The Art of a Successful Partnership: Staying Engaged After Saying “I do!”

Ahh, February, the Love month, host of Valentine’s Day. The day millions of us express our love with flowers, chocolates and those sugar hearts with goofy sayings.  The day thousands will pop the question and become engaged.

If you’ve been engaged or just plain head-over-heels in love, I bet you can remember how great you felt: energized, empowered, able to leap tall buildings. All was right with the world.  You may also recall when the bliss began to blister and it took more energy, attention and communication to keep your promise to be the best partner ever.

It’s like that for us when we begin a new job. We’re energized, ready to give our all and contribute to our own and the company’s success. We’re open, listening, willing to learn. Then, as time passes, the bliss fades, the grind sets in. We become disengaged. We’re at work, but we’ve quit showing up as the contributor we promised ourselves we would be.

Disengagement is not an anomaly on the work front. In 2008, a study by The Gallup Organization estimated that 6 out of 8 American workers, almost 22 million, were extremely negative or “actively disengaged” at work and calculated the cost to the American economy of that disengagement to be almost $300 billion per year.

I think the cost to the American psyche is much higher. When we’re disengaged, our performance and satisfaction decrease. The more we stay disengaged and go through the motions, the harder to re-engage. It doesn’t have to be that way. Being disengaged happens. Staying disengaged is a choice.

Now, more than ever, each of us needs to re-connect with our values and re-engage at work, at home and in our communities. (Want to learn more about the impact of disengagement? View my free webinar: Values: The Energy Source for Employee Engagement, http://unboundideas.com/past-events/camille-smith/.)

When people have a heart-felt connection between what they value and the company’s purpose, they are naturally engaged. They are self-motivated (the only true motivation) and bring extra energy to their role.  Who doesn’t want that?

How to stay engaged:

1.    Know what you do and don’t value.  What energizes you? What drains you? When our values are satisfied, we’re in our performance zone. When they aren’t, stress and poor performance appear.  True, we can’t always do what energizes us. Knowing what does can help us make it through what doesn’t.

2.    Satisfy your values on & off the job. Connect your values to your work. Where your job doesn’t fulfill a value, get it satisfied elsewhere. Volunteer. Get a hobby. Be creative.

3.    Start today. Employees: Don’t wait for leaders to do this for you. They can’t. Leaders: Lead. It’s your job to provide opportunities for everyone, including yourself, to be engaged.

Being engaged is good for you, those around you and for your business. Plus, the feeling lasts way more than one sugar-coated day. Who wouldn’t want that?