Deployment

Okay. Forgive the big word. Merriam-Webster defines exhortation as “language intended to incite or encourage.” In plain speak it’s about excited talk, passionate words, and loud barking. If we talk about our organization’s goals with enough energy we will create it – that’s the underlying belief of the exhortation approach to employee engagement.
The great search for ways to engage employees involves many well-intended but misguided approaches. Exhortation. Management by objectives. Tools and techniques. Over the next three posts I’ll explore each approach and reveal why they have very limited results.

 
An intentional mix of formal and informal learning strategies might be just what your company needs.

In the East, it is said that people who are yin are creative, passive, and easygoing. When they tend to lethargy, they are encouraged to become more yang. On the other hand, those who are yang are seen as active, precise, and controlled. They are nudged to strive toward yin. It is acceptable to never find balance between yin and yang, but instead to always seek, reflect, and add elements of the other.

 
Organizations invest billions annually on a success curriculum known as "leadership development," which ends up leaving so much on the table. Training and development programs almost universally focus factory-like on inputs and outputs — absorb curriculum, check a box; learn a skill, advance a rung; submit to assessment, fix a problem. Likewise, they leave too many people behind with an elite selection process that fast-tracks "hi-pos" and essentially discards the rest. And they leave most people cold with flavor of the month remedies, off sites, immersions, and excursions — which produce little more than a grim legacy of fat binders gathering dust on shelves.
What if, instead of stuffing people with curricula, models, and competencies, we focused on deepening their sense of purpose, expanding their capability to navigate difficulty and complexity, and enriching their emotional resilience?