Personal Advancement
How juiced is your workplace?In a business age characterized by remote communication through e-mail, instant messaging, fax and phone, Brady G. Wilson is calling for the return of face-to-face conversation. SHARON ASCHAIEK |
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 [ 2007-04-18 ] |
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Employee engagement specialist
A Guelph, Ont.-based employee engagement specialist, Wilson says in-person conversations are far more powerful than we realize, and they have the potential to catapult companies to greater success by energizing and motivating employees.
"Employees are not motivated by looking at a strategic plan or a mission statement on a wall. It happens during the course of an interactive conversation, when a leader says something that evokes a sense of inspiration," says Wilson, author of Juice: Release Your Company's Intelligent Energy Through Powerful Conversations ($19.95, Bastion Books). "There's a great transfer of energy taking place and those employees are being affected on an emotional level; they can connect to their leader's vision."
Wilson's succinct and provocative 232-page book overflows with straightforward advice and compelling real-life anecdotes to help companies learn how to execute effective pull conversations, release the brilliance of their employees by respecting them and meeting their core emotional needs, and create energized work environments where staff feel fully engaged and business objectives are met.
Wilson has successfully worked with dozens of small to large companies in Canada and the U.S., including American Express, Bell Canada, CIBC and DuPont, to help then enhance the way they communicate.
By communicating directly with employees, he says, managers can pull out valuable information from them -- their opinions, values and desires, their realities. This type of deep inquiry, he says, helps managers better understand their personnel, and therefore how to motivate them. It also builds trust and respect, solicits the co-operation of employees and promotes high-level job performance.
"For years, managers thought it was their job to push their viewpoints on others until they got it and responded accordingly," says Wilson, who presented his theories at the Human Resources Professionals Association of Ontario 2007 annual conference. "We saw how powerful the concept of 'pull' was in certain industries when it was used to find out what customers need, instead of to push their products on them. The same concept can be used successfully in the corporate world, by managers trying to really understand their employees."
Once managers pull themselves into their employees' realities, Wilson says, they'll be better positioned to pull them into their own, and ultimately, to pull out what he refers to as the bigger reality: the common ground that meets both the needs and wants of the business and its employees.
"Finding common ground is about much more than the bare minimum," Wilson writes. "It encompasses, but goes beyond, what everyone needs: finding out what we both want is the essence of uncovering common ground and pulling out the Bigger Reality."
By the way, why Juice? As Wilson explains, it works in so many ways: it's slang for "power," e.g. how much juice you have with someone. It's also a healthful, energizing drink. To find out more about the book, and to learn how "juiced up" your work environment is, visit his website at www.juicecheck.com.
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