How do you engage with the unengagable?

That million dollar question all leaders want the magic answer to.

I’ve done many a course and read many a book or article on how we should be engaging with people to get the most out of them and provide them with job/participation satisfaction. We are told that we should include them in decision making, regularly communicate with them, and invite them to participate in projects that will allow them to share their expertise and grow their skills. We should be empowering them to make decisions. We are reminded that a disengaged team can cause a drop in morale and performance and be disruptive. https://jouta.com/blog/how-to-re-engage-a-disengaged-employee/

But there are some who just don’t want to be engaged with. They want to be valued, they want to be appreciated and for their efforts to be noticed. They want reward for doing a good job (some even want reward for doing an adequate or poor job, or for simply turning up at all). They want to feel listened to and communicated with. They want to be involved. That is, right up until the time when you invite them to be involved.

One thing I struggle with time and again is trying to get people to look wider than the work that is right in front of them, especially when they tell me that they are not happy, or feel undervalued. I invite them to participate; I offer courses that support their current role and any development they might want. I provide them with opportunities to use their knowledge and skills and to develop processes and procedures or plans that they will ultimately be responsible for. I provide open door opportunities to share ideas and talk freely.

But they just don’t want to play.

I’m not the sort to press gang unless absolutely necessary, I ask for volunteers. There are times when I have had to say “you and you are going to help with this” but I want to see who has a spark, who is interested, and who wants to be involved. I shouldn’t be the one suggesting all the process changes; I’m not doing the job. I can see opportunities to improve efficiency or process, but ultimately they have to own and be accountable for it, so it makes sense that they help develop it.

We are reminded that people respond positively when they are empowered to make choices and decisions for themselves, yet when they are given the opportunity they don’t want to take it. Figuring out what matters to them and how to spread positive stories, exchange ideas openly, and disseminate best practice is all well and good but only works when morale is already high and people are generally happier. https://www.achievers.com/blog/how-to-convert-a-disengaged-employee-into-an-engaged-one/ In this current climate, that’s really hard to do in a virtual world.

I think it also depends on the example they are given. Enthusiasm breads enthusiasm, contempt breads contempt. I try to be as upbeat as I can and to understand frustrations others are going through trying to deliver their piece of work or part of the project. I acknowledge that not everything can be done as perfectly as we might want it to be and sometimes corners might need to be cut in order to meet a more pressing need. I understand that there are often outside pressures that affect how motivated they feel. However, there are usually others in closer relationships that seem predetermined to be pessimistic about everything. Everything is a disaster, it’s not their fault, and it’s nothing to do with them, they are not responsible or accountable. That kind of vibe tends to spread like wildfire and before you know it most of the team is feeling down. They don’t realise that they vibe they are giving off is affecting how others feel and then it spirals.

I know that it’s extremely hard to eternally upbeat about everything all the time, it would be exhausting, and I certainly have my days when I’m not motivated or interested at all. But if I want a more optimistic team around and people to be more engaged, then it’s my responsibility as a leader to start that vibe, or to find help when I need it. If I can change one person’s attitude, which can then spread to someone else, I’d be happy.

I want people to develop, I want them to be fulfilled in what they do, be satisfied at the end of the day they did all they could to use their strengths. I want them to feel they have all the information they need about what’s going on in their immediate and wider world. I want all these things for them and provide opportunities for that. They just don’t seem interested in taking it. People complain about lack of development, I give them the opportunity to develop, they don’t want to take it. They complain about not knowing what’s going on, so I tell them but then they don’t listen or connect the dots with the relevance to them. I need to make more of an effort to ensure the message is put across in a ways that does demonstrate relevance to them.

Whilst it would be great to have one to ones with absolutely every person to determine what motivates them and how they could be better developed, communicated with etc, the practicalities are not so simple. It might be that I wouldn’t need to do that with everyone, just take a few key people to one side and address their motivations, then through the wonders of osmosis everyone else will feel more engaged and valued.

Reflecting on some of the reasons why previous attempts to engage others hasn’t worked it is useful to consider these questions:

Who in my team have I connected with the least? what gets in the way of connecting with them more?
Think about the people I connect with the least in my team, service users and peer group, and notice any similarities.
Think about who in my team I enjoy connecting with and why?
Think about those who I feel psychologically safe around and why? and those who I do not and why?. What are the differential factors?

There are many tools to try but I still don’t have a solution for how to engage the unengagable.

Can’t be in 2 places at once

Last night had a clash of #bellringing diaries. I should have been at an advanced district practice but also needed to be at a Central Council exec meeting.

This clash now happens very month. Last year it wasn’t a problem because we weren’t running the advanced practices. However we decided to put them back on the virtual agenda this year and try them out. Last month was the first one and as I set up the Zoom I kinda needed to be there so sent my apologies to the CC meeting.

This month though I needed to be at the CC meeting as I was on the Agenda. I did set up the advanced practice zoom session but needed to hand it over to someone else to run.

It was an interesting experiment. C attended the advanced practice on the PC next to me on my laptop attending the CC meeting. We both glanced over at the other several times and at one point were both talking to our respective meetings at the same time.

I missed out on practicing Little Bob Major and Yorkshire Surprise Major and the fact that they finished soon after 9pm. My meeting went on until 10:20pm.

Next month I’ll probably go to the advanced practice and give apologies to the CC meeting. I’ll probably end up alternating.

Being in the Zone

I’ve just watched a 2 minute excerpt from a TED talk given by learning expert Eduardo Briceno on what he considers to be the key to high performance. https://www.ted.com/talks/eduardo_briceno_how_to_get_better_at_the_things_you_care_about?utm_source=linkedin.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=social&utm_content=2021-3-18-cutdown

We all go through life trying to do the best we can, and equating that to #bellringing, we all turn up at practice night, or Sunday service ringing, or for a wedding or special practice, or quarter or peal attempt or, at the moment virtual practice, with full intention to do the best we can. To ring the method accurately. To strike our bell in the right place. But at a practice night we’re there to try to learn new things as well and extend our repertoire (if we want to).

Briceno offers that sometimes, despite our best intentions we might not always get any better at the things we want to achieve, despite working hard at them. What he learned from his research is that we should deliberately alternate between two different zones.

Learning Zone: here the goal is to improve. So we undertake activities that help that improvement. This could be attending a training day, reading around the subject, watching YouTube videos, asking others for advice, standing behind someone while they ring, asking for feedback and so on. Here, we spend time concentrating on what we haven’t mastered yet, and expect to make mistakes along the way knowing that we will learn from them.

Performance Zone: is where the goal is to do something as best as we can, to execute it. Where we concentrate on what we already have mastered and try to minimise the mistakes. This might be ringing for a special event or a peal attempt, or a striking competition.

Briceno suggests that we should be deliberately alternating between the two zones to purposefully build our skills in the learning zone in order to apply them in the performance zone. Being clear about when we want to be in each of these zones, with what goal, focus and execution in mind helps us better perform and improve. The performance zone maximises our immediate performance, whilst our learning zone maximises our growth and future performance. The more time we spend in the learning zone the more we will improve in the performance zone.

To be able to spend more time in the learning zone we need to believe that we can improve, we must want to improve that particular skill, we must have an idea about what we can do to improve. Just performing the same method over and over again doesn’t necessarily help us improve. Without the process of practice, making mistakes, getting feedback and revision we will tend to stagnate in our current “safe” zone; methods that are familiar and easy, that we won’t feel like we’d be ridiculed for if we go wrong. My favourite is “if in doubt, ring the Treble”, that way I’ll stand a better change of not going wrong, or mucking it up for everyone else. The trouble with that is, I don’t progress myself.

In our #bellringing context this could be the difference between learning the theory of a new method and practicing it on a practice night on using an ringing simulator, in order to perform it to the best of our ability of a Sunday morning, or during a striking competition, or a quarter peal or peal. I also know that I’m really bad at this too. Often I might turn up to a practice having not put enough effort into the learning part, and then hash my way through it, or do enough to just get by without making too much of a pigs ear, but I haven’t learned it properly and will immediately forget it because I’ve not gone back over the bits I find difficult, or asked for help.

My latest thing is to try to learn to ring handbells. I don’t particularly want to ring handbells quarters or peals, but I want to be able to hold my own if I were asked if I could ring something simple. It’s been nearly 40 years since I learnt to ring a tower bell so going back to the beginning to ring handbells, to unlearn some of the things I’ve learned on tower bells and learn them in a different way, has been, so far, really quite difficult. However, I must persevere if I am to reach a decent performance zone. I must make that effort and spend that time in the learning zone, read, watch, listen, practice, make mistakes, get feedback, try again and eventually I will improve.

Every day’s a school day

It seems like it at the moment anyway. Between doing my online mindfulness course, which has really challenged some thoughts and feelings, and learning methods for virtual #bellringing in Ringing Room sessions, of which I had 4 this week.

The first #bellringing session was a district practice which I didn’t need to learn anything new for but the session that I run on Thursdays we’re consolidating methods that we’ve been learning for February. Some of those methods are repeated at a Friday morning session but sometimes something different. Then every other Friday there’s another session that changes methods every time. This week I needed to learn Newcastle and Alnwick Surprise Minor. And in 2 weeks’ time, we’re aiming for London and Wells Surprise Minor, and I set new methods for our Thursday session at the beginning of the month.

Some of these methods I’ve never even looked at, always thinking they are beyond my capability but with the advent of Ringing Room, have been able to ring things that I wouldn’t normally get to ring in any of the towers that I would normally frequent.

Learning to ring takes time, even just the basics of handling a bell on your own, then you need to join in with others and make a meaningful sound. Then you can move on to the more complicated stuff, but that tends to depend on others a bit more, as you can only ring to the standard of the most novice ringer in the band. However, learning skills that require longer term commitment can be rewarding and stimulating for the brain.

A quick internet search shows that there are a multitude of sites that promote learning something new, from new skills, to new languages, to cooking and baking, knitting and creating videos. I’ve always found learning something new to be rewarding. It doesn’t necessarily make me an expert in it but it gives me better understanding, better skills, better adjustment and a wider range of things to do.

Having just completed the 6 week mindfulness course, I’m now looking around the site to find the next thing to dive into.

Quick fire round

I’m not one for small talk. I find it difficult to think of what to say. Its probably something to do with my introversion. I find it frustrating when meetings start with lots of random conversations that have nothing to do with the meeting agenda. I understand the purpose. An ice breaker, or checking in on others wellbeing and so on. But then I get to the point of “can we get on with it now please”?

Just for funsies I was having a play with a random conversation starter generator to see if they were the sort of things you could talk about in a room full of strangers, or at the beginning of a meeting whilst everyone is getting settled. Try some out. Here are the first 10 questions the random conversation starter presented to me.

What is your biggest fear? Losing my child.

What is your dream job? Not sure really. Like making cakes but not sure if I’d want to do it for a living. Thought about opening a cafe once. I guess not needing to have a job might be a dream.

If you were asked to teach a class, what would you teach? Baking.

Do you prefer baths or showers? Bit personal that one. Showers.

If you could choose any era to live in what would it be? Toss up between Tudor, but only if I was at Court. Or early 1900s when so much exploration and new invention happening.

What is one thing that you would like to change about the world? I suppose I ought to go for something like ending poverty or hunger or climate crisis but a big thing that gets me riled is hypocrisy.

How would you know you were in love? If I couldn’t stop thinking about someone or wait to see them and my heart started beating faster.

What is the longest amount of time you’ve slept for? 2 days. I went home from work ill on a Monday and woke up on the Wednesday.

Do you recycle? Yes!!!!

Do you prefer cats or dogs? Neither but if pushed on the subject dogs. Cats are selfish and mean.

Hmmm. Some of them are hardly conversation starters as they have a one word response. I suppose the idea is to then ask follow up questions but for some conversation done. I’m not sure that some of them would be appropriate at the office either but hey, if the conversation stops, I’ll throw one in and see what happens. 🤣

What’s the weirdest question you’ve ever been asked when the conversation got stuck?

The Ladder of Participation

Someone at work mentioned that they were reading an article about the Ladder of Participation. This got me thinking about my own participation in activities both at work and home, predominantly about the roles I have within the #bellringing community.

The Ladder, devised in the late 1960’s, has three categories: Non-participation, Tokenism and Citizen Power. Each category has a number of rungs within it that describes how citizens, the general public, can through participation, have more influence in society. https://nhspublicvoice.wordpress.com/2016/10/27/ladder-of-participation-shows-how-involved-you-are/

Starting at the bottom rungs of the ladder in the non-participative categories are Manipulation and Therapy. These two are there to educate and cure the participant and to achieve public support through PR activities.

The next three rungs are in the Tokenism category and cover Informing, the one way flow of information, Consultation, the use of attitudinal surveys, meetings, public enquiries, but can be seen as a window dressing, before escalating to Placation, allowing citizens to give opinion or advise but holding on to the right to judge the legitimacy of that advice.

The real Citizen Power comes with the top three rungs of the ladder. Partnership, the redistribution of power between citizens and the power holders with shared decision making. Delegated Power, where the citizens now have the power to make decisions and assure accountability. Citizen Control, where the participants hold the power for entire job planning, policy making and managing activities.

In the #bellringing context I can see definite elements of manipulation and therapy and informing, where we are providing information, guidance and exercises to educate and support. We are currently undertaking various consultations to find out what people want from their #bellringing organisations. I hope that we do not then use that to placate, but inform decision and policy making. We have seen some great examples, particularly over the last 12 months or so or partnership, Association of Ringing Teachers, Central Council of Church Bell Ringers and The Ringing World working together. We are certainly offering opportunities for Delegated Power in the workgroup structure, which allows anyone, even if they are not a Council member to participate and influence the direction we are taking, and providing expertise. The Citizen Control might be a bit more tricky to manage wholescale, but there are pockets of activities that are directed by the ringers at a local level and we would want to support them with that.

No doubt there is room for improvement at every rung of the ladder, but it was interesting to note that we are on every rung. Where are you on the ladder?