If you want to engage employees don’t just read this, do this.

How do you get people on board with employee engagement? How do you promote change in the age of choice?

Read the following snippet on leadership and change from Margaret Wheatley, one of the foremost leadership experts:

We never succeed in directing or telling people how they must change. We don’t succeed by handing them a plan, or pestering them with our interpretations, or relentlessly pressing forward with our agenda, believing that volume and intensity will convince them to see it our way. You can scream and holler as much as you want, but if people don’t regard what you’re saying as important, they’ll just ignore you and go on with their own life. (In this way, all people behave like teenagers.)

Wheatley then goes on to add:

It is impossible to impose anything on people. We must participate in anything that affects us. We can’t act on behalf of anyone, we can’t figure out what’s best for somebody else. If leaders or task forces refuse to believe this and go ahead and make plans for us, we don’t sit by passively and do what we’re told. We still get involved, but from the sidelines, where we’ve been told to sit and wait. We get involved by ignoring, resisting, or sabotaging all plans and directives that are imposed on us.

From Margaret J. Wheatley, Finding Our Way, p 105.

If you are involved in employee engagement initiatives I recommend you read this about 4 times, print it out, underline it and learn the lessons if you want to create authentic employee engagement with results that matter for all.

Photo Credit: Waiting on the World to Change by http://flickr.com/photos/fotorita/1705242665/

David Zinger, M.Ed.

Employee Engagement Expert