Hey, this is Chris with Hacking your Leadership. On today's discussion on employee engagement. I want to talk about the role that tools like augmented reality, virtual reality, the metaverse, you know, the all these kind of the futuristic tools that have become you know, part of our culture and our zeitgeist right now. I want to talk about the way that these will change how leaders interact with teams.
And I think it's important to talk about because you know, all of those tools there is a you know, a seemingly productivity slash business component to them, and then there's an entertainment slash fund component to them. And I think on a lot of teams and a lot of organizations and a lot of leaders, that kind of split is is looked at from purposes of work versus not work. And so if I'm really into those types of tools, and I'm a leader of people, then I might you know,
play video games on them at home. I might you know, watch movies on them, you know, when I not at work. But when I'm interacting with my team, I'm looking at it from the perspective of, Okay, how do how do I how do I use these tools to interact with my teams from a from a standpoint of productivity or
you know, getting more work done. And I think there can be an overlap here where the way that a lot of these tools can impact leaders and teams positively is in how leaders use these tools not just to drive more productivity, but from a standpoint of how do we drive better culture and engagement and fun.
Yeah, I think that there's so much in technology that we can utilize to do more things to build community, to build culture, to personalize the workplace, to be able to recognize great work in a much more unique and personal way. I just think that there's there's a lot of things that I think about all the tech that we use to just mess with each other, to create memes, to to make pictures, dance around, to do face swap, like all these funny things that we do in this
space of technology. When you take now in AR and VR into the workplace, we tend to only think about it from like how do we use this to be more productive at work? And I think there's a big space here to say like, well, how can we use this to actually build better culture and make it more personal and have more fun with the team. And when you're thinking about employee engagement. Those are the types of things that I think we overlook and just spend some
more time digging into from a leadership standpoint. And so I think there's something that we're just now at the beginning of what could this possibly look like. But as these technologies roll out into our everyday kind of work days, that that's when we need to start to figure out, like what can we do to utilize them to either create more engagement or more interaction amongst each other in a fun and engaging way. I think that's the power of some of this technology.
Yeah, I'm thinking back to, you know, the probably almost twenty years ago now, which is crazy to think, when the Nintendo We first came out, it's probably O six
oh seven somewhere in that neighborhood. And I was with a team of people who we all created our own you know Nintendo We, the WE little person that you create, and we made it look like ourselves, and we did team building exercises where we would do you know, the WE fitness stuff, and we'd have competitions for different sports and you were playing with your little little you know WE character that you created, and it wasn't It wasn't
you know, related to productivity or the business. It was just kind of having fun and it wasn't presented as team building. It was just kind of like, hey, you want to challenge somebody that you work alongside to do this. That builds relationships and camaraderie teamwork, and that leads to better productivity because when you get along with your teammates, you become more collaborative with your teammates, and then better
work gets done. So you know, this is this has been happening forever, like there's always new technology and there are always leaders who will you know, gravitate towards that
technology anyway, because that's who they are. The leaders who can do that and then take the next step of saying, how can I integrate this within my team from a standpoint of, you know, increasing the way people engage with each other, not to increase productivity, but to increase the way people engage with each other, knowing that the increase in productivity will eventually come. That's kind of the sweet
spot there. So I want to talk about some of the ways leaders can do this with their teams, But
first I'm gonna get up over sponsors. All Right, if you're a leader of people and you've been in the workforce for you know, let's say five or six years or more at least, you've undoubtedly been in situations where a thing that could been fun ended up not being fun because it was presented as a team building exercise or as a kind of a top down, structured way of you know, getting people to have fun with each
other that wasn't organic or didn't feel organic. And you've probably also been in situations where you've had interactions that did feel organic because they were organic. If you're a leader of people, it's very important that you don't cross that line. It's very important that when you're trying to integrate things like this or or you know, use these tools to you know, interact with your team better, that it doesn't start from I'm the leader, this is what
we're all gonna do now. It starts from a, hey, do you want to work with me on this? With one person, a crowd draws a crowd. And so if you can work with a person, or you know, a single person or two or three people that you already have a close relationship with, and other people can kind of see what's going on, and they want to get involved.
That kind of organic growth is what leads to the the camraadering the team building you're looking for you standing in front of the room and saying we're all gonna put these goggles on and do an exercise together. That doesn't work because they go into it thinking there's an ulterior motive. Your employees will think they're doing this because they want us to engage with people that we wouldn't
normally engage with. And what I'm saying is, as a leader, your job is to get people to engage with people that they wouldn't normally engage with, but to have it be organic, which is to say, create the space that allows it to happen and then know that it will happen.
Yeah, And I think take advantage of the technology and
what it's capable of doing. I think again, I've been on virtual calls and things like that, and we use different technologies all over the place for different meetings and stuff, and I think sometimes we only use a small percentage of the technology and the tool just to accomplish the thing that we're trying to accomplish in the moment, versus thinking about how could we utilize this to be more interactive, to be more creative, to be able to recognize people
in a different way, to engage with people in a
different way. And I think that's something that thinking about, you know, ar VR, metaverse, you know, virtual communication platforms, whatever they might be, there are ways to utilize them that will allow you to engage with teams in a different way and will create the spaces that I think will make it more fun and and and and more of an opportunity to to you know, make people feel seen and heard and you know, celebrated for the work that they're doing and not just the monotonous of we
only use these things for these certain ways, for these
certain reasons. So that would be my only other thoughts and challenge on this, and something that I'm constantly thinking about is how can we use this technology to maybe interact with a workforce and with teams that are very comfortable in this technology in other areas, uh and maybe have you know, a higher expectation of engagement outside of work because of the way that people utilize the technology, and then a lower element of engagement in work because
we only use the bare minimums of the technology that we have.
Right, and they are self imposed restrictions too. Like if we're using the bare minimums, it's because we have said, oh, this doesn't belong here. This is a work environment, not a this it's we're trying to define it in advance, and we're limiting ourselves in terms of what our teams are capable of doing. If we just kind of like you know, took the gloves off and you know, threw the rule book out and said Okay, here's what you can't do, it's more like, this is what we have
to get done today. How we get there can be as fun and engaging or as you know, boring and unengaging as we want it to be, and it's completely within our control as leaders to make it go the way that we want to go, knowing that the outcomes will be better if it is fun and engaging and people feel recognized for the work that they're doing and using the technology to do it is a great way
to do it. You know, before a lot of this technology came out, I remember feeling like, as a leader, you know, struggling to find ways of recognizing people that were different, recognizing people that it wasn't just the same ways that we recognize people, and with a lack of technology, you can feel limited in terms of the ways you can do that with the resources that you have available
to you. The technology that is available to us now and that will continue to grow, opens up so many doors for how we can meet people where they are and and and recognize them and reward them and you know, kind of hoist them up on pedestals in front of
their teammates in ways that we've never done before. That that will feel different and that will be great at at kind of creating that engagement and that that buy into the work that has to be done because they they got the single the most important thing they need to get out of any interaction, which is it made them feel good, made them feel good to be there. If you can get that out of your team, the lessons of the interaction or of the training will land automatically.
All you have to do is make sure they feel good about themselves while they're there, and the rest will fall into place. The technology is the way to do that, and the leaders who use the technology in this way are the ones that will get better outcomes. Thank you for joining us in this episode on employee engagement we'll see you next Thursday. For the next one, you have a great day.