer’, a man who quietly weaves his magic to restore a horse and a relationship.

      If you work in academia, you may have heard of the ‘Thesis Whisperer’, a blog nurtured by Inger Mewburn who has become the ‘Thesis Whisperer’. She helps struggling students combat imposter syndrome and the challenge of getting that ‘darn thesis’ done.

      I like the term ‘Whisperer’ because of the sense of quiet wisdom and a ‘softly, softly’ approach. This is why I called this book ‘Engagement Whisperer’.

      ENTREE

      Thanks for dropping by.

      I want this book to be like your favourite café: a comfy place where you could drop in, take a break and pick up nourishing takeaways, such as useful ideas (or carrot cake) to improve your team’s engagement.

      The book is divided into six generous slices – I mean sections.

      In the first slice, I talk about how I gathered information about employee engagement, developed insights and then wrote it all down.

      Then I spend a bit of time talking about the main ingredients that make a great job such as autonomy, learning opportunity and solving challenging problems.

      In the third slice, I talk about working with others in teams. There’s a lot to say about the power of collaboration, interactive meetings, good relationships and feeling supported.

      The fourth slice looks at what the best managers do, highlighting the importance of being open to new ideas, providing recognition and making team members feel valued. The relationship you have with your team members will have a big impact on their (and your) engagement.

      In the fifth slice, we look at the reality of working in a big organisation, and how it influences our sense of who we are and how connected we feel.

      Finally, for the last slice of cake we pull it all together. We listen to HR managers talking about their experiences in driving employee engagement initiatives. Big organisations tend to use big programs to enhance engagement. Employee engagement programs all come from a good place with some being implemented more effectively than others. I have combined the best of what my HR colleagues shared was important for success. If you are rolling out an organisational-wide initiative I trust you will find their insights of value.

      Best wishes,

      Tracy

      1

      Why the interest in employee engagement?

      Like many who have worked in large corporations I have experienced the joy of being deeply engaged in my work (so that time flies by) and the despair of not. These opposing experiences piqued my interest in employee engagement. The topic was discussed frequently in human resources journals with impressive claims being made about the relationship between engaged employees and improved business outcomes.

      Being in human resources gave me opportunity to implement programs and processes to measure engagement (whatever we thought that was) and then to help managers do something useful with the findings: to take tangible steps to increase engagement within their team.

      This process was a rich learning experience. While we – ‘we’ being the HR team – gathered valuable information about how the workplace was perceived, implementing a process to positively drive change was hard. Really hard. Expectations that change would follow the data collection process had been created. Reasonably so. Everyone’s expectations were different. Some thought that changes to human resource policy and practice were key in lifting engagement. Increasing everyone’s pay was often mentioned as the panacea for solving widespread disengagement. I was always sceptical of this view.

      Before I go further it’s important to explain my earlier comment about the definition of employee engagement. The term was introduced by Kahn in 1990, and has been used extensively by consultants and academics. Controversy followed, with some arguing that it has a duplication of meaning with earlier, and now less fashionable, concepts such as job satisfaction or job involvement or organisational commitment. Since then many pages have been devoted to discussing what it is and indeed what it isn’t.

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