Engaging our teams, and enabling them to work together collaboratively to deliver the strategy, are crucial elements of leadership.
We often see this engagement fail at times of change, and where the leadership team champions a new way of working. Teams can respond to new strategies with a degree of ambivalence. When this happens, which is quite frequently, the leadership team tends to create a narrative that the employees “just don’t get it”. The responsibility, however, lies with the leadership team to communicate and engage effectively. Exploring Engagement waves leads us to identify what is happening and learn how to engage more effectively.
If we map the level of engagement of the leadership team to a new idea, then we tend to see a wave shape as illustrated in the diagram below:
Initially the level of engagement is low as they are first introduced to the idea and then over time, they become more engaged and enthusiastic. Typically, this engagement will increase until delegation, implementation or, more likely, they are enthused by the next idea and move on to that. Of course, this wave does not just apply to leadership teams but when we explore organisational engagement with new ideas and practices, we typically start with the leadership team.
The leadership team will, as they reach a certain level of understanding and engagement with the idea, decide to communicate it to the management team and, quite naturally they will do this with a high degree of enthusiasm and conviction, after all, they have been working with the idea for quite a while.
What the leadership team often fails to recognise is that the management team will start their own engagement wave when they hear about the idea, and they too, will start at the bottom. This results in a mismatch of engagement between the leaders and the managers as shown in the diagram below:
Here we can clearly see the engagement delta which generally results in the leaders walking away saying “what’s wrong with them they just don’t understand, we expected better” and the management team walking away saying “what on earth were they talking about, more ivory tower nonsense.”
This engagement delta persists through the project and the situation deteriorates when the management team briefs the delivery team. Normally this occurs when they have developed a deeper understanding and so they, in turn, conduct the briefing with enthusiasm and conviction and wonder why the implementation team aren’t as excited as they are. Diagrammatically this looks like this:
Here we can see the engagement delta playing out one more time with the management team but this is accompanied by a much bigger differential between the Implementation team and the leadership team. We now tend to see the Leadership and Management teams puzzling over why the implementation teams “just don’t get it” and tending towards a more micro-management approach to ensure successful delivery. Meanwhile the Implementation team are feeling somewhat left out and not really understanding where the excitement and enthusiasm is coming from.
The final issue occurs when the Implementation team, having had time to think through the idea in detail and to build their own level of enthusiasm, moves towards the point of initiating action. At this time, they will often go to the leadership team to ask for clarification and guidance and find that the leadership team has moved on to the next idea. In terms of Engagement Waves this looks like the following diagram:
Here we see that the Implementation team with increasing enthusiasm now has different engagement delta with the leadership team – rising enthusiasm meeting falling enthusiasm. Here the Leadership team walk away saying “what are they playing at, we thought this was completed ages ago” and the Implementation team walk away disheartened and demotivated because their enthusiasm was dented by the relative disinterest of the leadership team.
We see this play out on a regular basis in organisations that we work with, and our guidance is always:
- Understand the audience, identify what they know and understand and communicate in language and in a style that engages them, not in a style that reflects your understanding and enthusiasm. In short, you are not the audience.
- Secondly, take time to enable the audience to build their own level of understanding and give them the space and opportunity to co-create the detail with you. In this way their progression along the engagement wave is accelerated and the subsequent level of ownership and commitment will ensure a successful implementation.