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4 Ways Managers Can Build Relationship BACKbone into Employee Engagement

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3. Build Relationship –  The Manager’s Employee Engagement Relationship BACKbone: Bids, Authenticity, Caring, and Knowledge 

(Part 4 of a 10 part series on how managers can improve employee engagement)

Foundation of relationships. Obviously relationships and relationship building are a foundation of employee engagement. Linda Hill in a Harvard Business Review article on Building Effective One-on-One Relationships cited research by John Kotter that found “that one of the factors that distinguished  those general managers with consistently outstanding performance records from their counterparts was their ability to develop and maintin a strong network of relationships.” Work is a relationship and engagement experience. One third of Gallup’s quintessential Q12 survey asks directly about relationships to uncover engagement at work while most of the other items are also influenced indirectly by relationship. Four of the twelve statements employees are asked to respond to are:

  1. I have a best friend at work.
  2. In the last seven days I have received recognition.
  3. My supervisor or some one at work cares about me as a person.
  4. There is someone at work who encourages my development. In the last six months someone has talked to me about my progress.

Relationship defined. A relationship is s a connection between two individuals. Interpersonal relationships usually involve some level of interdependence. People in a relationship  influence each other. Because of this interdependence, most things that change or impact one member of the relationship will have some level of impact on the other member. Exercising a strong BACKbone as a manager will have an impact on other employees. This BACKbone is comprised of: bids, authenticity, caring, and knowledge.

People are people, don’t depersonalize with terms such as assets or human capital.  From a distance we can view employees as assets and human capital but engagement and relationship requires closeness. Employees are human and we inadvertently dehumanize employees when we refer to employees as assets or capital. Remember, as a manager you are an employee too. One classic definition of management is getting work done through people but in an engaged workplace work is done with people. We don’t have relationships with assets or capital we have relationships with other humans. An employees locus of engagement is frequently a task while a manager’s locus of engagement is the working relationship with the employee.

Don’t go soft. Too often the human element of engagement is dismissed as a fluffy soft skill afterthought.  Soft skills sound mushy and unimportant while hard skills sound like the foundation of management. I want to add some fortitiude, gumption, and moxie to relationship building in employee engagement by adding BACKbone to a manager’s work. The backbone is our central source of support and stability, it refers to fortitude and determination, and it is part of a network that connects the other networks together.

Dissecting the relationship BACKbone. BACKbone is an acronym for bids, authenticity, caring, and knowledge. John Gottman offered an excellent micro skills focus to building relationships by examining relationships through the lens of bids and the other person turning towards or turning away from that bid for connection. Authenticity is central to trust and true relationships as our brains are social and detect in-authenticity in fractions of seconds. Relationships are built on meaningful and personal connection not manipulation tactics. Caring is a fundamental engagement key and a core to both relationships and management. Knowledge creates our foundation for relationship as we learn more about each other and ensure we acknowledge the people we work with.

B is for Bids. John Gottman in The Relationship Cure outlined a very powerful practice to build better relationships in all elements of our life including work. He examined the smallest of exchanges between people that communicated a request for connection followed by one of three responses. A bid is the fundamental unit of emotional communication. It can be a question, a gesture, a look or any expression that says, “I want to be connected to you.” A bid is followed by a positive or negative response to the other person’s bid or request for emotional connection. The response can be turning towards (a positive response to a bid); turning against (a negative response); and turning away (ignoring another’s bid). In a future post we will examine how working with bids and responses can help us master moments and transform micromanagement from a creepy control mechanism to a fluid and authentic relationship builder that infuses and energizes our work and the work of the people we manage.

A is for Authenticity. Being authentic is key to trust, respect, and genuine relationships. Authentic managers demonstrate integrity, with a profound sense of purpose and willingness to live by their core values.  Bill George, author of True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership believes that authentic managers genuinely desire to serve others through their management.  They are interested in empowering the people they manage to make a difference; more than they are interested in power, money or prestige for themselves.  They are guided equally by the heart and the mind – practicing heart-based guidance grounded in passion and compassion,  as well as thoughtful management.  People follow authentic managers because they are consistent, reliable and strong.  When they are pushed to go beyond their beliefs and values, authentic managers will not compromise.  If we want to foster full engagement we must be real or “get real.”

C is for Caring. Without caring for others and what they are trying to achieve and experience our management and relationship building is shallow and insignificant. Caring is valuing the people who report to you and focusing more on their needs than your own. Caring is not a fluffy emotion but a number of powerful behaviors demonstrated by managers. Caring can include “care-frontation” where we hold others accountable for their performance and don’t shy away from having conversations about bad behavior or variances in performance expectations. An excellent source to read on  how caring is infused in conversation to create safety while building relationships and achieving results is Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler.  Michael Kroth and Carolyn Keeler in a thoughtful article entitled, Caring as a Managerial Strategy in the Human Resource Development Review outlined a number of actions by managers that demonstrate caring:

  • Invites employees
  • Is receptive and fully available to the employee
  • Is emotionally accessible
  • Pays attention
  • Shows interest in the employee
  • Accepts the employee
  • Remains open to ideas, possibilities (is open minded)
  • Empathizes
  • Advances employees
  • Has a desire to help the employee succeed
  • Puts employee plans and goals ahead of his or her own
  • Advocates for the employee
  • Commits to employee success
  • Protects employees
  • Seeks opportunities for advancing employees
  • Builds employees capacities
  • Sees individual potential and helps employees grow and learn
  • Informs employees
  • Facilitates problem solving
  • Gives generative feedback
  • Encourages employees
  • Believes in employees
  • Teaches and mentors employees
  • Connects with employees
  • Shares feelings
  • Develops relationships of mutual trust and obligation

K is for Knowledge. Interpersonal knowledge is a key to relationships. We begin to learn more about other people and can respond in ways that create and invite more engagement based on the other person’s needs, values, beliefs, experiences, culture, personality, etc. It helps to have knowledge of how to build relationships but even more important is the knowledge we gather as we fully connect with each other. It can be very engaging to notice something is amiss for one of our employees without them saying a thing. Strong relationships are based on knowing the other person. Do we take time to “know” and do we retain that knowledge of employees’ interests, motivators, and uniqueness to further develop both the relationship and engagement at work? Interpersonal knowledge is greatly heightened by acknowledgement, as we show or express recognition or appreciation and gratitude. Notice the word now is contained in the larger work knowledge — gather and act on your knowledge now and in the moment of relationship.

Get BACK to work. When we tell people to get back to work we are usually suggesting that they get on task. We need to achieve results and we need to understand that work is also social. You can enhance engagement for your employees and yourself by putting your BACKbone into it. Make bids and respond positively to employees bids. Be fully who you are. Demonstrate the power of caring. Build your knowledge base of employees to acknowledge each employee as the unique person they already are.

Read these  5 sources to strengthen your employee engagement relationship BACKbone:

    • Rodd Wagner and James K. Harter, 12: The Elements of Great Managing
    • John M. Gottman, The Relationship Cure.
    •  Michael Kroth and Carolyn Keeler Caring as a Managerial Strategy in Human Resource Development Review.
    • Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler, Crucial Conversations.
    • Bill George and Peter Sims, True North.

Building the pyramid of employee engagement. Review these 4 previous posts as we build the 10 block pyramid of employee engagement actions for managers:

Next post in this series: Recognition.

David Zinger built the 10 block pyramid of employee engagement to help managers bring the full power of employee engagement to their workplaces. If you would like to arrange to have this course or workshop for your organization or conference contact David today at 204 254 2130 or zingerdj@gmail.com.

December Assorted Zingers E-book Special $3.99.

Click on the image below or click here to learn more and place an order:


7 Significant Steps to Employee Engagement Progress

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3. Path Progress: Navigate through setbacks, path progress, enable work and achieve small wins. 

(Part 3 of a 10 part series on how managers can improve employee engagement)

Fully engaged. Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer published The Progress Principle this year demonstrating the primary role progress and avoidance of setbacks plays in motivation and engagement.  Their research was based on 12,000 daily diaries. Their conclusion:

of all the positive events that influence inner work life, the single most powerful is progress in meaningful work; of all the negative events, the single most powerful is the opposite of progress — setbacks in the work.  We consider this to be a fundamental management principle: facilitating progress is the most effective way for managers to influence inner work life. Even when progress happens in small steps, a person’s sense of steady forward movement toward an important goal can make all the difference betweeen a great day and a terrible one. (p.76&77)

Snakes and ladders. If progress is the ladder on the classic board game of snakes and ladders than setbacks are the snakes. It is very important to realize that the effect of setbaks on emotions is stronger than the effect of progress. Small loses can eliminate small wins and negative managerial behavior trumps positive management. As we climb up the pyramid of engagement we must guard against setbacks perhaps even more than working towards making progress.

The 3-block pyramid of engagement. In my pyramid of engagement Path Progress  is in the second row to indicate how important this building block is for managers to increase employee engagement. It is naturally paired with maximize performance as these concepts are paired together to achieve results.

7 Significant Steps on the Path of Progress. Here are 7 steps to help you fully path progress for robust employee engagement:

Accentuate the positive. Continually work towards small wins and breakthroughs. Ensure employees are working towards meaningful goals paired with sufficient autonomy to achieve success. Managers can ensure resources, time and help are available on the path of progress. Managers can catalyze progress by ensuring proper resources and tools as they also nourish progress by fostering strong interpersonal connections focused on progress.

Eliminate the negative. Negative events have a disproportionate impact on engagement. Because negative events have a stronger impact than positive events it is important to prevent setbacks before they occur or minimize the damage setbacks can cause. As a manager, ask yourself these two questions then construct solid responses to squash setbacks:

What can I do to prevent setbacks before they occur with my work group?

 What can I do to overcome setbacks once they have occurred?

Hack your work and work around. Hacking work and workarounds are two powerful twins to achieve progress and minimize nasty setbacks. Bill Jensen and Josh Klein wrote Hacking Work to outline how we can hack our work to achieve progress.  Hacking work is getting what you need to do your best job by exploiting loopholes and using workarounds to make it easier to do great work. I encourage you to read a previous post I wrote as a review on  hacking work.  Another book that just came out based on the same idea is Russell Bishop’s Workaround that Work. It is not always up to the manager to ensure progress, employees can seize control of how they do work and create powerful benevolent hacks or workarounds to get the job done and heighten their own engagement.

Ready, willing and able. We must ensure that not only are employees ready and willing to be engaged they must also be able. Engagement without enabling is a fast track to frustration. Up to 20% of your engaged workforce  may be frustrated because they are unable to fully act on their engagement. Mark Royal and Tom Agnew wrote The Enemy of Engagement offering a framework to end workplace frustration. They found that about 30% of employees don’t get clear goals and feel they lack authority to do their jobs. About half of all employees are concerned with adequate staffing, don’t feel they have time  for training, that other teams in the company do not offer high-quality support, and that their organization is not effectively structured. They offer numerous suggestion to lessen frustration by enabling employees with such methods as: making training a priority, share people as well as resources, and beware of the “trap” of routines.

Be game. Study the principles and practices of games to transfer gaming principles to work. One of the reasons games are so engaging is that they are often designed so that we both achieve and see our  progress.Virtual games are programmed to ensure new player begin to experience progress almost immediately. How long does it take to have your newly hired employees experience progress? Are employees getting lots of feedback on their progress? Are setbacks framed as challenges that compel your employee to try again? If you want to instill significant progress at work you must “get into the game.”

Little feats. Many of us are overwhelmed by the copious volume of work and shy away from new tasks because we have little or no capacity or we fear falling further behind on the tasks already on our plate. In today’s workplace, small is the new significant. As one manager said to me in Tucson last month, “we have gone from doing more with less to doing everything with nothing.”  Determine small and significant actions that move towards achieving results. Ensure those small actions are significant tasks…they should be important not just urgent. If you doubt the power of the small think about this statement from Betty Reese, an American pilot, “if you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito.”

Celebrate progress. Don’t forget to celebrate progress. You should have celebration markers along the way. The celebration can be a quiet yet mindful internal sense of satisfaction to a high five or more formal recognition. My model for this is Usain Bolt who slowed down in the last 20% of his 100 meter race at the Beijing Olymicps and still achieved an Olympic record time of 9.69. Physicists calculated that Bolt could have finished in 9.55±0.04 seconds had he not slowed to celebrate before crossing  the finishing line. Progress is not always about ultimate record breaking achievement — we have much to gain by celebrating achievement even if it costs us a tenth of a second!

Read these  5 books to build your awareness, knowledge, and skills on the path of  progress:

    • Bill Jensen and Josh Klein, Hacking Work: Breaking Stupid Rules for Smart Results
    • Russell Bishop, Workarounds that Work: How to conquer Anything That Stands in Your Way at Work
    • Peter Sims, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge From Small Discoveries
    • Mark Royal and Tom Agnew, The Enemy of Engagement: Put an End to Workplace Frustration and Get the Most from Your Employees.
    • Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignie Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work

Building the pyramid of employee engagement. Review these 3 previous posts as we build the 10 block pyramid of employee engagement actions for managers:

Next post in this series: Build Relationships: We get our work done with others not through others.

David Zinger built the 10 block pyramid of employee engagement to help managers bring the full power of employee engagement to their workplaces. If you would like to arrange to have this course or workshop for your organization or conference contact David today at 204 254 2130 or zingerdj@gmail.com.

Bonus: I encourage you to view the slides and listen to this informative 40 minute interview/webinar with Teresa Amabile on The Progress Principle.

The Progress Principle and Employee Engagement from David Zinger on Vimeo.

12 Keys to Achieve Results with Employee Engagement

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1. Achieve Results (Part 1 of a 10 part series on the Employee Engagement Pyramid for Managers)

Top of the pyramid. Based on extensive work in employee engagement, I constructed a pyramid of employee engagement actions for managers. There are 10 building blocks to full engagement and at the top of the pyramid on the 10 things managers must do to increase employee engagement is Achieve Results. The symbol used for achieving results is a target to ensure we know where we are aiming our engagement efforts.

Strategic engagement. Achieving results is important for the organization, team, manager, and employee. Engagement must be directed towards a specific end or it will lack focus and  sustainability. It will also quickly be perceived as a fluffy extra lacking in contribution to strategic objectives and wither because of a lack of impact or energy. Achieve Results is tightly aligned with the first principle in my 10 Principles of Engagement:

Employee engagement is specific. We cannot sustain engagement all the time and everywhere. When we talk about engagement we need to ask: Who is engaged, with what,  for how long, and for what purpose?

12 key concepts. The 10 block pyramid of engagement is the structure for a course for managers to improve and increase engagement. Here are 12 key points from the course that connect achieving results with employee engagement.

Results defined. The definition of a result is a  consequence, effect, or outcome of something. The something we are looking for here is engagement. In addition in this integrated view of engagement into work, employees will also contribute to the development of targets and results for the organization.

Expansive view.   Lisa Haneberg in writing about a results orientation at work stated,  “many organizations use “results orientation” as a core competency. Let’s start describing it fully – not just focusing on accountability and measurements, but also how culture, passion, and challenge impact results. If you use this competency to train and evaluate leaders, take another look at how you have described what results orientation looks like in action.”

Clearly stated and clearly communicated. Are your results clearly stated? To ensure the organizational results are clear to employees ask a number of employees on the spot to state the results the organization is working to achieve. Can they state them without hesitation or ignorance? If not, make sure what is clearly stated is also fully communicated.

Drucker’s drive for results. Peter Drucker focused extensively on results, including writing the book, Managing for Results. He stated that results come from leveraging opportunities rather than focusing on problems. Resources must go to opportunities and to achieve economic results we must concentrate. As a manager ensure the resource of engagement is directed towards results not aimless activities. If achieving results is a weak spot on your pyramid of engagement I encourage you to read Drucker’s classic book on managing for results.

Results in reverse. When we know specifically what we are working to achieve we can reverse engineer from the results to the specific actions we need to fully engage with to achieve those results.

Create white space so that employees can input into the crafting of results. Did employees have an opportunity to influence results. In full engagement, we have moved from results being given to employees to also being created by employees. Remember the following two keys lines as you develop the results that you are working to achieve. If you want everyone on the same page give them an opportunity to write on the page. Never do anything about employees without employees, including determining results.

What you really want. Ensure that the results you are focusing on are what you and your reports really want. I encourage you to contemplate the “spice girl question.” This is part of the lyrics from one of their ear-worm like classics: I’ll tell you what I want, what I really really want, So tell me what you want, what you really really want, I’ll tell you what I want, what I really really want, So tell me what you want, what you really really want.

Pull results rather than push results.  Do you and other employees feel excitement and interest in the results the organization is trying to achieve. Do the results have meaning? When we find results engaging we are powerfully pulled into engagement rather than feeling pushed to engage.

TEAM up for engaging results. Apply the TEAM acronym as a quick guide to your results statement: Are your results:  Timed – Engaging –  Achievable – Meaningful? In regards to timed and specific, Don Berwick, the health care leader who was responsible for the 100,000 lives campaign was always reminding us:  Some is not a number and soon is not a time. Based on achieving high levels of engagement and successful results the campaign is now the Protecting 5 Million Lives From Harm campaign.

10 measures. Skip Reardon offered 10 insightful reasons to measure results ranging from clarifying expectations and directing behavior to promoting understanding and improving execution. I encourage you to read his post to learn more about the four mentioned here and the additional six outlined in his post, The Top 10 Reasons to Measure Results.

Locus of engagement. Employee engagement has shifted away from a general pervasive measure of connection to being localized to different areas or results. For example your report’s locus of engagement may be on a task while your locus of engagement is the people achieving those tasks. Our results could be financial, environmental, or wellbeing. A strong connection between engagement and specific results ensures that engagement is integrated into work and management rather than an additional demand and helps give a rifle-like powerful specificity to engagement rather than a shotgun feel good satisfaction about work.

Target-Engagement fusion. At the highest level of engagement, we engage so fully with the target, that the target and our engagement become one. This was eloquently described in Eugen Herrigel’s book  The Zen of the Art Archery. This would be the ideal state of engagement and demonstrates a model of what is possible when we engage fully with results that are meaningful, focused, and enriching.

Next up, maximize performance. In the Employee Engagement Pyramid, the 10 blocks are very connected. We cannot reach the heights of achieving elevated results without the other 9 blocks that support this. Check into this site next week for the second post on  Maximize Performance in this 10 part series building the Pyramid of Engagement for Managers.

David Zinger created The Pyramid of Employee Engagement as a powerful tool to help managers understand the 10 key actions they can take to build full employee engagement. Contact David Zinger at zingerdj@gmail.com or phone David Zinger at 204 254 2130 to learn more or request the course for your company, organization, or conference.

Bonus resource for results. JD Meier has written an excellent guide to agility and results. I encourage you to take a look at his extensive and helpful book: Getting Results the Agile Way. The link in the previous sentence to Meier’s book will take you to free online wiki version of the book full of excellent tools, checklists, and methods.