Let’s cut to the chase. If you want to engage me and have me come with you, I have to feel valued by you. I may not articulate whether I do, but I’ll be feeling it. This is another way of saying that for engagement to happen the relationship between us has to be big enough.

In the last few weeks I’ve seen two separate instances of where the energy of people being up to something eventually worked against them in terms of leaving others feeling valued and so engaged. The problem was that both of them put so much energy into talking about what they were up to that they left absolutely no room for anyone else to speak. Their ‘engaging’ turned into ‘communicating at’ and ‘telling’; people tried to speak but the leaders just kept on talking. I watched as people were less and less listened to and eventually withdrew.

So this week, yes please bring your energy for what you care about but just check are you also giving people a jolly good ‘listening to’!

By Steve Radcliffe