In Part I of the series, we learned that many organizations are considering employee engagement as a significant area that impacts profitability.

However, only 18% of the North American workforce considers itself to be highly engaged. We examined both the individual’s and organization’s responsibility in Part II. The organization is responsible for providing a culture that fosters engagement and the individual is responsible for everything else. So what else do we need to know about engagement?

According to Timothy Clark, author of “The Employee Engagement Mindset”, we need to consider the following five concepts:

Privately – show up and follow-through with what you have been assigned. In other words, get the basics done.
Be a Learner – grow into the job so you can become an expert; actively learn, ask effective questions, be willing to give and receive feedback.
Become the expert – You can do the job independently, even better than most, demonstrate expertise, be a collaborative team member.
Coach others– Help others achieve success by leading with influence, questioning and willingness to be interrupted.
Become a visionary – See the whole rather just your part, monitor and anticipate changes, build a network, remain curious and say no to good ideas when everything cannot be done.

Yes, this is a tall order! It does not happen overnight. Please review the five ways to contribute. Where are you on specific responsibilities? If you have changed jobs, changed organizations or been promoted, it’s acceptable to temporarily be at the private/learner scale. To be engaged, you must first learn the job and learn it well. If you are not engaged at the expert or above scale, why not? What’s getting in the way? How will you become more engaged?

Think about your contribution regardless of your organization and job. Either you are highly engaged or you are not. Which are you? If you are waiting for someone else, you’ll be waiting a long time. Without being engaged, you fall into the worker that dreads to go to work, puts in minimal effort, distrusts many if not all and are paranoid about anything that looks like change.

1 – Will I accept it with a good heart attitude and perform to the best of my ability?

2 – Will I stay with it with the goal of making the job better with changes? ‘ OR ‘

3 – Do I need to leave it to be successful and engaged somewhere else?

The moral of the story is…it’s your choice; no one else’s. Let Learning Alliances, LLC help you as an individual or as an organization to be fully engaged.