A3E2 Model

We’re now talking about the fourth element of our motto and that is employee engagement. It is really an important element. And you have the opportunity to make it better for your team and your company. We all can help others to be more engaged. We can help others find true meaning in their work, true meaning in their work lives. And what they are doing. There’s a epidemic of unengaged people today all over the world. Well, we can cure it with simple positive measures, the kinds of things that you have been learning throughout this entire course.

What does it mean to be truly engaged? It means that a person performs highly first. Of course, high performance first remember. And they’re also committed to the mission and the vision of the team or the work at hand. That means they have to understand what the mission and the vision is. They have to see the greater picture. They have to know what they’re moving towards. If they’re committed to executing success and creating something bigger than themselves, they truly can become engaged. The graph here indicates what research tells us. That will commitment and performance, comes discretionary effort in work. We believe it creates approximately 57% greater levels of work and that’s pretty spectacular.

Our last and fifth area of exploration is that of emotional intelligence. All of us express ourselves with our facial expressions. Those that are able to pick up on the cues of others are really better off in the talent space. We do know that 80% of communication is through our body language. So this is an important ability, an ability that you can in fact, work to hone even better.

I like to say that we’re born with two ears and one mouth. Using them in that proportion may be helpful in observing the body language of others and to understanding what is behind the body language. What are the words that aren’t being said? Emotional intelligence is defined as the ability to monitor ones own and other people’s emotions. To really discriminate between different emotions and label them appropriately. And to use emotional information to guide your thinking, your speaking, as well as all of the other behaviors that make you up. Those who are able to identify the feelings, the expressions, the words that lie beneath the expressions are more able to lead. Look at the faces of this team.

The woman close to the center looks happy about something. Perhaps she’s discovered something that the rest of the team has yet to realize. Looking over her shoulder is someone being inquisitive. Others, kind of look frustrated to me. We can construct a story to tell what is happening in the team, and then we can determine whether we need to insert ourselves as leaders to help the team to move forward.

Recently, Professor Sanchez, Burks here at the University, did some excellent work on the concept of emotional aperture. His work culminated in a test of aperture that gives you a hint as to whether you’re able to assess the emotions of others and whether you can do it very quickly. I have to say, I thought I would be a little bit better than I have scored. I pride myself on being able to be emotionally intelligent and to pick up on the cues of the people that work for me and the people that I work with. But it reminded me of the critical skill as a leader.

We need to be able to coach and council our team members, the people work for us and with us. In order to do that, we have to listen more closely. We have to listen more than we speak to observe everything and to discuss what it seen, to check for understanding. To realize, is what I’m seeing really what I’m seeing? Maybe I’m making a mistake. Here’s the quiz. I urge you to take it and test your own emotional aperture. Well there you have it. I’ve created the model for you. Ability, agility, that’s learning agility, aspiration, emotional intelligence and engagement. Where do you fare on the scales I’ve created for you for all five of these qualities?

What about the employee or the team member that you started to rate earlier in our course?

Here are the forms for you to really think critically, about where you fall and where the person that you are looking to develop, perhaps, where do they fall?

Please work on this, and we’ll talk about it next time.