Increasing Employee Engagement-Pt.2: The Heart of the Matter

Dr. Bruce Lipton, profiled on this blog in previous articles, did a wonderful job of explaining how cellular biology informs corporate performance in a series of six ten-minute interviews done for InSight Out Consulting in June, 2006. In these interviews, he explains how our subconscious beliefs (which amount to around 90%) drive our actions. Most of these are downloaded from birth to six years.

From then on we just add to the pile forgetting to take a close look to see what is old baggage, useful or useless. Take that and mutiply it by the number of employees you have in your company and you see a community of unconscious potentiality~powerful or powerless.

It is a sure bet that some of what operates undetected is based on limiting notions about what is possible, what is not, what works, what doesn't, what is true and what is not.  Recognizing this simple scientific reality helps point the way to why we have been talking abour corporate culture change for the last ten years or more; why participative leadership is the only way to achieve performance and then leaders roll right on back to command and control as the default programming.

It would be easy to blame corporate executive leadership for this, but where is the manual for renewing and redefining oneself outside of the boundaries of commander of a fleet of employees? Letting go isn't easy especially when you aren't sure what will wander into the gap created. Trust then becomes the core issue. Trust in the self, in one's sense of what makes sense illogically but intuitively and trust that at the deepest level, employees come to work to do good work - unless of course the initiative has been beaten or repressed out of them.

Previous blogs have covered personal spirit and its role in fueling performance. When trust is broken, talent repressed, or contribution unsupported the human spirit takes a beating. One or more of the measures: initiative, outlook on life, sense of control, are weakened and creative initiative goes underground. What happens then? Pt. 3 covers that question.