Using Social Media to Engage Students.  Ten Tips for Engaging Your Workforce.  Are Your Customers Engaged?  Creating Engaging Presentations.

We are inundated with articles on creating engagement.  What’s going on?  Why is everyone so disengaged?  More importantly, why are we all so boring?  The answer is simple . . . to create engagement you must first be engaged yourself.  People are overworked and that they have little time to do just about anything.  As a result our interactions have become superficial and devoid of meaning.  No one engages with that.

Creating engagement is actually pretty simple and doesn’t require a lot of flash. Just be interesting.  Find a way to tap into people’s interests and passions.

Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest all engage people.  However, they don’t do it because they are Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.  They do it because they provide an outlet for people to share and learn about things in which they are interested.  Not every page works.  They only work if they meet someone’s need.

Similarly, kids don’t use technology or play MMORPGs just because they are there.  They do it because they are fun.  They provide something interesting and challenging. They give them a chance to advance, improve, and demonstrate mastery.

Courses that have engaged students generally have teachers who are actively engaged in the subject matter and teaching it.  They may use technology, but it is their passion which drives engagement.

You can’t make a presentation engaging simply by adding stories.  I’ve heard some pretty boring stories. Presentations are engaging when the presenter connects with an interest in the audience or challenges them to see their world in a new way.  The best presenters are the ones who have devoted considerable time and effort (i.e., engagement) learning about their topic.  They have the best stories and examples because they’ve experienced the same wonder that they are conveying to the audience.  It also helps when the speaker actually understands what he or she is talking about and hasn’t just memorized a page of “speaker notes”.   It’s hard to engage anyone with content you don’t understand.

And finally, employees don’t suddenly become engaged because they are involved in morning huddles, skip-level meetings, or town hall conversations.  Employees become engaged when they find challenging work that recognizes and rewards their creativity, value, and contribution.  Leaders who have the greatest employee engagement are the ones who have the greatest amount of authentic engagement with their employees.

One of the most enduring and engaging technologies off all times remains the book.  A good book, whether fiction or non-fiction, can hold a person’s attention well beyond the guidelines we often hear for presentations or other interactions (fifteen to eighteen minutes).  That’s because at their core, books engage our minds and emotions.  They aren’t interactive (at least not physically) or flashy.  They don’t offer a tremendous amount of user control.  They don’t connect you with other people to share your opinions.  They just capture our imagination and interests. That’s all they need.  All of the engagement techniques in the world can’t out-perform being interesting.

There is no shortcut to engagement.  It takes work.  Alot of work.  Yet, the work isn’t all that hard. Start by becoming engaged yourself.  Invest time in your work.  Learn about your business, your industry, and your job.  Go deep.  Invest time in your people. Find out their interests, challenges, and passions. Figure out what they need (and forget what you need). Then, adapt everything you do to meet those needs, draw upon those interests, and provide assistance in overcoming those challenges.  That’s it.  If you do that consistently, you will soon see engagement rise.

Stop trying to engage people’s eyes and ears and starting focusing on their hearts and minds.  That’s where real engagement begins.