How To Be An Engaging Leader : Foundation for Establishing Engaging Experience At The Workplace

How To Be An Engaging Leader

Foundation for Establishing Engaging Experience At The Workplace

Sometimes, working with c-suites executives as well as their multi-level counterparts is a humbling experience as each has  different stories that will help to trigger memories of common and unique people engagement activities. C-suite executives and employees may refer their own unique experience as equivalent to educational material. Likewise, encouraging engagement of employees and c-suites themselves may also consist of engaging experiences resulting from stories established by learning resources.

Combining both "Growth and creativity, meanwhile, would be futile without some means of selecting and filtering resources, and meaningless without some way of creating representations and constructing meaning" as written by Stephen Downes in 2012 ebook titled Connectivism and Connective Knowledge Essays on meaning and learning networks, It is through CREANIVITY methodology that an intenitonal "creative act is never a random act, never a pointless act; it is always informed with a sense of refinement and purpose" (page.492).The same with the case of "Walk into any boardroom today and it's highly likely that you will hear C-Level executives talking about customer experience economics and how best to harness the Voice of the Employee (VoE) as part of a cross-enterprise strategy to drive business success" as written by Karine Del Moro n an online article titled Driving Customer and Employee Engagement in 2014 (Source).

Since  "Discussions are no longer simply about the results of an annual customer or employee satisfaction survey that could only ever hope to deliver a static measure on one given day.The fact that companies are measuring customer experience and employee engagement demonstrates that they understand the value of listening to the voice of the employee and customer as an important factor in achieving organisational success", noted Karine Del Moro n an online article titled Driving Customer and Employee Engagement in 2014 (Source). According to Stephen Downes in 2012 ebook titled Connectivism and Connective Knowledge Essays on meaning and learning networks, "So, the challenge is: how do we preserve the unique values of connectives and collectives. Eg. how do we retain our ability to focus when, say, reading a book? (I have a rule - read one journal article before reading email).

 We need to:

- design for varying levels of connectedness

- value the collective effort (the contribution to the whole) - but - what is the role of the

    individual in that process? What is the role of the agent? (page, 367) (Source)

From the above view, one aspect of concern would refer to Brown and Duguid's idea on "reciprocity is strong. People are able to affect one another and the group as a whole directly. Changes can propagate easily. Coordination is tight. Ideas and knowledge may be distributed across the group, not held individually. These groups allow for highly productive and creative work to develop collaboratively" (as cited in Stephen Downes, 2012, page .378)(Source).With CREANIVITY methodology, creativity becomes a collaborative effort in the form of "The problem is not with the use of data to make decisions - the problem is with the simplistic one-dimensional use of data to make decisions." (page 273)(Source). Stephen Downes in 2012 wrote that " Instead of attacking the data - which leaves you with no ground to stand upon - it makes more sense to attack the simple-mindedness. Change the grounds! It's not that their approach is 'data-driven' or 'evidence-based' and yours is not, it's that they have very carefully selected a subset of the evidence that will 'count', while you are using a much broader, richer, and ultimately more accurate base of evidence" (page. 273) (Source).In this regard,Karine Del Moro in an online article titled Driving Customer and Employee Engagement in 2014   (Source) advised on using "Use the best channels to reach your employees" which may adopt CREANIVITY methodology to conduct a collaborative session to aggregate "Short, relevant and timely surveys, using the right feedback channel (online, SMS, paper, mobile device) can maximise responses and elicit much more accurate insight. Utilising the correct channels is essential to obtaining the feedback your company needs to succeed."  (Source).

An example given by  Karine Del Moro  in 2014 (Source) referred to effort from" mobile [that] opens up retail and hospitality environments, while the web will be highly effective for contact centres. Seek out the technology that will encourage employees to get involved." Moreover, CREANIVITY session helps to compiled meaningful data base to "Analyse feedback alongside other insights" because the CREANIVITY components account for "Employee engagement and customer feedback [that] should not be siloed. Bring your employee data into the same reporting hub as customer feedback, industry benchmarks and financial data to create a holistic view that will uncover drivers of employee engagement and customer satisfaction together"(Source) .

Part of learning experiences to produce share-able resources may reside in the concept of CREANIVITY methodology as a way to facilitate the co-creation process. In learning communities, as well, we see commonality or shared vision as central to the creation. Supporting this view, Dewey to Brown and  Duguid acknowledged that "a learning community" (as cited in Stephen Downes ,2012,page 378). (Source)is based on "The idea that learning is social in nature has been a recurring theme in education." CREANIVITY methodology drew on the idea of learning communities that were written by Kilpatrick, Barrett and  Jones as being  "operationalised through collaboration, cooperation, and/or partnerships. The shared goals are achieved through working together and potentially building or creating new knowledge" (as cited in Stephen Downes ,2012,page 484) (Source).In relation to this view was a complementary remark by  Stephen Downes in 2012 on " Interactivity and Connectedness - is the knowledge produced in the network produced as a

result of the connectedness, as opposed to merely being propagated by the connectedness? If

a signal is merely sent from one person to the next to the next, no new knowledge is generated (page 372). It is "Rather, in a community that exhibits connectivist dynamics, knowledge is not merely distributed form one person to another, but is rather emergent from the communicative behaviour of the whole" (page.372) .CREANIVITY methodology aggregate different learning resources and activities representing "The knowledge produced by the community is unique, it was possessed by no one person prior to the formation or interaction in the community. Such knowledge will very likely be complex, representing not simple statements of fact or principle, but rather, will reflect a

community response to complex phenomena" (Stephen Downes ,2012,page.p.372)(Source)..

Within collaborative community approach such as CREANIVITY methodolgy, each learning activity "at the core of connectivism is the idea that learning is not a matter of transferring knowledge from a teacher to a learner, but is rather the product of the learner focusing and repeating creative acts, of practising something that is important and reflecting on this practice." (Stephen Downes , 2012,page.p.641).Therefore, participating in CREANIVITY session would follow similar lines of application .

Modelling along the community of learning concept, CREANIVITY session would see that "When we have a problem we need to solve, for example, we don’t have to turn to the knowledge stored in our brains, but can turn to a web search, to people we’re connected with, to a course, or other sources to get the information/skills we need. “As knowledge continues to grow and evolve, access to what is needed is more important than what the learner currently possesses,” so “[n]urturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning” as noted by Siemens in 2005 (as cited in Christina Hendricks , 2013) in the online article CONNECTIVISM–SIEMENS’ ARGUMENTS.  (Source)

Furthermore , Christina Hendricks in  2013 recommended from an online article about CONNECTIVISM–SIEMENS’ ARGUMENTS that

And in a context in which the internet makes information fairly easy to access (recognizing the problems with search engines filtering results in various ways) and connections to other people fairly easy to make (recognizing that people are most likely going to connect to others who are connected to who they already know, and those they tend to agree with most), I can see that the ability to make and access connections would be more important than what one “knows” in the sense of having information stored in one’s brain. One could also think of all learning as a matter of connecting things, whether it be making a connection to a book, a web page, a person, a video, etc., one might say that I am learning through making connections. I am also learning through adding the new information and skills I get thereby to my existing set, and making connections in that way as well.(Source)

On the basis of connectivity, Stephen Downes in 2012 on page 437  elevated "Interactivity - the system of education and educational resources should be structured so as to maximize interactivity. This is a recognition both that learning results from a process of immersion in a community or society, and second that the knowledge of that community or society, even that resulting from individual insight, is a product of the cumulative interactions of the society as a whole. Jut as a language represents the collective wisdom of a society, so also an insight represented in that language is based on that collective insight" 

Bearing resemblance to collectivity element in terms of CREANIVITY methodology, the problem solving component relies "Instead of attempting to identify thought-leaders, for example, and instead of attempting to identify and understand the content created on the web, the various activities of participants in the network are acts of interaction and communication " (Stephen Downes,2012, page 382)(Source)..Whether in onsite classroom session or offsite online activities , CREANIVITY methodology with "Instructional scaffolding provides support for learning and problem solving through the use of hints, reviewing material, encouragement, and reducing complex problems into “manageable chunks” , as suggested by Woolfolk in  1995 (as cited in Rita Kop and Adrian Hill, 2008) in an article Connectivism: Learning theory of the future or vestige of the past? (Source)

CREANIVITY methodology also provides a structured process flow starting from problem to plan to productivity , thus, c-suites are able to " Close the loop - show employees the results of what they do. To engage employees you need to prove to them that what they do really makes a difference to customers.Tell them exactly what you've done with the feedback they've provided. Make customer feedback available to all employees, through the right channels and with the right level of detail, and recognise their role in delivering great customer experiences. You can tie this in with employee reward programmes for greater engagement " (Source) .In short, revenue performance and churn rate may be "possible to see just how significant the relationship between employee engagement and customer satisfaction is to financial and operational performance as a whole and to drive real change across the entire business"(Karine Del Moro,2014)(Source).