E³=Engagement

*Note: The following text is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Bill Berthel

Welcome to the Get Emergent Podcast. The Get Emergent Podcast guides leaders to creatively strengthen relationships and improve the performance of their leadership and those they lead. We like to provide concepts and ideas that you can turn into pragmatic experiments to help you develop your higher potential in your work and your leadership. And we hope you’ll find some better practices to apply directly in your work. I’m Bill Berthel.

Ralph Simone

And I’m Ralph Simone.

Bill Berthel

So Ralph, I love the equation we’re going to talk about today: E cubed equals engagement.

Ralph Simone

Yes. I think, and I don’t even know if I’m attributing this correctly, but I attribute E cubed, which I’ll explain in a moment, to Tony Robbins.

Bill Berthel

Yeah.

Ralph Simone

I’m a big Tony Robbins fan. I’ve probably read everything he’s written, from Unlimited Power to Life Force and some of his newer things. Early on when I was doing training and facilitation, this stuck with me. The three E’s are entertain, educate, and empower.

Bill Berthel

That’s the E3 that’s cubed: entertain, educate, and empower.

Ralph Simone

Exactly. And I think for anyone who does stand-up training, leads meetings, or has one-on-ones, if you’re looking to maximize engagement, think about those three things. I think in that order, although you could mix it up a bit. When people are entertained, they loosen up a little. There’s an opening. I learned this at the Covey Leadership Center in the late 80s: show a video clip.

Bill Berthel

Yeah.

Ralph Simone

From a contemporary movie that many people have seen. It’s entertaining, it creates laughter and positive energy. What it does is loosen people up so they’re more inclined to participate.

Bill Berthel

And the selection of that video not only loosens them up but might set the context for the work. So it’s not just entertainment for the sake of fun; it’s entertainment with a purpose.

Ralph Simone

Exactly. That’s the connection to education. Selecting a clip, a story, or a joke that connects with the theme of the meeting or session is ideal. There are some icebreakers you can use just to break the ice that are disconnected, but if you can link it to the topic you’re covering, it’s much more powerful.

Bill Berthel

We were talking about this: one of the three E’s might be the one most of us are challenged with or don’t feel as good at. I was curious about the root of the word “entertain.” I had to look it up because sometimes there’s a clue in the word for me. I didn’t know this — it comes from two Latin words meaning “to hold among” or “to hold together,” to hold people’s interest.

Ralph Simone

Isn’t that something?

Bill Berthel

I love that idea that entertainment is to be with or among and to hold space and interest. That’s the environment for engagement to begin.

Ralph Simone

Absolutely. Maybe I’ll jump to empower because we really can’t empower anybody. We can create conditions.

Bill Berthel

Yes.

Ralph Simone

Conditions for people to empower themselves. I remember vividly an exercise from the Covey Leadership Center: how do you grow a world-class tomato? What are the necessary conditions? The list would include soil, fertilizer,

Bill Berthel

Water.

Ralph Simone

Water and all that. As you think about your group sessions, what are the conditions you can create so people empower themselves? Because then they’re engaged. When you bring groups together, you want their engagement, their perspective, and conversational turn-taking so you get better answers.

Bill Berthel

Those conditions for empowerment are important because we’re suggesting that empowerment really comes from an internal source. It’s innate. I’m a huge B.F. Skinner fan because he was so right and so wrong about human behavior and motivation. He was the original stick-and-carrot guy. You had rewards or consequences. It turns out we’re not that simple. But he did recognize that those were external conditions that brought out the motivation or empowerment from the individual. They bring that or not. There’s more than sticks or carrots in the environment. That’s the point of not fully agreeing with Skinner. But he was right about the innate nature of motivation and empowerment.

Ralph Simone

People are more likely to bring it if they’ve had a shared experience with others that was a little bit of fun.

Bill Berthel

Right back to entertainment, right?

Ralph Simone

Exactly.

Bill Berthel

You share a video, an appropriate joke, or a small story. That shared experience creates an opening to educate — to share content, knowledge, ask questions, and get perspectives. We create that opening for the purpose of sharing content. Part of empowerment is challenging people on the applicability and practicality of the content you’re sharing. Create conditions of safety so people feel comfortable challenging it or sharing their opinion. It makes for a fascinating conversation.

Ralph Simone

Open that opportunity for education — really a transfer of knowledge, information, skills, abilities, whatever that is. These three pieces work together to achieve the level of engagement we’re all looking for. When we have complaints about engagement not being there, leaders have an opportunity through these three E’s.

Bill Berthel

And you can do them in groups or one-on-one. Think about it: when you entertain, when you are among people holding their interest, you can do that in a one-on-one coaching meeting by asking someone to share a recent success.

Ralph Simone

Yes.

Bill Berthel

What does that do? It creates a good feeling and openness to pursue something that may be challenging. Then, because they’re at a higher energetic level, they’re more open to creating questions or engaging with information we share.

Ralph Simone

I think — and hopefully this doesn’t sound too braggy — but I think this is the key to our podcasts. I think we do this well on the episodes we get good feedback on. We do a little entertainment. We tell stories or we’re willing to laugh at ourselves. Even that alone can be entertaining — listening to two people laugh at themselves.

Bill Berthel

No question. And I think the ones that don’t get feedback are the ones where we’re a little uptight and get too much down to business and too focused on education.

Ralph Simone

We want to give them a

Bill Berthel

We’re going to over-educate you so people’s eyes glaze over. The other piece we do is talk about how we might personally apply something. Most often, we challenge people to think about what they can do differently in their leadership, which I think is the invitation for empowerment. It’s asking the question for people to reflect on and see what emerges.

I was thinking about my early training at Carrier back in the mid-1980s. Three guys with no instructional design or professional training experience were training all of North America on total quality management. We were stiff, agenda-dependent, and reluctant to tell a joke or a story or do anything that made us slightly uncomfortable. As a result, many early sessions were flat.

Bill Berthel

Less engaging.

Ralph Simone

Less engaging. We covered the content, but if you open the door — one of our signatures in some of our training sessions and retreats is to read a passage. We don’t know how it will land, but we give people an opportunity to reflect and share. We’re creating that opening and that space, but also educating with content that invites people to engage.

Bill Berthel

I love that. And I’m no mathematician, and I don’t know what this does to our E cubed equals engagement equation, but I think there’s a fourth E here: energy. I think the leader brings energy. One thing our opening passage readings do is help shift people’s energy to be more present with each other. It even shifts my energy.

Ralph Simone

Absolutely.

Bill Berthel

Present with the group.

Ralph Simone

We talked about this in a recent podcast: any conversation between more than one person

Bill Berthel

Yes.

Ralph Simone

I’m not sure how you would

Bill Berthel

I have a lot of conversations by myself, so

Ralph Simone

With yourself. But it might be good to apply this thinking to yourself. We need to bring this level of energy. We need to open the door to engagement through entertaining people. Standing meetings in particular, or anything that has been going on for a long time, gets stale. One way to bring energy and engagement to any meeting — even as a participant — is to think of our calculus of E cubed, or maybe E to the fourth power: energy, entertain, educate, and empower. I think it requires getting out of your comfort zone and experimenting. There’s even a fifth E — experiment — with something that feels a little awkward. If you respond to a provocative question, there’s a chance it falls flat. But even that is an option.

Bill Berthel

It could be entertaining.

Ralph Simone

It can be entertaining.

Bill Berthel

Allow it to be.

Ralph Simone

One of the stories I love to tell — in fact, my son told it recently. He did some joke-telling at a staff meeting at the music venue he manages. He told the barber joke I used to tell to kick off quality management seminars. The joke about the barber cutting a guy’s hair who was going to Italy. I told it so often — it’s a long joke, so I won’t tell it here — but I realized I was halfway into it and hadn’t set it up properly. I said, “Oh no,” and then, “Well, folks, I don’t know if this is the bad news or the worse news, but I’m about to deliver the punchline and I haven’t set it up correctly.” And they laughed.

Bill Berthel

Right.

Ralph Simone

That alone created the opening through entertainment. Then we moved on to hopefully smoother education and empowerment throughout the rest of the training. My son said, “Dad, I told that joke because we all had to tell a joke. I don’t think I did it that well, but people really thought it was funny.”

Bill Berthel

That space of entertainment is like being a gracious host. The more comfortable you are, the more comfortable your guests are. A willingness to just flow with what happens. I think that’s true for educating and empowering as well. It starts with our energy.

Ralph Simone

I love your point because there’s a vulnerability. I’m not big on comedians, but I’ve developed a favorite. Why I like him is he makes a lot of my quirkiness feel okay. I’m able to be more vulnerable, and there’s grace associated with that quirkiness. The stuff I find off-putting, he normalizes.

Bill Berthel

That’s awesome. We need people like that in our lives — whether it’s the comedian on stage, the leader who leads our team, or a coworker — to help normalize some of our experiences.

Ralph Simone

So what would our challenge or suggestion be to our listeners on how to use this E to the third concept to get more engagement?

Bill Berthel

I love calling our listeners to action or at least giving them ideas on what they might experiment with. I’m going to assume that of the three, “entertain” might be the least natural or least comfortable for most folks. Some can flow right into it, but some might hesitate. I think it’s about being authentic. Be yourself. Don’t try to be a stand-up comedian if that’s not your thing. It might be sharing a small story or selecting a video that makes your meeting’s context more meaningful. It may not be you as the entertainer — you can use media that way — but I think it’s stepping into that experimentation.

Ralph Simone

I love that and I love “be yourself.” It could be sharing a story where you made a mistake and being a little vulnerable. Part of empowerment requires creating safety for people to raise their hand, challenge, push back, or try something new. That safety is better created when you demonstrate that you’re real, human, and make mistakes. That could be the entertainment portion of starting a meeting.

Bill Berthel

Absolutely. For “educate,” I think that’s the one most clear to us. But I think it needs to go beyond just sharing information. It’s about setting the context of why it’s important and coming back to the value of the knowledge, skills, or abilities being transferred. We sometimes miss that and just give information. The need for education is: here’s what we do with it and why we do it.

Ralph Simone

Absolutely. I was thinking of a “how” tip that would be good around education. Particularly if you find yourself with a group of introverts or leading a remote meeting where it’s easier for people not to engage, have them write down a response to a question or a reaction to something you’ve taught. Self-reflection. Silent generation. Don’t be afraid to do small-group buzz groups or breakout groups so they get to talk about it. You build engagement by first giving people space to think and write, then talk with a partner, then move into a larger group discussion. We can’t go from zero to sixty immediately. We have to build that. So that’s a very specific “how” to maximize engagement and empower people to share their opinions or perspectives.

Bill Berthel

For “empower,” I want to share something I’ve been experimenting with that I feel works really well. It might sound small, but it’s shifted something in my platform skills and front-of-room presentations. I would sometimes share a teaching piece or do the entertaining, share an educational piece, and then ask the really flat question: “Does anyone have any questions?” Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn’t. Other times, I’d say, “Okay, three people — I want three questions.” Those are forced. A subtle shift I’ve been experimenting with is: “Before I move on to the next piece, someone ask me a question.” People want to be helpful.

Ralph Simone

Oh, okay.

Bill Berthel

They want to be empowered. It’s a simple shift — “Before I move on to the next piece, someone ask me a question.” And I usually get very engaged questions from that. Most folks are ready; it’s what we invite them into.

Ralph Simone

That’s exactly where I was going: pay attention to how you’re inviting people in.

Bill Berthel

That’s it, right?

Ralph Simone

Yes. That’s really good.

Bill Berthel

Thanks for listening. Ralph, thank you. This was another great podcast.

Ralph Simone

A lot of fun.

Bill Berthel

We hope you enjoyed this episode and that you’re looking forward to more. You can listen to a new podcast twice a month here at Get Emergent or wherever you listen to your podcasts. We hope you pick something up you’ll apply to your leadership and work. Let us know how it goes — just reach out to [email protected], or you can directly reach out to me ([email protected]) or Ralph ([email protected]). Thanks for listening.