The Power of Engagement: A New Frontier for Creating Sustainable Success

Lately, many of my conversations with clients have been around how to develop new ways to enhance everything from sales to executive leadership.

For today’s post I thought I would focus on two areas:

  1. Presenting the essentials for creating a focus on engagement as a methodology and as a new frontier for creating results and for creating successful innovation.
  2. A suggested format for strategic planning that enhances engagement in the process and in the implementation phase.

The key is movement, and the key to movement is the open sharing of ideas and opinions in a way that works. The below questions are a format for creating the focus on engagement. From this the essentials of engagement come forward.

I urge you to take an hour to think these questions through, and to engage a colleague to discuss.

  1. Think about a goal that you have for your business that you would like to accomplish this year.
  2. How could other members of your team or your associates enhance and develop your vision?
  3. What are the techniques you use or could use to engage others?
  4.  What would you need to hear or experience to become engaged in a vision?

How can you create an environment of open communication and sharing of ideas?

The Essentials of Engagement

  1. Open communication about yourself and your vision
  2. Creating a safe place for the expression of ideas and opinions
  3. Willingness to conflict with personal respect
  4.  Initial trust
  5. Communication—Acknowledgment—Clarity
  6. Connection and Relationship
  7. Recognition of your personal strengths and areas of development

Strategic Planning Process for Creating Greater Engagement

Rather than starting with detailed strategy and plans for implementation simply begin with four areas for presentation and discussion:

  1. Creating the future – what behaviors do we want to bring forward?
  2. Expanding the Brand-  who are we and where are we going?
  3. Investing in People – what are our important values and are they aligned?
  4. The essential elements for growing the business – What values are important to our customers, both internal and external?

As with most strategic plans, the leadership of the team or organization begins with addressing these areas to arrive at strategic vision. Then each member of the leadership team is given the opportunity to give their clear thoughts on these areas and then to discuss how they can address each area. From that place. a specific strategy with time lines is developed. A more detailed description of the Strategic Planning Process done in this way is available on our website.

You’ll find the true difference in this process, compared to others, is the focus on engagement as being the primary reason for success in implementation, and in discovering new ways to perceive and to develop innovative products and procedures. Enhance engagement and you enhance your results from sales to executive leadership.

Do you have a particular challenge or success you’d like to share about engaging your team or associates in your vision? I’d enjoy hearing from you; please be sure to leave a comment – Patricia Heyman