An Engagement Challenge!

 

Engagement can be such a tricky thing, don’t you think? 

In most cases, there are several common objectives to engagement:

1. You want people to interact with you and the topic you have brought up
2. You want feedback from everyone – both quiet and loud, both for and against
3. You want to create a healthy balance between those positive and negative perspectives that might come forth – without shutting anyone or any sub-topical theme down!
4. Most of all, you want to draw insights from the dialogue to derive the greatest value to all involved.

So, when it comes to engaging people, how do you do it?

A Challenge!

Last year, leading up to the PMI North American Congress, I was asked, along with a number of other people, to help engage our project management community. We were asked if we could blog on topics within our various areas of expertise to help people see the potential for support one could gain from attending the conference, and most specifically, by engaging with specialists at the “Ask the Experts” booth.

What ensued was a bit of a backroom battle around who could issue the most posts – before, during, and after the event. It started out without intent – no challenge had actually been issued by anyone. It just seemed to happen of its own accord. And I don’t know who ended up winning because that wasn’t what mattered.

What mattered was that it was all in good fun, we got to know each other a bit, we all learned from each other, and a lot of valuable content was shared. But I don't know how successful we were in ENGAGING all of you!

So for the reasons above,

I am throwing a gauntlet down!

I hereby challenge all our past conference bloggers to raise the bar – how will you engage our community this year?

Did you see last year’s battle? Will you support us this year, through reading, liking, sharing and, gasp! – commenting?? I hope so…

The Catch

Did you see what I did there?

The first step in any sort of engagement exercise, of course, is to gain some attention.  What is the topic?  Does it have appeal?  Will it draw everyone in, or will only one “side” (i.e. for or against) participate?

As a potential participant, we need first to have a reason to engage.  In the case of a proposed organizational change, the development of a project plan you might be involved with, or perhaps just a decision within a project, there is definitely a reason to listen in, and to fully engage.

If it were me, I’d want to know what my role might be, how my work might be impacted, and who’s work I might impact as well. And I’d want to be able to maximize my efficiencies, and minimize any potential upsets to getting said work done.

But what if the purpose of engagement is just for an opinion about something? 

Like a conference theme or focus area.  A discussion on common challenges in your industry? Or even to inform a survey or poll.

Maybe it starts with thinking about your own preferences.  What draws you in, and how best do you like to be engaged?  Do you prefer anonymity?  Online vs. face to face?  Private conversations or group dialogue?  There are many considerations.

For this post, I purposely threw a challenge out there to engage people as an attempted gain of attention…but all in good fun. If you’re still reading, well, I guess it worked just a smidge.

We’ll see who the winner ends up being!

Engagement Options

I have been exploring different avenues for engaging people, particularly in the online world.  It seems that this is often a way to engage a much broader group of people, it takes less time, and the engagement can be done from anywhere – at your desk, at home, on your phone, etc.  Some offer anonymity, some do not. 

I prefer that anonymity is avoided – people can be abusive when they are anonymous, and this can detract from the engagement significantly.

Two of my favourites tools right now include Twitter chats (Facebook chats exist too, I guess, but I don’t “reside” there…), and virtual coffees (hosted on a platform like Zoom).

Twitter Chats

A chat format typically involves an hour timeframe over which to discuss a particular topic, and these chats are scheduled on a regular weekly interval, always at the same time of the day so that people know when to attend, if they want to engage.

Throughout the hour, anywhere from 6-10 questions may be posted by the host. They ask their questions with a Q1, Q2, etc., and everyone who has joined the chat respectively answers with A1, A2, etc. until all thoughts are posed. 

There is no established order for attendees to provide their opinions – in fact, there is no requirement to answer any question at all! And, best part – if you can’t make the whole thing (or the topic isn’t keeping your attention), you can just join in and duck out as you wish. No hurt feelings by anyone, honest.

Anyone is free to respond to answers provided by others, like and share comments, and add their own quotes to others’ answers as well.  And with this, sometimes it can get difficult to follow all the different chains of conversation that might be occurring at once!  But really, that is more an issue for a host than it is for anyone else.

All questions and answers should include the corresponding and associated hashtag for the chat, so that anyone who chooses can follow the question and answer sequence – even if they could not attend live. A note that adding the hashtag to every question and answer is a learning curve – not everyone remembers, as you can see by snippets of conversation coming and going between participants!

One Twitter chat I have found useful for this community in particular is the #PMChat every Friday at 12:00 EST.  I try to attend regularly, and I have hosted a couple times now – here's a link for you to scroll through a chat around sustainability, if you want to see what it might look like.

Maybe you’ll join one of our conversations soon?! Or better yet, maybe you'll host a topic?

Virtual Coffees

This is just as it sounds.

Create a meeting on a particular topic, invite people to it, and host it online. Several platforms are available, and I choose to use Zoom because it allows me to see everyone on camera and chat with them live – as if we were in the same room. This encourages active participation and discourages behaviours like checking phones or performing other work during the meeting!

The way I have best managed these sessions is by having a particular topic or agenda to follow, and then having a roundtable on each question or discussion point. Setting an expected time boundary for either the entire meeting, or per subtopic, can help to ensure people stay on topic and bring forward key points. Having a bit of flexibility allows for the dialogue to occur on points that require it. And on that note, there is a bit of facilitation that does need to occur, just like any other meeting, so be aware of that going in.

I am involved with some individuals right now, using the Zoom platform to support a Study Action Team exercise. The SAT concept includes picking a book relating to an area of learning that you’d like to target within your team. Each chat session is based around one or two chapters of the book. The questions we are asking during each virtual meeting include:

1. What were the author’s main points?
2. What significance does this have for our endeavour?
3. What do I want to do with this knowledge? AKA: What actions will I take?  
4. Plus / Delta (of the session)

After the second session, we also added another to start each session off:

What action did I take and how did it go?

This is a great method of learning because you:

1. Are held accountable to prepare for each session (i.e. read the book & actually absorb the content!)
2. Hear other perspectives and takeaways, which often produce further insights for you.
3. Think about how what you are learning relates to your own challenges.
4. Think about corrective actions you can take right away, which benefits not only you but also your team typically.
5. Build relationships – because there is a focus on the dialogue with a common objective that will benefit everyone, it improves the level of dialogue, invites everyone to safely voice opinions, and builds trust, bringing team members closer together for future endeavours.

So, this provided a couple of tools and strategies to engage people.

Perhaps you have recommendations of your own that you might suggest in the comments below?...

(Psst! Your comments below support ME as the future winner on engagement! Ha ha!)