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Equip Senior Leaders to Drive Employee Engagement

Turn resistance to feedback into enthusiastic support by providing leaders with simple yet powerful ways to connect with employees.

  • It can be difficult to know how to translate engagement survey feedback into action, and senior leaders may have limited opportunities or time to interact with employees.
  • Senior leaders may be unaware of their impact on engagement or resistant to feedback, discounting their influence as inaccurate or taking criticism personally.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

  • What employees want from senior leaders is actually quite simple: they want to be informed, have the opportunity to interact with their leaders, and be involved in decisions that affect their work life.
  • Inspiration is the natural outcome of sharing rationale for decisions, acting on feedback, and building trust with employees.
  • Increased interaction can be emotionally demanding for senior leaders and may be uncomfortable for employees at first. However, the organizational benefits of employee engagement outweigh any initial discomfort.

Impact and Result

  • Use insights from neuroscience to decrease resistance to feedback and help senior leaders understand and own their impact on employee engagement.
  • Guide senior leaders to use McLean & Company’s 3i model as a foundation for increasing their connection with employees: encourage them to find ways to inform, interact with, and involve employees to increase engagement.
  • Offer senior leaders practical steps to improve in four key areas: sharing rationale for decisions, acting on feedback, building trust, and inspiring employees.

Equip Senior Leaders to Drive Employee Engagement Research & Tools

1. Prepare to deliver feedback

Prepare for meetings with senior leaders to review common objections to engagement survey results and how to respond.

Equip Senior Leaders to Drive Employee Engagement Storyboard
Equip Senior Leaders to Drive Employee Engagement Executive Briefing
Senior Management Driver: Sample Email Communication Template
Senior Management Driver: Executive Pre-Work Template
Senior Management Driver: Presentation Template

2. Help leaders interpret feedback and review strategies to improve

Guide senior leaders through interpreting individual scorecards and discuss strategies to strengthen relationships.

Senior Management Driver: Interpretation Worksheet and Action Plan
3i Leadership Self-Assessment

3. Plan for action and execute

Create an action plan with senior leaders to change moving forward.

Senior Management Driver: HR One-on-One Discussion Guide

Workshop: Equip Senior Leaders to Drive Employee Engagement

Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost onsite delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

Module 1: Prepare to Implement Manager Training

The Purpose

  • Make the case for strengthening senior leadership relationships to drive employee engagement.
  • Select goals and metrics training.
  • Customize the training material and plan all aspects of the training day.

Key Benefits Achieved

  • Use McLean & Company’s framework to equip senior leaders to drive engagement.
  • Select baseline metrics.
  • Align training material to the organization and determine aspects of the training day.

Activities

Outputs

1.1

Establish high-level session objectives.

  • Defined objectives and goals for the training initiative
1.2

Set benchmark metrics and take baseline measurements.

  • Documented baseline measurements
1.3

Review content and customize session material.

  • Customized senior leader training material
1.4

Plan session material.

  • Determined the logistics of the training and planned out aspects of the training

Module 2: Follow Up After Training

The Purpose

  • Create a timeline and criteria for follow-up to determine ongoing success of training program.

Key Benefits Achieved

  • Create timeline for both senior leader behavior and metrics follow-up and set criteria.

Activities

Outputs

2.1

Prepare to follow up on executive behavioral change and impact on the business.

  • Designed and set a timeline for training follow-up initiatives and set follow-up criteria
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About McLean & Company

McLean & Company is an HR research and advisory firm providing practical solutions to human resources challenges via executable research, tools, diagnostics, and advisory services that have a clear and measurable impact on your business.

What Is a Blueprint?

A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your HR problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.

Need Extra Help?
Speak With An Analyst

Get the help you need in this 3-phase advisory process. You'll receive 7 touchpoints with our researchers, all included in your membership.

Guided Implementation #1 - Prepare to deliver feedback
  • Call #1 - Discuss when and how to review scorecards with senior leaders.
  • Call #2 - Discuss how to prepare communication in a brain-friendly way to decrease resistance to feedback.
  • Call #3 - Review common objections to engagement survey results and how to respond.

Guided Implementation #2 - Help leaders to interpret feedback and review strategies to improve
  • Call #1 - Discuss how to use McLean & Company’s 3i model as a foundation for changes in four key areas.
  • Call #2 - Discuss strategies for improving in the four key areas: sharing rationale, acting on feedback, building trust, and inspiring.

Guided Implementation #3 - Plan for action and execute
  • Call #1 - Discuss how to guide senior managers to use the 3i approach to changes.
  • Call #2 - Discuss how to best support senior managers in their efforts to change moving forward.

Contributors

  • James Alexander, VP of IT Research, Info-Tech Research Group, former Group Vice President at IDC
  • Jocelyn Bryce, VP of Human Resources, Sigma Systems
  • Christine Comaford, Entrepreneur, Author, Consultant, CEO of SmartTribes Institute
  • Terri Harrison, Vice President, Consulting Services & Senior Strategist, Tap Strategy & HR Consulting
  • Vicki Hess, Healthcare Employee Engagement Expert, Catalyst Consulting
  • Anna Hrapkova, Director, Change Management and Strategic Business Partnerships, Tangerine
  • David MacLeod, Co-Chair and Co-Author, Engage for Success
  • Jennifer McClure, Founder & President, Unbridled Talent and CEO of DisruptHR
  • Jason Lauritsen, Author, Engagement & Workplace Culture Expert, Consultant
  • Fadel Matta, Assistant Professor, Terry College of Business, University of Georgia
  • Jackie Meagher, VP of HR, Info-Tech Research Group
  • James Stone, HR Manager, Spinal Injuries Australia
  • Debra Verbeke, Executive Vice President, Human Resources, Fairfield County Bank
  • David Zinger, Engagement Educator, Consultant, and Coach, David Zinger Associates

Related Content: Employee Engagement