Estimated reading time: 5-minutes

I don’t have much time today (as I’m writing this), and I figured, maybe you don’t either.

So here’s every principle, tactic, and technique I teach in my programs about engaging people. In 5 minutes.

How This Is Going To Work

We’re going to start big picture and work our way down to the nitty gritty. We’re going to start big, from the why I approach engagement this way, to how you can approach people, finishing off with what exactly you need to do.

Let’s get into it.

1 Person, 3 Parts.

To fully engage a person, you need to understand what parts of a person there is to engage. Many leaders make the mistake of believing that they are engaging an employee, and therefore need to look solely at the work they do. That couldn’t be further from the truth.

We are people made up many needs, biological, social, economic, spiritual… Too much to cover really… unless someone makes it a little simpler.

I’ve made it simpler for you.

In every person there are 3 parts, or sub-people:

1. Who they are
This refers to people and their authentic selves, at their emotional and relational core. Do people feel like they are embraced for who they are? Feeling loved and belonging kinda stuff.

2. Who they could be
This refers to people and their need to realize their potential (even potential they do not see in themselves. Do people feel like they are in an environment that will help them become their best selves? Achievement and development kinda stuff.

3. Who they want to be
This refers to our need to contribute. Who do you want to be for the people around you, for your greater community or society, and most importantly, who do you want to be for yourself? Self-actualization and purpose kinda stuff.

If your employee engagement initiatives aren’t directly speaking to at least one of these at any given point of time. You’re wasting your time.

How Do We Engage All 3 People?

Great question, there are many interventions people all around the world try. A quick look and reflection and it doesn’t take long to realize every activity people engage in is an attempt to satisfy themselves in any one of these three aspects.

Some attempts are more productive and successful than others, of course.

But we’re talking about leaders and managers. How can leaders engage their people? One answer in my book.

Meaningful relationships.

It is through developing meaningful relationships alone that people learn important information about other people. In this case, information about their employees, specifically: who they are, who they could be, and who they want to be.

But here’s the hard part. Everyone is different, and what it means to fulfill them is different. So your job as a leader is to get close enough to your people to find out what would fully satisfy them. Then try your best to give it to them.

How Can Leaders Build Meaningful Relationships?

The answer is not small talk, drinks after work, or teambuilding activities (you do realize that most people despise being forced into that kind of stuff right?).

The answer is feedback.

This is why feedback works:

1. Feedback says “I care about you”.
Would someone give you feedback if they didn’t care about you and your success? No.

2. The opportunity is always there - and it’s relevant
There are countless opportunities to build relationship at work, using matters relating to work. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to build relationship by trying to pry personal information out of your employees.

3. The side effect is better performance.
You build relationships, help improve performance, and you don’t have to pry about stuff outside work. Isn’t that a dream?

In short, it is the skill that helps you organically build strong foundations for your relationships with your people. Most importantly, when you start to have feedback conversations you open the door to talking about those 3 people.

1. Who They Are:
Each time you show appreciation or give positive feedback for something they’ve done, you are acknowledging, celebrating and reinforcing a part of who they are.

2. Who they could be:
Each time to you give feedback that helps people improve you help them get a little close to who they could be.

3. Who they want to be:
Because of reasons 1 and 2, feedback opens the door for you to talk about the deeper motivations in their lives.

Feedback is your gateway into the hearts and minds of the people in your charge.

The rest of this article is going to be all about how and what to do when it comes to feedback.

Everything You Need to Know About Feedback

While is the only management skill you need to know to engage people fully, most people however, are not good enough at giving feedback for it to be useful for building relationships.

So let’s break feedback down into it’s different parts. Objectives, types, vehicles and techniques.

Objectives of Feedback

3 main objectives you can center your feedback around.

1. Removing or correcting behaviours (Do less)
2. Adding or improving behaviours (Start doing)
3. Keeping or reinforcing behaviours (Do more)

That’s it.

Types of Feedback

Most people relate to feedback as the kind done in performance reviews, and so they think it can’t be done often. Performance reviews and formal feedback are a small part of the vast and flexible feedback pie.

Here are the various types and nature of feedback:

1. Formal vs. Informal
2. Regularly Occurring vs. Irregular
3. Planned vs. Responsive/Ad-hoc

The decision around which feedback type is employed depends on the objective it’s there to achieve, and nature of circumstances.

For instance, a performance review is an example of a Formal, Regular, and Planned form of feedback. Whereas if you are purely trying to correct a minor behaviour you just picked up on, an Informal, bit of feedback can be given “In Response” to that behaviour.

Vehicles of Feedback

Now the fun part. Most leaders and managers have a very narrow view of the different ways that feedback is delivered. It varies from very serious, to a little less serious but still serious.

I believe that many more leaders would give feedback if they knew more ways to do it.

Here is every vehicle of feedback ranked according to,
1. Most informal to most formal,
2. Least serious to most serious situations,
3. Easiest to hardest to execute.

Text Message
Voice message
Phone/Video call
Bump-into (ad-hoc)
Pop-in (planned)
Walk and talk (while on the way somewhere)
Over Coffee
Over a meal
Meeting (informal, ad-hoc)
Meeting (informal)
One-on-ones (informal, regular, planned)
Meeting (formal, planned, responsive)
Performance Review (formal, planned, regular)

There you go, every vehicle of feedback available to you at work.

Must-Know Feedback Techniques

There are hundreds out there, but I think every manager only needs to know 2 different styles that enable them to cover all bases of every kind of feedback, in every context, for every purpose.

1. Keep-Start-Stop
Simple, straightforward, applicable for every objective, reserved for anything not too serious. Something to keep doing, start doing, or stop doing

2. COIN feedback
Context, Observation, Impact, Next Steps.

Usually reserved for contexts where more active behaviour change needs to be had, in a slightly more serious setting. It can also be used effectively for positive feedback, for added impact.

Vital Ingredients of Feedback

Once you get better, and more experienced at feedback, you might feel like you can cook without following a recipe. That’s fine!

It doesn’t matter how you give the feedback, just as long as it has these ingredients:

(Mostly for more serious feedback)

1. Context
Clarity must be provided on the behaviour and setting the behaviour was in.

2. Consequences
Without consequences, nothing changes.

3. Collaboration
Change never happens alone. Most importantly, this is also where most of the relationship building and engagement happens - when they know they are not alone in their improvement.

With these 3 ingredients, you provide sufficient awareness, accountability, and alignment needed to make changes.

There you have it.

See you next week!

This happens to also be everything we cover in our one-day relationship accelerator for leaders.

Whenever you’re ready, here’s how I can help you:

Explore My Relationship Accelerator program for leaders:

→ If you’re still struggling to unlock the potential of your people and would like to make some meaningful change - our relationship accelerator program helps your leaders learn all they need to know about building effective relationships to drive success - in one day. Check it out here.

Or reach out at [email protected]