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Discovering Ingagement

A key insight from my book Ingaged Leadership: The Ultimate Edition

by Evan Hackel

 

Ingagement is a leadership philosophy for those who believe that it is not enough to tell people what to do, but to involve their minds, creativity and even their emotions. In this chapter, we will get a first glimpse at how Ingaged leadership works and how powerful it can be. 

 

 

What is the philosophy of Ingagement? It all starts with a belief that:

 

When you align people and create an organization where everyone works together in partnership, that organization becomes vastly more successful.

 

Ingagement isn’t a single action that you take just once. It is an ongoing, dynamic business practice that has the power to transform your organization, your people, you, and ultimately, your success.

 

Everyone in a company can create Ingagement—company leaders, members of a top leadership team, middle managers and people at many organizational levels. Ingagement goes beyond the management you will find in many companies today, where top executives and middle managers believe that effective leadership means giving instructions or offering incentives.

 

Ingagement is different—it offers a way of moving from good to great. Ingaged leaders trust people to participate actively in the creation and development of a strategic vision. They openly involve key stakeholders in an ongoing conversation about the organizational vision and how it can be put into action through planning and follow through.

 

You develop Ingaged leadership when, through your Ingaged attitude and open listening,  you let people know that you are partnering with them and that you truly listen and believe what they are saying has value.

 

Authenticity is key to Ingagement. When you listen sincerely, you cooperatively create plans and practices that are supported by everyone in your organization, not only initiatives that have been developed at the top.

 

To be clear, Ingagement doesn’t mean having a democracy. In most organizations, it is the role of senior management and the board to ultimately make the best decisions for an organization in the long term. Yet when people at all levels feel heard, they are more likely to support company plans, even if their own ideas might not have been utilized completely. When people know they have been heard, they are more likely to become invested in their work; they become more eager to continue to share ideas and to cooperate. As a result, the entire organization improves and grows.

Ingagement is a highly effective way to lead members of the millennial and Generation Z groups—a cohort that I will refer to in this book as the “younger generation.”

Ingaging Your Key Stakeholders

 

Ingagement is not limited to internal operations. When successful Ingagement extends beyond company walls, it can help you multiply your success. You can achieve such success by involving your customers, vendors, distributors, and other stakeholders in open conversation.

 

From a management perspective, the result is that you build an organization in which more people focus on executing the right, productive things. But getting everyone’s priorities and to-do lists directed toward your organization’s immediate goals is only part of the picture; both the power and the reach of Ingagement are transformative, not just habitual or “standard practice.”

 

Evan Hackel
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