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What About Manager Engagement?
Jan 26My son, Stephen, is a sophomore in high school and takes a full complement of AP classes. This weekend is the weekend before semester finals. We drove him and a friend over to another student’s house so that they could work in their study group for AP European History. While they were there, his AP Euro teacher called his cell phone to make sure that they were studying and if they had any questions. Their teacher, who they affectionately call “Z,” did that for every student in his classes. Every one. Stephen told me that his group had some questions later — this was on a Saturday — and they called “Z” back to ask. He answered.
All of which made me think about the talking we do in HR about employee engagement. What about manager engagement? What about calling and checking in? What about caring? It’s a start…and employees will be engaged when managers are engaged. We all need more “Z’s” in our lives, and I’m not talking about sleep.
About the Author
Frank Roche
Frank started IFRACTAL over 7 years ago with Sarah Chambers. Together, they've created HR communications and HR software for some of the world's leading companies. Frank is also studying Flamenco guitar and origami.
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As we have seen in prior comments before with the Communication Compensation being the most affordable type in this economy, I could not agree more. For some folks this will actually be an epiphany, don't worry I am not going religious on you here, hopefully the management engagement will transcend the good and bad times. Lets learn the skills in the bad times (NOW) and keep them going when we get out of this funk!
Great post, Frank. Seems to me that if managers are engaged you won't need to worry much about engaging the people who work for them.
Thank you, Wally. I pay attention to what you write about this…it is about
eladership. If the managers get it right, the team is right. So true.
Mark, it is about doing the right thing all the time. I like that a lot. And
learning to do these communication things now when there's not buckets full
of money is even better. And that will be an epiphany for some…
Congratulations! This post was selected as one of the five best business blog posts of the week in my Three Star Leadership Midweek Review of the Business Blogs.
http://blog.threestarleadership.com/2009/01/28/...
Wally Bock