Why No Survey Will Solve Your Engagement Problem

No Survey will solve your engagement problem.

Certainly not alone.

After all, only 8% of employees really believe that their organisation will actually do anything as a result of engagement surveys. And only 1 in 4 employees feel that their opinion matters in their organisation.

If leaders aren’t engaging with their teams in a meaningful way on a day to day basis, why would we expect those teams to engage in a survey in any meaningful way? - however well it might be positioned.

In this week’s episode of with INTENT: we delve further into what it takes to have the all important high performance conversations with your team, every day - keeping them engaged - keeping you productive.

With INTENT: our 5 minute deconstructions of the current trends to inspire healthy rethinking and reconstructive action.

by Chris Wickenden, Chief Creative Officer at FROM:TODAY

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hi, Chris here from FROM:TODAY. And this week I want to address how no engagement survey, however well that you construct it will solve your fundamental engagement problem. Certainly not alone. So we know that currently about only 8 percent of of the global workforce believe that their organization will actually do anything at all as a result of any survey, which doesn't encourage them to invest much in it.

And only one in four workers actually believe that their opinion matters within their organization. And if you think of any relationship in our lives, if we don't feel that our voice is valued and that we're going to be heard, we don't generally invest too much in those relationships. So if our managers and if our leaders are not engaging with their teams in a meaningful way on a day to day basis, then how can we expect our workers to engage with a survey in a meaningful way?

Even if we tell them that this time [00:01:00] it's different, we're going to be really listening to them, we value their input and we will be taking action. For them, it's just words at that point. So we know that employee disengagement is a huge problem across the world. And an employee engagement survey can seem like a very appealing shortcut solution to the problem.

Our employees are disengaged. We don't know why. Well, let's just ask him a load of questions, then we'll know why and we can take some action. But the problem with this sort of quite simplistic approach is that it can actually become part of the problem as opposed to the solution. Because if we always view employee disengagement as a finite problem to solve, without the accompanying curiosity to really understand what's going on behind it.

Then we're unlikely to get very far because the reality is it's a complex, nuanced [00:02:00] problem and it has multifaceted causes and those will be specific to your organization and there is no substitute and the route to the solution will lie in. And we spoke about this last week. The way that your managers and leaders show up on a day to day basis, investing in the relationships in their team.

The activity that builds high performance relationships more than anything other is the ability for managers to have meaningful conversations with their team on a weekly basis. That ability to truly show up and to listen, to understand. And I totally get the pushback from people who say, Look, I'm busy.

I'm not a psychiatrist. I can't read people's minds. I've got a job to do as well. And absolutely, you probably are not a psychiatrist. Um, we are all busy. It's very difficult. It doesn't mean it's easy. But my pushback to that would be that In our personal lives, we're all able to build [00:03:00] really, highly successful relationships with people.

And all of those things are still true. Relationships where we are open and upfront, where we face bumps along the way, but it doesn't break the relationship. Often it makes it stronger. Where we face troubles, we speak about it. We listen to each other to understand each other's point of view, and we move through it.

We don't go. Um, well, I wonder what's wrong with Ashley. So that's a bit confusing, really. So I'll tell you what, I'll knock up a little survey and ask him the questions and then that'll, that'll tell me what to do. I'm not meaning to be flippant about it. I do understand. It's a lot harder when we have.

more people within our care. But I think there's learning in that. Um, we cannot underestimate the value of showing up and listening to truly understand the people around us and the role that that plays in reengaging people within our organizations. And I want to come on to this point [00:04:00] of active listening because it always seems to come up as the number one thing when we're talking about high performance communication.

Active listening comes up and I want to challenge it somewhat, and maybe it's a semantic thing, but I love this quote from the American psychiatrist Morgan Scott Peck, and it's that you cannot truly listen to anyone. Whilst doing anything else at the same time. And it's true that high quality listening or the highest quality listening requires the cessation of doing.

And that can be a quite a hard sell within business. When we need to be productive, we need to be outcome oriented. It always needs to drive towards a solution. And the, the, the natural tendency is to us, well, what's the ROI? What's the solution on that? And. The reality is that not all conversations have that.

Some do, some will necessitate some action afterwards. And if we don't take that action, it can really destroy the trust that's been built. [00:05:00] But I also think it misses the point of the importance of entering into a conversation with a desire to truly listen, to understand, not just what's said. But what's not said?

Maybe an unexpressed thought, the nuance of a look, a pause, a sense of unease, maybe a bit of anxiety, excitement, the emotion behind it. How are we able to pick up on that if our head is so full of finding the solution and approaching communication in a more of a productive, efficient way? It won't work.

So, that ability to listen from a place of high quality presence, present listening, is an absolutely key tool for any leader. So, if you want to learn more about how to practice that present listening, I really encourage you to join us on the 22nd of May. We're delivering a live Workshop high performance conversations [00:06:00] why they matter and how to have them Well, we're going to be looking at this and a lot more.

I hope to see you all then. You can click the link to sign up always as well. I'm really keen to hear from you So if you want to get in touch with me, you can do that at chris@from today.com or simply on LinkedIn. Um, also you can have a look at our blog on this where we go into it in a bit more detail and offer some more of our guidance.

I look forward to seeing hopefully a lot of you on the 22nd of May. Cheers. Bye bye.