In a recent Gallup article, Jennifer Robison explains that millennials like to job-hop because only 29 per cent are engaged at work. Robison says they continually search for high-quality management that provides opportunities to learn and grow and to do work that's purposeful.

Now I'm not convinced that this need for increased engagement at work is only reserved for those born post 1981! All of us, of all ages, are seeking connection with others and the opportunity to learn and better ourselves.

We all crave to be engaged and excited by our work within teams, with our clients and with each other.

CEOs approach me at the end of year-long leadership programs and say, ‘Wow the team are so connected and engaged. There's so much support in this room for each other — how did you do that?' My answer is, ‘I care about their success. I want them to succeed and the only way to do this is to respect and get to know each individual by creating a safe space where we can talk and engage. I choose to listen, to really listen, because how can I truly provide help and support if I don't understand where they're currently at?'

People ask me, ‘How do I network? What's the first thing I should say?' My answer is always, ‘Say hi, be yourself and talk. Be truly interested in the other person and ask them a question. Listen carefully and then ask another question'.

Years later I bump into people I met at conferences, whom I trained or mentored, and I'll remember something about them — not just what they do — and people ask me how I do that. Again, it's because I'm interested in people, in getting to know something about them.

These are just examples to illustrate that …

… engagement is about connecting and being truly interested in getting to know the other person — it's that simple.

I often say to my clients, ‘I know more about your people than you do' (sad, but true!). You may know their career aspirations (though, sometimes, I'm not convinced that's the case), you know what their capability and performance score is and what you think is going on for them, but I reckon I know more about them than you do. I know what's going on for them personally, what challenges they're really having at work, their belief systems, their fears and limitations, their hopes and dreams. Why? Because I make an effort to connect and engage first and foremost. This is how I push people out of their comfort zone and to a new frontier of competence.

Every single one of us is so much more than our job titles, salaries, the cars we drive and where we live. Building engagement is as simple as being curious and interested in the other person, in what's going on for them, and meeting them where they're at. It's about having a conversation with the whole person — not just the job they do and where they work.

It doesn't matter whether you're a leader or an employee, a celebrity or a fan, a parent or a child, engagement across boundaries is all about meeting people where they're at, getting curious, finding a connection point and moving forward together.

Challenge your assumptions

Ron Harvey is a retired US army veteran based in Columbia, South Carolina. He is now a certified coach as part of the John Maxwell team, and we met studying together at Harvard Kennedy School in early 2019.

Returning home from deployment in the Gulf War at the age of 26, Ron was selected for recruitment duty and assigned to a city called Davie in Florida. He was recruiting a young Caucasian man and drove out to meet his family in full uniform. When Ron got to the house, the young man's mother opened the door and said, ‘You can work with my son, but you can't come in. I don't let black people in my house'.

Ron was naturally angry and hurt as the discrimination hit him hard. ‘The most difficult thing for me was I wasn't even respected in the country that I had fought for, where I had experienced loss of life, and had put my own life in jeopardy. The fact that my race was the reason why I wasn't respected — that was the most difficult thing.'

Ron knew that the decision he made next about how to engage with the mother would change the trajectory for the young man, for himself, for the other African-American recruiters and for anybody of any race for that matter.

Recalling the story, he says, ‘I gathered myself really quickly. I told her I'm sorry she feels that way and I said I would be more than happy to talk to her son in the car'.

In the car, the son got angry. He was frustrated and embarrassed at the situation and started speaking disrespectfully about his mother. Ron told me ‘the military doesn't believe in disrespecting authority. Whether right or wrong, being respectful is critical,' and so he told the mother that the army wasn't as interested in her son as initially thought because they believe in respecting authority. ‘His disrespect for you will cause problems for us,' said Ron. Ron didn't do the interview that day.

The young man did eventually enter the army, but it's what the mother did next that illustrates the power of engagement.

She called Ron on Easter Sunday and told him her son had shown a high level of respect for Ron, and that this was the first time he'd really respected someone at that level of authority. She had witnessed how Ron had engaged with her son and helped change his world view.

She invited Ron to her house to apologise. She shared how she'd been raised and how this had affected her own belief system and racial judgement. From witnessing Ron's engagement with her son and how this had changed him, she shared that her own belief system and judgement around race were challenged. She wanted to learn more from Ron — to engage. She said that she was willing to challenge her learnt beliefs and renegotiate what these meant for her moving forward. She had to be brave enough to unlearn and relearn. Ron welcomed the conversation with open arms and with no judgement and he and this mother have subsequently stayed in contact, sharing many a conversation over a meal at her house.

Ron's story of racial discrimination, his acceptance and love for people and his powerful poise in the moment — as well as his open vulnerability around his anger at being judged not on how he'd served his country but on the colour of his skin — moved me and the rest of the Harvard class to tears.

In his learning he shared that ‘people are insecure and not willing to listen because of the fear they may learn something. Even for that mother, at that moment when she saw me, she wasn't willing to listen. But as she listened to her son later, and saw that he cared and that I was someone who was going to help her son achieve something that she wanted him to achieve, she found herself in a position where she needed to listen and she needed my help'.

Ron's story is an example of the opportunity that exists when we're willing and prepared to meet people where they're at. When we're brave enough to connect and be emotionally involved and fully committed to the conversation. When we're willing to listen and when we want to learn to understand.

Engaging in the right way is about being okay with being challenged about our own existing beliefs, to rethink original thoughts, to be comfortable in the space of being proved wrong.

It's about willingly engaging with diversity of thought, opinion, culture and experience versus sitting comfortably only among those who think, believe and behave just like you.

It's about acceptance. It's about debate, agreement and disagreement. It's about knowing that only by engaging and coming together are we creating an opportunity to drive collective momentum.

Engaging with others is a willingness to be interested and choosing to understand and appreciate others without judgement.

Ron's willingness to engage with someone whose belief system upset and angered him, knowing that this engagement had the potential for many knock-on ramifications to the mother, the son, the wider family, the community and his comrades, illustrates a willingness to be curious, to appreciate, to not judge but to explore more deeply. To ask, ‘I wonder what's going on?', to ultimately love unconditionally and be willing to hear and understand someone else's perspective and point of view.

Imagine what the world could be like if there were more Rons in it?

Imagine what your world could be like if you were prepared to suspend judgement and, in its place, engage deeply to move forward with others.

Heart, not head

In 1938, Harvard University began following 724 participants as part of the longest running study on human development in history. The study was developed to determine what makes us happy. The study explored every part of who we are — from physical and psychological traits to social life and IQ — to learn how we can flourish. Findings were published in the 2012 book Triumphs of Experience, with key results showing that happiness and health aren't a result of wealth, fame or working hard, but come instead from our relationships with each other.

The positive impact of strong engagement levels was further reinforced in the findings of a 2018 report. Researchers explored how social support influences university students' academic achievement and concluded that the more a person felt they were supported, the better their self-esteem and their performance. The research team suggested that social support and self-esteem work in a sort of ‘feedback loop', with one bolstering the other.

The benefits of social engagement and good mental health are numerous. Proven links include lower rates of anxiety and depression, higher self-esteem, greater empathy, and more trusting and cooperative relationships. Strong, healthy relationships can also help to strengthen your immune system, help you recover from disease and may even lengthen your life.

When we have stronger ties and a sense of purpose, our happiness levels are fuelled. We:

• create a positive workplace
• are willing to put in the extra effort
• treat each other with respect and acceptance
• are more productive and successful
• are more innovative, thinking outside the box, and curious about how we can improve and do better.

To increase engagement levels across the board, we need to practise how we engage individually, human to human, and heart to heart.

We need to practise connecting with intent, which requires:

• being present and in the moment: focusing on the other person — we always remember how people make us feel
• being interested: listening deeply, developing understanding and broadening perspective — we feel valued and respected when others are interested in us and our thoughts and opinions
• giving praise and encouragement: we feel hope when others make us feel great about ourselves or help us find perspective
• committing to operating from a place of ‘we': we feel connected when we feel like we're in it together
• being enthusiastic and having fun: we build our strongest relationships when we laugh and have fun
• engaging in two-way conversations: sharing value with each other.

At the end of the day, business has been and always will be about people. Leadership is and always has been about meeting people where they're at, paving the path to a new future and creating a desire to collectively work in the direction you're envisioning.

Discussion, debate, ideas and innovation need us, together, to engage. Support, help, solution finding and compassion only happen when we truly work together, when we engage and when we ultimately start re-engaging as people first and foremost.

And this also means banning the bullshit!

Ban the BS

We waste so much time and energy hiding behind the stories we tell ourselves, the external personal brand we want to present to the world, that we engage with the head and totally avoid the heart. We're not engaging, but rather faking it till we make it. We all have an incredible nose for the bullshit in others — and others can sense the BS in us!

According to Lewis Howes, New York Times best-selling author of The School of Greatness, people can tell when others aren't being real, and to become more likeable and personable you should focus on developing genuine connections, and not on what others can do for you. He maintains that in business, this may not be required to be a great leader, but it will make you a respected leader.

The crazy thing is that we're living in a world where we're able to engage and connect more than ever before: mobile phone, the internet, instant messaging, social media. Millions of people are chatting, sharing and creating around the world at the same time, and new data, information, news and ideas reach us at the click of a button. Yet this just adds to the bullshit!

There's a lot of ‘telling' going on, a one-way blasting out of information and facts. We can research the living daylights out of anything online, consume content in a multitude of formats and receive notifications, should we choose, every second of every day. We're able to check in with friends from around the world daily via short, succinct conversations, selfies and holiday posts. We can choose to engage in serious online debates and discussions, or stalk others secretly from behind a computer screen, and we all love the frivolous conversations and cat memes that give us a giggle. This is merely an information exchange — and it's dangerous.

You have to engage as you, not as some wonderfully coiffured, perfectly polished, edited and retouched version of you. We want to get to know you and all your uncomfortable, jiggly bits. Otherwise, you may as well print off that retouched selfie picture from your Instagram feed and pop up a cardboard cut-out of yourself instead!

Ask yourself honestly, how well are you showing up? Go on, be honest with yourself: is there some BS that you're sharing right now? Or are you just presenting the perfectly polished version of you?

In what ways could you remove the BS and be a more real version of yourself?

Make every moment count

Dr Michael Perry is a retired army lieutenant colonel with 20 years of service, and now co-founder and COO of Catalyst Executive Advising & Development where he and his team focus on developing leaders with the courage and vision to transform culture and change lives. I met Dr Perry during a trip to the United States.

It was during an interview with him that he shared the story of being in his office working when his daughter walked in to have a conversation. He remembers listening to his daughter, but not really listening as he had his back turned to her and was typing at his computer while she was talking (I don't think he's the only one who has done this, right?!).

He said, ‘Suddenly, I realised with the busyness of work, I was neglecting the thing that was the most important'. In that moment of distraction, Dr Perry shares how he lost the opportunity to engage with his daughter and instead chose to engage with the work. He realised this had to change if he was going to build a strong relationship with his daughter, asking himself, ‘How many moments have I missed because I've been so enthralled in what I was doing that I was distracted from what was going on in that moment?'

I'm sure many of us can relate to this battle between intention and distraction as we spend our lives juggling multiple balls and demands on our time. Equally, I wonder how many moments we're missing with our clients, staff, customers, family and friends. How often the answers are right there in front of us, but in our busyness and race through life the clues in the moment disappear into the ether.

Dr Perry shared that engagement matters no matter who you're talking to and this requires work and focus on our part. He says, ‘They deserve everything I have at that moment. Because if I'm giving a portion of myself to anything else, then I'm doing that particular thing or person a disservice'.

How connected, present and engaged are you really?

How many moments are you missing and what's the detrimental impact of that?

Open your eyes

A few years ago, I was working with a senior IT executive. She was well respected, results oriented and on a fast-track to promotion. During one of our sessions she angrily shared with me her frustration about a member of her team who used to be a high achiever but for some reason his performance had gone off the boil in the previous few weeks. It didn't matter what she did in terms of one-on-one conversation — helping with priorities, setting short-term goals — nothing helped. Her only solution, she told me, was to go to HR and start the process of performance discussion.

‘Have you actually asked him what's going on?' I asked.

‘Yeah, yeah, sort of. He says he's got a lot on his plate, that he's trying, but quite frankly I need his performance to improve and it's not good enough right now,' was her response.

‘But he used to be one of your best performers, correct?' I replied.

‘Yes, but not anymore and nothing seems to be improving.'

So instead of finding out what was going on, my client had started performance proceedings with HR!

I suggested, irrespective of where they were at in the company HR process, she needed to sit down and have a deeper conversation. What was really going on?

And to her credit she did.

She discovered that both his parents were sick in the UK, he was worrying about them and this worry for his family was all-consuming, taking over from any focus or interest he had in his work or the business. Quite rightly, his sick parents were his priority.

Here's the thing though: because of the formal HR proceedings, he'd lost all loyalty to the company and ended up resigning.

This story could have ended so much better: granting extended leave, carer support programs. But no, instead she chose to let process and protocol sort it out.

This is a classic example of being so wrapped up in the surface-level tasks of getting the job done, of self, that you're totally disengaged and blind to the other person.

Another time I was mentoring a senior executive for a large serviced office in Queensland. He was killing it on the results front — the figures were great, projects were being ticked off — but he felt his team were not being a team.

‘When was the last time you had a good conversation with them, individually? To find out what's going on outside of work?'

He shared that team meetings happened every week, one-on-one catch ups were in the diary and that team social outings were scheduled somewhere in the 12-month plan.

‘Yeah, yeah, I get that. But do you really know your team?'

After a blank response I challenged him for two weeks to engage individually with every member of his team and to have a conversation that didn't involve work, task lists or project plans. To actually engage, to find out about his team: their lives and what makes them tick.

Two weeks later he came back more excited than I'd experienced in any previous meeting. He began to reel off the stories he'd discovered: how one employee looked after his sick mother, how another was doing a yoga training course, how another volunteered at a local charity and how another was planning to ask his girlfriend to get married.

‘Awesome,' I said. ‘How does all this information make you feel and what are you going to do next?'

He proceeded to share how he felt more engaged with his team, how he had developed a greater understanding of their interests and key drivers and how, by having conversations that involved more than work, he felt more connected to his team.

The risk we all take is that we spend too much time with our eyes down looking at our screens or the immediate work at hand. We live in our heads; among our spreadsheets, project plans and sales targets. We get lost in the noise of our email inbox. We're racing through life and our days, just existing and oblivious to what's going on around us.

We're failing to stop and take notice of the clues that people are giving us: the employee who's no longer engaging in meetings, the partner whose shoulders are slumped as they trudge in from work, the child who's quietly sitting in their room night after night.

And if we do notice these things, we seem to actively avoid any person-to-person contact, worrying about what to say, how to say it, and we may jump into process mapping a solution, the protocol of correcting in the right way or the ‘seven steps to sorting it out', instead of stopping and being curious — instead of engaging, human to human.

Engagement is about creating the space to allow others to be themselves, to be imperfect and free to make mistakes. Engagement is about creating the space for both parties to share their inherent humanity, their dreams and aspirations, their passions and their lives in their entirety, knowing that togetherness is the one opportunity to drive change for each other.

When was the last time you actually stopped, chatted and connected over more than calendar commitments and project plans?

Take a moment to think about how you could engage more with the people you work with and the people at home.

What could you start doing this week to deepen the relationships you already have?

Trust builds engagement

While on holidays in Hawaii, the ride-share app Uber became my family's go-to. Onto the app we'd jump, load our trip details and accept the allocated ride, essentially placing our trust in the driver to get us safely to our destination. On the same holiday, we'd use the app OpenTable to find the best restaurants in the area based on ratings, reviews and the recommendations of others.

Yet isn't it interesting, that as much as we put our trust in websites and apps, and complete strangers who rate our experiences or drive our cars, as a society we're extremely distrusting of companies, brands, businesses and government?

The 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer describes it as ‘a world of seemingly stagnant distrust'. According to this report, our trust in business, governments, media and brands is at an all-time low. The same report also identifies that nearly seven in 10 respondents believe building trust is the number one job for CEOs, ahead of high-quality products and services.

Trust is a vital feature of human interaction and a fundamental building block for engagement and connecting with intent. The high value of trust is linked to its scarcity. It takes time to develop as each small step and behaviour contributes to the building of trust. And just as it takes time to build trust, it only takes one small event or behaviour to diminish or destroy it completely and you're back to square one.

In a research report titled ‘Why trust is critical to team success', Dennis and Michelle Reina and David Hudnut stated that,

When trust is present, people step forward and do their best work, together, efficiently. They align around a common purpose, take risks, think out of the box, have each other's backs, and communicate openly and honestly.

However, they continued, when there's no trust people manipulate others, hide information, don't take risks and talk about, rather than to, others.

Trust is a two-way street. We have to give trust to receive trust. In her book Dare to Lead, Brené Brown introduced BRAVING trust, with the acronym standing for:

• Boundaries — I will trust you if you hold and respect boundaries
• Reliability — I will trust you if you do what you say you're going to do
• Accountability — I will trust you if you own your mistakes, apologise and make amends, and I will do the same
• Vault — I will trust you if you hold what I share in confidence
• Integrity — I will trust you if you choose courage over comfort; choose what's right rather than what's quick and enjoyable; and practise, not just speak, your values
• Non-judgement — I will trust you if you accept who I am and what I'm telling you without judgement
• Generosity — I will trust you if you'll make a generous assumption for me.

To build trust with others, you have to learn to brave trust so others can trust you too. You have to be brave enough to connect your head with your heart; to meet others and engage where they're at.

People will follow you, work hard for you, support you, even maybe make their own sacrifices for you, if they trust you and feel connected to you.