The confidence to be who you want to be in a way that nurtures and improves those around you.

Focusing on the collectiveto ramp up engagementJamie from HRZone, were obsessed with helping HR professionals prepare for the workplace as it morphs and shiftsWhat I want to do is take a look at how personality presents in the workplace and how traditionally companies have tried to influenced the personalities of their employees. Also 1

This is about how we create the conditions in which employees offer more of their capability and potential. David MacleodThis is the definition of engagement given by David Macleod of Engage for Success and for me this is exactly what engagement is aboutThis definition isnt synonymous with getting more from people that is an employer-led initiative. This is about employees OFFERING more than the transactional relationship of employment dictates and wanting to do itBecause its about wanting to do it, engagement is inherently up in the motivations, actions and desires of the individual2ENGAGEMENT CULTURE

EMPLOYEESenior leader buy-inBusiness caseTackling legacy cynicismTrust-based relationshipsInfrastructure and processTrained line managersPerception of job importanceClarity around job expectationsImprovement opportunitiesRegular feedback with superiorsPerceptions of organisational valuesSo the standard model of engagement which weve worked towards over time and which now has been proven by research, maps pretty well to this.Employers create an engagement culture and these factors have been proven to be essential in creating this base engagement culture, which is an infrastructure that supports empowered employeesDont want to dwell too much on this except that this stuff is now provenThe key here is the direction of the footprints going back to the David Macleod quote, the company invites employees to become emotionally committed but you cant force someone to be emotionally committedOnes at top aimed towards organisational goals3

ORGANISATIONAL GOALSPERSON APERSON BSo a huge amount of hard work goes in and at the end we have this engagement culture where people are much more committed to organisational goals, understand their place, feel empowered etc.People feel listened to when it comes to the overall needs of the organisation and their feedback is taken on boardExtremely positive place to be and Towers Watson have shown that having this engagement culture leads to a 26% increase in profit per employeeSo companies are acting on the need to derive people competitive advantage and its working well.4NASA janitor, when asked what he was doing, replied..

"I'm helping to put a man on the Moon.NASA janitor, when asked what he was doing, saidIncredible.5Peoplecompetitiveadvantage

Team dynamics1-to-1sCustomerserviceLeadershipInnovationINTERACTIONSCollaborationNot much more competitrive advantage from products and advertising consumer word-of-mouth, people, recommendations, social mediaWe need to derive competitive advantage from people that much is increasingly clear. Globalisation etc are putting pressure on firms to maximise competitive advantage and technology is acting as a democratiser.6

PERSON APERSON BORGANISATIONAL GOALSINTERACTIONSBut there is a gap in the matrix here and thats the emotional connection between colleagues and how this translates to organisational goals. Everyone can be better aligned with organisational goals but the bigger picture requires the way people interact and work to be more aligned with organisational goals too for true people competitive advantage to be there.AND THESE PEOPLE CAN BE CUSTOMERS TOO THIS IS CRUCIAL. THIS IS ABOUT INTERACTION a high part of high performing organisations is treating customers as partners7

Were helping to put a man on the Moon.Incredible.8The word personality didnt exist in the English language until the 18th centuryPersonality and appearance became valued when we came to work alongside strangersPersonality is developed in order to be as effective as possible in a given social situation

Personality

First lets take a look at personality because its important to understand the way we interact with others.Essentially the concept of personality came about as American companies were formed and people had to work alongside people they didnt know.Capitalism forces continual improvements in productivity personality was needed to oil effectiveness and allow people to work well togetherThis is a good thing!!! An adaptive response to help us meet the needs of a situation. If someone gets in your face, you may need to act more assertive than you really feel. This is an adaptive responseIn the workplace context, when we say personality we mean the state in which we interact with others9

Brent W. Roberts and Joshua J. Jackson, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 2008Model of personality and how people act in the workplace very useful for understanding why people act the way they do and very useful as a model to help ramp up engagement efforts that focus on getting people to work better togetherBiological factors: Brain formation, heart rate variability, levels of neurotransmittersEnvironment: traditionally would be upbringing, conditioning, but much wider definitionTraits: Youve got the Big Five such as agreeableness extraversion etcStates: the manifestation of personality that we see and the reactive features of our psychological systemsAll are important: environment rules when essential e.g. a sabre tooth tiger jumps out at you10

Brent W. Roberts and Joshua J. Jackson, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 2008For organisations ENVIRONMENT is key because its the thing they have traditionally tried to influence only real thing they can influenceCompanies place pressures good or bad - on the environment to encourage individuals to adopt states beneficial to the organisationThis is a personality-based look at the principal-agent problem, so how can a company get an individual to act in the companys interest?Well, they bring pressure to bear on the environment around the individual11

EnvironmentState

Heres an easy example. We put cameras in casinos to make employees act honestly. Note that this is a STATE at work, we dont put cameras in their homes because for the company honesty at work is whats important. The powerful incentive of being caught red-handed and being fired/put in prison is likely to override any tendencies of an individual towards being impulsive or risk-taking. Note, however, the environment can change. If the croupiers children are starving, who cares about the cameras?12

EnvironmentState

Heres another example. We fit lorries with tachograph to put drivers in states of awareness and care by negatively incentivising risk takingThese two are very basic environmental cues that are designed to direct people towards behaviours by influencing their environment. We need workers to act a certain way in a certain situationNow, if everyone worked as lone wolves, this type of environmental cue would be enough.But, of course, they dont. We come together as groups of people to achieve goals and for this we must look at how environment cues shape the way we interact with others around us.13

Environment

StateOn the basic level, by offering financial incentives to sales staff, we encourage them to be affable, agreeable, to focus on body language, to focus on closing the deal this is about their interactions with CUSTOMERS14

EnvironmentState

Whats really interesting here is that you change an environment and it affects people in various ways. So we encourage people to interact in a more friendly way with colleagues by having casual dress policy because we think this will make people more relaxed. For some people it does, but others still come in in smart clothes because they want to interact on a more professional level. What does that mean? AIR OF AUTHORITY FOR MANAGERS BE ABOVE EMPLOYEE LEVEL15

Environment

StateComing back to this, this will make some people very self-centred, and others very caring about other people to help them hit their commission16

Person APerson BNervousSelf-learnerIntrovertedEmotionalMoral

AgreeableCharismaticExtrovertedFinancially drivenSelf-starterSo we can have very different people in the workplace and the environment we create creates both positive and negative outcomes depending on the type of person that you are and the challenge for organisations now is to create conditions that are personality-independent that work to create positive outcomes despite individual qualities and characteristics.17

EnvironmentState

So heres an example of a modern initiative designed to help employees act more like individuals, which is great for creating that engagement culture we talked about earlier. So for some employees, it works as planned. They give more because they are have more control, they have autonomy, they can become results-focused, and these align with organisational goals of better results and everyone wins.18

EnvironmentState

But then you get others who dont respond well to this policy and it creates exhaustion because they dont know when to stop. And then you get this misalignment thats to do with perception. Perception can be a dangerous thing at work. Lonely too, dont have people to bounce ideas off. Entrepreneurs v social workers.Another one we do with engagement is implement online social collaboration platforms to make people talk and communicate more. For some people this naturally fits in with their way of working. For others its just another thing to do and it encourages a state of being visible and extroverted.

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WorkLifeWe live in a globalised world and have to interact with more, different people, and we can work in more environments, and different means of doing things e.g. Google Hangouts, SkypePeople dont get as much downtime in SAFE environments and if we cant recover then we find it hard to go into work and create these states in which we work well with strangers and become more effective. People get snappy, hard to work with and regress to their natural states.Police imagery intentional new piece of research from Gail Kinman at Bedfordshire says that police officers face fewer issues of taking their work home with them anyone know why?Metaphorical separation of taking their uniform off.This is a big office-based problem.20

123In an engagement culture, we are successfully giving people the conditions to express their individual potential and capability

The way we shape the environment can lead to different results depending on individual personality, making it difficult to create the conditions that encourage collective potential

To derive greater people competitive advantage for the company, we must provide conditions where the collective potential is encouraged

To summarise.!21

Towards a culture of collective potential and collective performanceWhen we focus on personal performance then we incentivise people to act in self-interest and shape their personalities towards situations. By judging people on collective performance we can help.22

1. Create an organisational culture of engagementStandard model of employee engagement youve got all the things at the bottom that are proven to help develop engagement cultures. We did some research earlier this year that pointed to infrastructure and process and management buy-in as the two biggest obstaclesAnd the key here is the direction of the footprints the company invites employees to become emotionally committed but you cant force someone to be emotionally committed23ENGAGEMENT CULTURE

EMPLOYEESSenior leader buy-inBusiness caseTackling legacy cynicismTrust-based relationshipsInfrastructure and processTrained line managersPerception of job importanceClarity around job expectationsImprovement opportunitiesRegular feedback with superiorsPerceptions of organisational valuesSo the standard model of engagement which weve worked towards over time and which now has been proven by research, maps pretty well to this.Employers create an engagement culture and these factors have been proven to be essential in creating this base engagement culture, which is an infrastructure that supports empowered employeesDont want to dwell too much on this except that this stuff is now provenThe key here is the direction of the footprints going back to the David Macleod quote, the company invites employees to become emotionally committed but you cant force someone to be emotionally committed24

2. Make people accountable for the way they feelStandard model of employee engagement youve got all the things at the bottom that are proven to help develop engagement cultures. We did some research earlier this year that pointed to infrastructure and process and management buy-in as the two biggest obstaclesAnd the key here is the direction of the footprints the company invites employees to become emotionally committed but you cant force someone to be emotionally committed25

Brent W. Roberts and Joshua J. Jackson, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 2008BIOLOGICAL FACTORS: These are driven by physiology and genetic makeup and we used to think we couldnt change it. But we can example is allostatic load which can change brain chemistry.Belief you cant change them which leads to VICTIMHOOD someone made me feel that way.Training managers, senior leaders and employees to deal with honesty and develop positive outcomes from those.Lots of personality comes out because people have been taught that being themselves does not do well.

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Robert Plutchiks Wheel of Emotion, Albert Einstein College of MedicineBIOLOGICAL FACTORS: These are driven by physiology and genetic makeup and we used to think we couldnt change it. But we can example is allostatic load which can change brain chemistry.Belief you cant change them which leads to VICTIMHOOD someone made me feel that way.Quick straw poll how many emotions did you feel in the last week? Ill give you a minute. Raise your hand etc

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Empower employeesChange #1: Awareness

Traits -> Environment: Ilene Siegle from Duke found people with high agreeableness traits are more likely to engage in vigorous exerciseTraits are hard to change. As organisations we need focus the RIGHT resources on the environment, and train people to understand their physiology.28

Empower employeesChange #2: No more victimhood

Traits -> Environment: Ilene Siegle from Duke found people with high agreeableness traits are more likely to engage in vigorous exerciseTraits are hard to change. As organisations we need focus the RIGHT resources on the environment, and train people to understand their physiology.29

Objective analysisBreathingVisualisationChange #3: Techniques

Empower employeesIF you dont know what to do in the event of aquaplaning, youre scared of it. Were scared of how people make us feel.Traits -> Environment: Ilene Siegle from Duke found people with high agreeableness traits are more likely to engage in vigorous exerciseTraits are hard to change. As organisations we need focus the RIGHT resources on the environment, and train people to understand their physiology.Visualisation: this is outcome-based visualisation30

Change #4: Education and benefitsEmpower employees

Coffee

Exercise

NutritionIF you dont know what to do in the event of aquaplaning, youre scared of it. Were scared of how people make us feel.Traits -> Environment: Ilene Siegle from Duke found people with high agreeableness traits are more likely to engage in vigorous exerciseTraits are hard to change. As organisations we need focus the RIGHT resources on the environment, and train people to understand their physiology.Visualisation: this is outcome-based visualisation31

3. Set boundaries to remove uncertaintyStandard model of employee engagement youve got all the things at the bottom that are proven to help develop engagement cultures. We did some research earlier this year that pointed to infrastructure and process and management buy-in as the two biggest obstaclesAnd the key here is the direction of the footprints the company invites employees to become emotionally committed but you cant force someone to be emotionally committed32

Not a 9-5 companyInnovationPassionateInnovation-friendlyResults-focusedOpen-mindedCasual dressFree dressTo give employees CHOICE, you must incentivise the outcome. So the environment is one of profit-sharing, no-blame and shared responsibility. Employees are free to collaborate as they see fit.33

Nothing more powerful than the view that management accept and approve of a wide variety of doing things you want diversity in EVERYTHING34

4. Re-shape the shapersTake a look at your organisation and see if the environment shapers that have existed for a long time are still incentivising the result youre looking for specifically to what extent could they send two different people down the wrong path?35

Environment

StateGoing back, this is the standard model of enhancing sales performance used across the world but its really one for personal performance. Although you will get some people who desire to help others.36

EnvironmentState

If we replace commission with profit-sharing, we have a collective personality.37

5. Educate people on the importance of diversity of approachesTake a look at your organisation and see if the environment shapers that have existed for a long time are still incentivising the result youre looking for specifically to what extent could they send two different people down the wrong path?38

TeamdiversityImplementersPlantsCompleter finishersShapersSpecialistsCo-ordinatorsThe negative person is MALIGNED and this is why you get groupthink in engagement cultures this is often the case passionate etcTake Plants out no ideas39

CHARACTERPERSONALITYCHARACTERPERSONALITYCharacter comes out in safe places. LOTS of things influence environment. For a child, a safe environment becomes unsafe when a stranger enters. They havent developed the ability to project personalityAt the same time as work-life balance putting pressure on peoples character, we also have a lack of understanding in humans about Get to this place where character swells and personality gets smaller. People have the confidence to be who they want to be 40

Stay true to who you are and what you believe in and encourage others to do the same, while working towards a shared goal.This is where engagement intersects with personality and character, in my view.Engagement cultures throw their weight behind the qualities of the individual and say we will support the unique set of individual circumstances that make you YOU.This is not about shaping the environment to create engagement but about allowing individuals to shape their own environment by creating an environment that supports thatABOUT THE ALIGNMENT OF PERSONALITY AT WORK THROUGH COLLECTIVE PERFORMANCE41