One of the strategies in Gallup’s 2024 Employee Engagement Strategies report is "Prepare managers to have meaningful conversations with their employees."

Gallup researchers studied the most common characteristics of extremely meaningful and less meaningful conversations. These are the top 5 characteristics of meaningful conversations, in order of importance:

1) Recognition or appreciation for recent work.

2) Collaboration and relationships.

3) Current goals and priorities at work.

4) The length of the conversation: Between 15 and 30 minutes is enough time for a meaningful conversation, but only if it happens frequently.

5) Employee strengths or the things they do well: Managers can have much more meaningful discussions about how each person gets their work done if those conversations are based on what they do best.

The takeaway is that feedback is meaningful to employees when their manager focuses on recognition, collaboration, goals and priorities, and strengths. And if these conversations happen every week, they can be brief. Naturally, problems and challenges will arise — and managers and employees should discuss them — but to improve engagement, managers must have conversations that inspire each individual.

Everything DiSC is a language your organization can use to build rapport and therefore engagement between managers and employees. DM me for a demo or more information.