Engaging the Hearts and Minds of Your Employees: How to Ignite Passionate Performance for Better Business ResultsBuilding “Passionate Performance” through employee engagement is the premise of Lee J. Cohen’s book, Engaging the Hearts and Minds of Your Employees: How to Ignite Passionate Performance for Better Business Results. To begin, companies must focus on their people.

 

Everyone has needs. Mr. Cohen identifies the six basic needs required to fully engage your employees.  Three of these needs are emotional and the other three are intellectual. “Engaged minds build employee performance, and engaged hearts ignite people’s passion.”1 By engaging the hearts AND minds of employees, they will achieve Passionate Performance.

 

Intellectual Needs

Let’s look at each of the intellectual needs that engage people’s minds: Achievement, Autonomy, Mastery.2

 

Achievement3: We all want to succeed at something. There are two key strategies to fulfill your employees’ need for achievement.

  1. Eliminate barriers to achievement.
  2. Define clear goals. (SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.)

 

Automony4: We all want to control our work. There are two key strategies to fulfill your employees’ need for autonomy.

  1. Involve employees in improving their work processes.
  2. Set broad yet clear boundaries.

 

Mastery5: People have the need to develop expert skills and/or knowledge. There are two key strategies to fulfill your employees’ need for mastery.

  1. Fit the person to position for “highest and best use.”
  2. Seize teachable moments to coach employees.

 

 

Emotional Needs

To engage people’s hearts you have to focus on their emotional needs: Purpose, Intimacy, Appreciation.6

 

Purpose7: We all want to be part of something bigger than ourselves. Some key strategies to fulfill your employees’ needs for purpose include:

  1. Create a compelling purpose.
  2. Stay focused on activities that directly support your team’s purpose.

 

Intimacy8: Everybody wants to feel like they belong. Some key strategies to fulfill your employees’ need for intimacy include:

  1. Maintain a sense of smallness.
  2. Create rituals and celebrations.

 

Appreciation9: People want to be recognized for their work. Some key strategies to fulfill your employees’ need for appreciation include:

  1. Find opportunities to appreciate employee’s contributions.
  2. Demonstrate a sincere interest in your employees as people.

 

 

Passionate Performance

“To engage the hearts of your employees, you’ll need to fulfill all three of the emotional needs. And the same is true to engage their minds; you’ll need to fulfill all of their intellectual needs.”10 To achieve Passionate Performance, you must engage the hearts and minds of your employees.11

Passionate Performance Flowchart_sm

 

Where do you start? There are five steps you will need to take to ignite Passionate Performance.12

  1. Engaging leaders start with themselves
  2. Assess your leadership skills and identify areas of opportunity
  3. Select one opportunity to work on
  4. Turn the opportunity into a habit by continually focusing on it
  5. Identify a new opportunity and build another habit.

 

 

What actions will you take to engage the hearts and minds of your employees?

 

 

1 Colan, Lee J. Engaging the Hearts and Minds of All Your Employees: How to Ignite Passionate Performance for Better Business Results. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2009. Print. Pg. 15.
2 Ibid, Pg. 16.
3 Ibid, Pgs. 67-68.
4 Ibid, Pgs. 82-83.
5 Ibid, Pgs. 100-101.
6 Ibid, Pg. 16.
7 Ibid, Pgs. 123-124.
8 Ibid, Pg. 139.
9 Ibid, Pg. 152.
10 Ibid, Pg. 14.
11 Ibid, Pg. 15.
12 Ibid, Pgs. 170-172.

 

 

 

Let’s Engage!

I’m Agent in Engagement Simpson…Gregory F Simpson.

Employee engagement is a critical mission. I hope I can count on your help! Subscribe to the RSS Feed to receive the latest intelligence/insights and/or register to make entries in the comments log.

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P.S.  First contact? Welcome to the Agent In Engagement community. Explore and join fellow employee engagement operatives in targeting a known thief – alias: Disengagement. Together we can bring this thief to justice and make the world a better place for all companies and their employees.

Other recent Agent in Engagement data/reports by Agent Gregory F Simpson:

 

 

 

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