Building Engagement

"The single most powerful way to build engagement is to have people talk about, and arrive at, and then reaffirm their purpose and shared vision".

Over the last month, I've been exploring the concept of storytelling as a means of activating team members' involvement in the purpose of what they do. 

This is a straightforward, yet powerful idea from Professor Richard Boyatzis of Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland, Ohio), interviewed in a recent HBR Podcast 'On Leadership' (2023 November). I'll re-state what he says to emphasise the point:  

Professor Boyatzis provides a case study of the approach taken by Tom Strauss, the CEO of Summa Health Systems, Ohio. It goes like this: 

Strauss oversaw the running of nine hospitals. 

He had a 60-minute weekly meeting with all of the Heads of the Hospitals and Clinics. 

Each week, as they left his office, he would pick two of them, and say “bring me back a story for next week’s meeting, of some patient that has been helped in your unit this week”. 

The next week, he’d open the meeting and give 5-10 minutes of the meeting to those two people, to tell their stories. 

This was a way of reminding them that their real purpose is healing.