In this chapter we’ll look at the pivotal link between the principles of coaching and your ability to engage and motivate people in the workplace. Whether you work in a small business or large organisation, engagement levels affect people’s behaviour around you on a daily basis. So I’ll offer simple definitions of engagement to confirm your awareness and help you consider the relevance to you. Using questions and prompts, I’ll also help you decide where you might benefit from a sharper focus on this fascinating topic. Finally, we’ll consider what you can actually do in conversation to benefit someone’s engagement levels.
Of course, if you are super-keen to learn about coaching more directly, simply scan this section and skip to the next chapter.
What do we mean by engagement?
Engagement relates to our sense of connection, value and motivation around a task or situation. At work, it’s the difference between people doing what they need to do and going beyond what was expected. There are many industry definitions and here’s one which is both simple and effective:
 | ‘Engagement is the willingness to invest oneself and expend one’s discretionary effort to help the employer succeed.’ |
| Tamara Erickson, 2005 (testimony to US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labour and Pensions) |
Why is engagement important in the workplace?
The recent surge of interest, research and focus on this topic is logical and positive; organisations now realise that for businesses to thrive, first – people must thrive.
| ‘Companies with high (and sustainable) levels of engagement had an average one year operating margin almost three times higher than those with lower levels of engagement.’ |
| Towers Watson, (formerly Towers Perrin Consulting) 2012 |
So this is a high-value topic, and your ability to engage your colleagues can mean a dramatic increase in your results. In quality and service terms, the difference between those who are engaged and those who are not is tangible. For example, if you ask a retail assistant where you might find something, do they point in the vague direction of the aisle, or do they take you to it?
When you’re on a call to a service centre and your mobile phone signal drops, does the operator phone you back or just move on to their next call? If one of your team notices that a customer has left something behind, what do they do? Our engagement levels regularly shape our attitude and our actions.
What does this have to do with you?
As a manager, your style and approach affects how people think, how they feel and what they do, which impacts their engagement levels. Also, to inspire and motivate others, you need their positive engagement. How responsive are they to your requests? Do they do what they say they will do? In a crisis can you rely on their good will? Here are just a few ways that you impact people’s engagement levels directly:
- in your attitude towards people, for example the respect and value that you demonstrate
- in the clarity you create for people around vision, objectives and core activities
- in the sense of purpose that you encourage, for example by what you make important
in how much you challenge and support others to learn and progress
- in whether they trust you to act in their best interests, for example that you want what is positive for them.
Some factors of engagement might be beyond your control, such as the trading environment or people’s basic wellness. However, as a manager you do hold the keys to many of them. This is, of course, a good and positive thing as it enables you to make a worthwhile contribution personally and professionally.
| ‘Managers who are able to create an all-around engaging work climate can have an invaluable effect on an employee’s commitment to an organisation and the productivity a group of employees can generate.’ |
| Mel Stark, Hay Group |
How does coaching link to engagement?
At a really basic level, if someone is not engaged in a conversation with you, they are less likely to be open to you coaching them. The need for them to involve themselves actively in the conversation, to make the effort to think things through, offer ideas, etc. is less likely to be met. So as you move away from a more directive style (where you talk and they listen), you now rely on someone to participate more fully in a conversation.
However, the real opportunity of coaching behaviours is to increase people’s engagement levels more broadly in relation to how they perform at work. Let’s now focus on that opportunity more directly.
What drives our engagement?
As you’d expect, what engages people is both common and individual, for example we all like a healthy level of challenge and we all enjoy a positive sense of learning and progress. However, some of us are enlivened by receiving praise, while others just want to see results. Our sense of engagement involves our head and our heart; just because we may logically know we should do something, does not instantly make us joyful at the prospect of that. Coaching conversations enable you to learn what someone’s individual drivers are, as you’ll see later in this section.
There is now huge effort to evidence and understand the common (and core) drivers of engagement. For example, a UK government-sponsored study (the MacCleod Review/Employee Engagement Task Force 2008–2012) lists the top drivers of employee engagement as:
- Visible, empowering leadership with a strong strategic organisational narrative, for example where the organisation has come from and where it’s going to.
- Engaging managers who:
- focus on their people and give them scope to act
- treat their people as individuals, and
- coach and stretch their people.
- Employees having a voice throughout the organisation, to reinforce and challenge views. Employees seen as central to ‘the solution’.
- Organisational integrity – the values on the wall are present in day-to-day behaviours – there is no ‘say–do’ gap.
As a leader or manager you have direct or indirect influence on all of the above. For example, when you adopt a coaching style in conversation you can influence:
- people’s alignment with company purpose and objectives, for example by using questions such as ‘How does this situation relate to our drive for innovation?’
- people’s learning, growth and empowerment, for example as you encourage their confidence to think and act for themselves
- their sense of being positively challenged, for example by not always fixing things for them, or by offering regular and constructive feedback
- how valued people feel – because you listen to them, ask them what they think and encourage them to act on their own ideas
- their experience of organisational values, such as openness and respect, for example ‘What are your views on this?’ or ‘What do you think needs to happen here?’
| ‘When it comes to actions that can support both enablement and energy, few things have as much immediate impact as an effective relationship with one’s direct manager.’ |
| Towers Watson, (formerly Towers Perrin Consulting) 2012 |
How well do you engage others?
Use the following questions to assess how effective you are at engaging, motivating and inspiring others.
With your team
Q: How engaged does your team appear (individually/as a group)? For example, if you aren’t there, what happens to productivity?
Q: How aligned is your team behind a sense of purpose? For example, do they have a shared view of what’s important?
Q: How clear are you with people about what needs to be done?
Q: When you give someone a task or project how do they respond? Do they get behind your initiatives and deliver? Or do they go into hiding, or deliver something ‘half-done’?
Q: How much do you focus on and support people’s overall wellbeing?
With colleagues
Q: In conversation, do you flex your style to individuals? For example, this person welcomes detail, this person enjoys optimism, etc.
Q: How often do you consider people as individuals? For example, what’s important to them, what their preferences are, etc.
Q: How much do people enjoy and value working with you?
Please stay positive, and look for simple ideas for sustainable improvement, and keep those achievable. Trying to become an engagement super-hero overnight is likely to be counter-productive, simply because you risk being overwhelmed by doing that. If it helps, ask the opinion of someone you trust for other ideas or insights.
Coaching conversations enable engagement
Clearly coaching is a style of conversation that places greater emphasis and importance upon the person you are coaching. The table below illustrates more fully how the key drivers of engagement are naturally supported by coaching.
Engaged managers engage people
To engage others around a topic or task, your own engagement levels must also be positive. So it’s useful to consider your own engagement in situations regularly. In this way you can increase your enjoyment and contribution, while learning what is likely to engage people around you. For example, are you reading this book because you want to? Or because you feel that you should? Maybe your engagement level falls somewhere between those two ideas, i.e. that you feel you should but also that you are beginning to realise that you’ll benefit from doing so?
At work more generally, you will have activities that you happily arrive early for, and some that you put off and avoid. When we ask ourselves why this is, the answer isn’t always simple. For example, you might volunteer to do something, because you feel it’s important and something that you’re able to do, but then when the time arrives to start the task you procrastinate.
To understand what causes or inhibits engagement (in yourself or others) it’s useful to view engagement as having component parts:
The intellectual part How we understand something, how clear we are about it and what our view/opinion is of that.
The emotional part How we feel about doing something; the emotions that are being created by our thoughts/understanding.
The enabling/‘in action’ part What we are doing (the actions we are taking) in response to our understanding, views and feelings about something.
Towers Watson (formerly Towers Perrin Consulting)
It’s possible to coach yourself (and others) on these three topics, by enquiring into them more directly. To experience this yourself, use the brilliant questions tool below.
How engaged are you in a situation?
Think of a task or activity that you would like to make better progress in, or a situation that you know you avoid tackling. Use the following to explore your engagement around that more fully. As you reflect on the questions, it helps to handwrite simple notes to capture your thoughts.
The intellectual part: understanding
Q: How clear are you about what you need to do in this situation?
Q: What don’t you know, or are unclear about?
Q: What are your simple steps forward? What are the immediate priorities?
The emotional part: affinity
Q: What is your personal sense of connection (affinity) to this situation or task. For example, how do you feel about it?
Q: What’s your own reason for doing it? For example, how might you benefit? Or what’s important about this for you?
Q: When you imagine this task or situation, how enlivened do you feel by that?
Q: How ‘in action’ are you around this situation? What have you actually done to make progress?
Q: What are your potential blocks or barriers to action? What’s stopping you?
Q: How clearly are you focused on the priorities, and on actions that will make the most difference?
Go back over your notes and highlight any insights or actions needed to increase your engagement. If it helps, discuss the situation with someone you trust to support you.
Coach your own engagement and then coach it in others
Once you’re familiar with the three-part structure and typical questions shown in brilliant questions above, you can use those to increase the engagement of others – for example when your team member or colleague doesn’t seem to be making progress in a situation, or when you’ve given a task to someone, they aren’t making effective progress, and you don’t fully understand why not.
| ‘Leadership is not defined by the exercise of power, but by the ability to increase the sense of power among those who are led.’ |
| Mary Parker Follett, Creative Leadership, 1924 |
Transactional engagement, burnout and coaching
Sometimes people act/appear engaged but their engagement is unsustainable over time; this is known as transactional engagement. For example, in an openly competitive workplace people often work longer and harder because that’s what’s expected of them – for example ‘I need to look engaged here’. Some people believe that they need to demonstrate a commitment to the company that goes beyond considerations of themselves. Perhaps career development opportunities are scarce, or the threat of redundancy is fairly regular. Unfortunately, when we do not recover or recharge from working at peak levels, our resilience and enjoyment wane. Where extreme stress becomes permanent rather than temporary, people’s productivity suffers over time. Ultimately people whose engagement is transactional might burn out or choose to leave an organisation in order to redress their work–life balance or because the situation has become unsustainable for them personally.
Effective coaching conversations reduce the negative element of transactional engagement. Here’s why:
- As you listen more and ask better questions, you improve your relationships and people are more open with you about what they really think and feel.
- Your awareness of people’s views, attitudes and motivation broadens and deepens.
- When people aren’t coping as well as they may appear, you are in a better position to support them – for example by helping them share their true feelings, readjust priorities and set helpful boundaries around their work.
Engage someone in conversation
To increase someone’s levels of engagement around a situation or task, remember that they need:
- to be clear about what actually needs doing
- to feel a positive personal connection to that in some way, for example that what they are doing seems worthwhile/they can see a positive
- to be in tangible action towards that (and be enabled to act).
During the conversation, try one or more of the following:
- Increase your question to statement ratio (ask more questions, let them speak).
- Show sincere interest in them/their views, for example use appropriate body postures and eye contact.
- Summarise occasionally – indicate your effort to listen to and understand them.
- Focus on the components and blockers to engagement (see the earlier brilliant questions box ‘How engaged are you in a situation?’).
- Be willing to talk about what they are less happy about, for example make it okay for them to be less than positive or share their concerns.
To effectively coach engagement, each person, group and situation presents fresh challenges. However, once you develop an attention for the topic of engagement, and the underlying causes or blocks to that, you can make progress where less aware managers cannot.
Engaging people gets personal
Exploring the personal aspects of people’s performance can reveal how they truly think and feel and you may be less comfortable with that. For example, you’ve asked someone to create a report on store trading figures. You’ve chased them already, it’s been weeks and they still haven’t begun the task.
This is where a directive style of managing people (I instruct, you comply) often seems preferable. After all, if you keep conversations with people to fact and logic (‘I need you to do this by the end of this week please’), isn’t everything simple and easy? The answer is, of course, sometimes, for a while, and not always. Much of the alarm caused by indications of how disengaged people are feeling at work has been caused by ignoring people’s fundamental humanness, that is, we are both logical and emotional beings (for a fuller illustration, check out the Towers Watson Global Workforce Study). We have basic hopes, desires, feelings and needs which must also be considered alongside business goals. In this case, a less directive style might ask ‘What’s stopping you from getting started here?’ Which means you need to hear whatever that might be. Perhaps they tell you that they don’t enjoy creating reports (‘I dread going through all the store spreadsheets; I get really stressed at the idea of it’).
Perhaps you’re comfortable helping people realise what needs doing (intellectual) and also the steps towards that (action), but typically skip the middle component of engagement (personal connection/affinity). That’s understandable and also a false barrier to your ability to create results through other people. A coaching style helps you to do this naturally as you attune more closely to individuals in conversation. Also, because of the principles and structure underneath those, it offers you a more predictable and comfortable way to do that. For illustrations of structured conversations, see Part 3 (‘Application’).
Coaching is a critical link in the need to engage people
When people are engaged, they are naturally enlivened and motivated to do a great job. They enjoy their work and the challenge and learning that it provides them. That’s proven to be good for quality, customers and bottom-line performance. The things that engage us are both common and individual. For example, we all enjoy a worthwhile challenge and clear sense of purpose. In addition, we have individual preferences – for example, you enjoy ambitious challenge while I might not. Coaching behaviours help to increase people’s engagement. In conversation, you can focus on the core components and drivers of engagement, plus uncover what someone enjoys and responds to as an individual.