fuel engagement in your organization

I've been hearing a lot about how the London2012 Olympics have been such a success due to the throngs of engaged volunteers. A recent post on the Harvard Business Review explored how enthusiasm from the volunteers spilled over to all kinds of other workers around the city and resulted in productivity above the normal expectations of a typical unengaged workforce. The argument is that if organizations do more every day to draw on and fuel enthusiasms, and less to maximize efficiency, the problem of disengagement would be gone forever.

We talk a lot about engagement in university advancement, but we usually focus it on alumni and donors. We inherently understand that for our stakeholders to be engaged, we must fuel their enthusiasm and earn their trust. But do we behave the same way with our staff and colleagues?

Unfortunately, high turnover exists in the advancement industry and can hurt relationships that are building between the institution and a stakeholder. Hopefully, the engagement officer has done a good job in creating a broad relationship between the stakeholder and the school in the area in which they hold interest so that their departure has minimal effect. Then again, good work is done by engaged employees, and disengagement is the number one reason why employees leave.

Why don't we use the same approach with our staff and colleagues as we do with our stakeholders? We know it works. We know that if we build mutually profitable long-term relationships, they will lead to satisfaction, trust and results. In fact, Tony Schwartz and his firm The Energy Project are proving it. He works with companies to "shift their paradigm from getting more out of people by pushing them harder, to investing more systematically in meeting their needs, so they're freed, fueled, and inspired to bring more of themselves to work every day."  In an interesting HBR article he reasons that workers (and possibly women in particular) are so busy in today's fast-paced world that if they are given the flexibility to do their work when and how they need to, they will have the focus and energy to do a better quality job.

The advancement world is filled with a high percentage of women doing high-energy jobs like development and alumni front-line work. Schwartz's theory makes a lot of sense in this space. After all, we want to build quality, fulfilling relationships with our stakeholders, and constantly fuel them, inspire them and meet their needs so that they will give back. We naturally then need equally engaged, loyal and passionate front-line people to make those connections and achieve that goal for us.

Taking the time to fully engage and trust our staff will deliver extraordinary value to the institution that is measurable and sustainable. In the end, that's what we all want.