Over 50 experienced practitioners in International Engagement met on Tuesday 19th November to share their experiences of what makes for great engagement in different countries, what it looks like and what the organisation has done to promote it. David MacLeod set the scene, powerfully drawing everyone’s attention to how a number of forces in the wider business world are coming together to create a ‘moment in time’ for engagement to promote a fundamental change in how businesses are run. Then, John Smythe shared his insights from consulting and speaking internationally including advising everyone to “partner with risk takers” to effect change.
Then it was for participants to share and discuss their experiences, using a ‘world cafe’ approach. The outputs were a series of recommended practices to increase engagement that seem to work internationally. See what you think of World cafe outcomes v 20 10 13 with and please let us have your input.
“We are very much at the beginning of plugging an important gap in current knowledge about engagement” said Caroline Sharley, Chair of the Cross-cultures sub-group. “We have fragments of what we know works in a particular country or organisation, but what we need is a set of principles that anyone can use consistently to go about increasing engagement everywhere in the world. It’s a exciting and important problem to have!”
The sub-group has ambitious plans to further research and refine the outputs from the workshop. If you would like to get involved, and learn more about what it takes to build engagement globally, please contact Caroline
