We are currently in the process of creating a new pre-packaged Visual Dialogue “session-in-a-box” to help programme teams discuss and resolve common issues.  This picture is one of several we’ve created to help get people talking.  They draw on our own experiences of difficult situations as well as those of our associates and clients.  If this is something you’d be interested in contributing to, please do get in touch.

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To speak to your voice is perhaps one of the most challenging aspects of genuine dialogue.  Speaking your voice has to do with revealing what is true for you regardless of other influences that might be brought to bear.

To say it’s challenging strikes us as a massive understatement!  Most organisational cultures seem to conspire to ensure that the really difficult issues remain unspoken.  This helps preserve the safety of the status quo, but creates an enormous barrier to change.

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A regular feature of life in the Delta 7 office is the monthly Visual Dialogue where we get together to discuss something that interests us. We do this because it’s fun – but also because it’s an opportunity to experience and practice the process we create for our clients.

Our pictures are tools to engage people in organisations in conversations about difficult issues. These facilitated dialogues enable people to gain powerful insights about the changes and challenges they face – and come up with responsible and creative solutions.

The starting point for our dialogue was familiar to everyone in the team. “How do I look?”

To begin with, the conversation focused on that uncomfortable conundrum: when is ‘honest’ too honest? Is the truth always the right thing in all situations? We all recognised the experience of holding back on what we said based on what we thought another person wanted to hear. We also all agreed that even though it made things easier at the time, it left us feeling uneasy.

In the end, we concluded that what really mattered to us was for there to be alignment between what we think on the inside and what we say (or do) on the outside. It was clear that congruence was more important a quality than protecting our, or someone else’s feelings.

What do you think? Is the honesty important in your organisation?

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Employee engagement:  Something you do with your employees, not to them

We were invited to attend the Public Service Event “Engaging the Human Resource” yesterday. For me the highlight of the day was an inspiring story from Clive Bradley about his trip to the Gambian hospital of Bangtang, which he used brilliantly to illustrate the point that engagement isn’t something you do to your employees, but rather something that you do with them. We at Delta 7 whole-heartedly agree.

Clive and his colleague Michael Cosello delivered a much needed Land Rover to the hospital to help employees travel around the various clinics throughout the Gambia and interviewed the employees to find out what other things they most wanted at work. At this point the hospital had been losing good people to another better equipped Gambian hospital.

It turned out that what people most wanted were simple things like having some books for ward staff to read on the night shift when there wasn’t much going on. When the changes that the staff had requested were made, there were some startling and unexpected consequences. As well as improved staff retention, the infant mortality rates dropped by around a factor of 10.

Clive and Michael were summoned to the House of Commons to explain whether the dramatic reduction in infant mortality could be replicated elsewhere. But the point is that it’s clearly not the giving of books per se, for example, that helped reduce infant mortality. The link is clearly through improving the experience of being at work for those employees whose actions have an effect on infant mortality. Yet there was no one-size fits all engagement “solution” here that worked its magic. Instead, increased engagement, and the dramatic improvements in other areas that went with it, occurred as a result of consulting with employees to find out what they wanted and then acting on it.

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Last week, we went to an event entitled, ‘Employee Engagement: Communication Matters’ which was jointly held by AIM Research, the CMI and the Institute of Business Consulting. We heard from many eminent speakers during the evening, but what we were most struck by was the disparity between the subject matter and the media through which it was being communicated. Are ‘talking-heads’ with slides on stage, with the audience sitting in silence most of the time,  really the most effective way to  make the point that employee engagement requires quality two-way communication?

At Delta7 we believe that dialogues with employees are a great way to truly engage with them. It gives a chance for all parties to give their point of view, not just those who are deemed to be the experts. We’d love to be involved in  an engagement event that provides the same sort of environment for its participants that it’s advocating they provide for their employees.

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Business jargon can be a place to hide at the same time as being a kind of weapon to show off your prowess. Meetings can sometimes feel like they’re dominated by people jousting with words.

And despite the volume of words being used, all too often people are left in the dark about what’s going on and feeling disconnected from each other.

How do you burst the bubble when you come up against ‘bigger, cleverer words’?

We’d love to know

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While commentators complain that our politicians aren’t being straight with us about the scale of the national debt, what we’ve picked up from our clients – particularly those in the public sector – is an overwhelming sense of foreboding.  People sense that something is coming that isn’t good, but no one quite knows what it will mean in practice or what if anything they can do about it.

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Once that energy is released, do you know how to steer it towards the target you’re aiming for?

Many people think that strategy is a hit-and-miss affair in their organisation. They see their leaders light the blue touchpaper – and then (like the old firework safety briefing says) stand well clear.

Is it ever like this in your organisation? Have you ever felt like you were strapped to a strategic rocket about to launch up the ramp?

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In Delta7, we fondly call this picture ‘The Blofeld Chair’ – a reference to the archetypal lever-operated chair used by arch-villains in Bond films to dispose of henchmen who have incurred their displeasure.

We’ve heard stories of people who practically roast anyone who dares to disagree but more often than not the threat is less overt and takes the form of a pressure to just agree and not rock the boat. ‘If you’re not with us, you’re against us’ is a gentle reminder that questioning or disagreement is considered negativity.

Have you ever found yourself sitting in The Blofeld Chair? How did it feel? And what did you do?

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Last week saw us taking a new Big Picture to the PR Week Engaging Internal Communications conference at the Grange City Hotel in Tower Hill. The new picture is a cityscape depicting what happens when organisations don’t pay attention to the 4 key drivers of employee engagement.

According to the MacLeod report on engagement, these are:

• Strategic narrative - a clear, compelling vision of where the business is going, why and what’s going to have to happen to get it there

• Engaging managers – people with the ability to communicate the strategic narrative in a way that engages, includes and motivates their people

• Employee voice – the willingess to give employees a voice and to seek, listen to and act on their feedback

• Living their values with integrity – leaders who ‘walk their talk’ by embodying the businesses values and who take responsibility for leading by example

Each of the four main buildings represents one of these key drivers and is filled with examples of what it’s like when these drivers aren’t in place.  People running around without any clear idea of what’s going on; people asking for feedback then not listening to it… in short, a range of things familiar to anyone who’s ever worked in a large organisation.

It was an ambitious picture and great fun to make and our artists worked tirelessly to achieve such a striking result, with it’s dizzying perspective. It’s so convincing that people standing in front of the picture reported they felt like they were falling forward into the story.

Which, of course, is just how we like it!

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“What are the characteristics of an engaged employee?” is a question they’re asking over at David Zinger’s ‘The Employee Engagement Network’

There are many different ways to characterise an engaged employee but one stands out for me – seeing yourself as part of the organisation rather than apart from it.

In my experience, engaged employees are those who care about some (or all) aspects of the work they do. Engaged employees care about doing their part well because they can see how that feeds into developing and safeguarding the thing they care about. They perceive themselves as part of the business and know where they fit in the bigger picture.

Disengaged employees, on the other hand, care more about their pay packet than the experience or importance of what they do – or how they do it. They see themselves as apart from the business, can only see through the view-frame of their own interests and often speak of themselves as though they were engaged in a struggle against the company.

Productivity can come from one of two basic motivations: either external or internal.  If you try to force productivity up through external motivation, you end up with an organisation that can only treat its people like slaves: resources to be exploited and controlled through a range punitive measures.  This approach will eventually create disengagement and at best, compliance.

Since you’re going to need ideas, creativity and willingness to keep productivity and innovation high, it follows that the only motivator that really makes sense is the internal one. Helping people to care about the organisation, what it stands for and to see the part they can play in its success will go a long way towards making that motivation personal – with far higher levels of engagement as the reward.

What do you think?

The Employee Engagement Network is free to join and features a wide range of interested people discussing employee engagement.

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Clients often talk about the need for more adult-to-adult conversations where the leaders treat employees with respect and listen to and value their views and concerns.  Time and again, however, engagement surveys tell us that this just isn’t happening.  ‘Soft stuff’?  Hardly.  In my experience the ability to have these kinds of difficult conversations is the ‘hard stuff’.

This picture reminds me that the engagement gap is also between HR and the rest of the board. How can HR leaders engage with other leaders diferently?

What do you think?

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I was at a conference last month, organised by  CIPD on Employee Engagement. In a discussion around some of the Kingston Consortium research findings I heard someone say “What is the key to unlocking potential?”

So what does a successful employee engagement strategy look like?  What’s your experience?

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One particular table exercise was to discuss “what HR can do to create employee engagement?”

A theme that came up on several tables was: ‘we need to see people as human beings who are valued and respected instead of a simple resource to be used up’.

That really got me thinking.  So many people share that feeling of not being treated by their organisation as human beings – it’s an unspoken that lies just below the surface.  I made this picture to capture both the intensity and simplicity of this issue.

Interestingly, the problem is clearly embedded there, in language, in the name of that most familiar of organisational job functions: ‘human resources’.

So what can HR do to make an organisation treat its people more like human beings and less like resources to be consumed?
What could I do today that would treat the people I work with more like human beings and less like raw resources to be used? What could I change personally?

At Delta7 we know that in order to treat other people with respect we have to first learn how to respect ourselves. What one thing could you do to treat yourself with more respect today?

We’d like to know how this picture makes you feel. Just post a comment (below)

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