Engagement comes before excellence

During a philosophical e-mail exchange, a friend of mine recently wrote about “excellence.” I surprised myself when I reacted badly to the word. Everybody loves excellence, right?

As I tried to explain myself I realized the word “excellence” comes with a lot of baggage these days. It seems to focus on worldly esteem, recognition or what the spin doctors have been able to convince us is “excellent.” Several years ago, business experts told us about “excellent” and “great” companies. Within a matter of a few years some of those companies were on the ash heap.

Many leaders seem more focused on the Chamber of Commerce excellence award and a bottom-line definition of “high performance” rather than they are with real substance. The subjectivity of the “excellence” discussion drives me nuts, especially when it gets defined differently for executives than for worker bees. Many executives make scores of millions a year for a mediocre performance, but keep yapping about excellence for their employees.

Excellence is so subjective we can’t always arrive at reasonable standards. Yet, that lack of standards doesn’t deter people from believing they can keep score. Everybody else judges our excellence. And it doesn’t matter if the people making judgments have achieved excellence. They will still tell the world their opinion about our excellence.

This is not a rant in favor of mediocrity. We all must aim for the highest standards of performance. We must try to be the best we can be. Personal pursuit of something like excellence can be fine as long as we don’t hang accomplishment, verification, praise and power around its neck. Most of us do, so we need to find another way to achieve.

I argue we would make our organizations and ourselves better if we pursued “quality engagement” with everything and everyone we encounter. That would allow us to make a difference in very genuine ways.

I think when it comes to setting our own high standards that quality engagement can net the same results without all the baggage and vagueness that surrounds the word excellence. Quality engagement builds more specificity into our behavior. If you commit yourself to making every encounter an inspired, even holy, encounter, that makes a difference in your life, in the life of the person you’re engaged with, and in your work product, you will have an incredible impact.

Engagement, the act of truly relating to the human being on the other side of the negotiating table, the hospital bed, the classroom, the plant floor and in the welfare line is what we need to make a difference. Business would be far better if we judged executives on the quality of their engagement.

Personalizing our pursuit of making a difference would change everything. I believe we are called to develop personal relationships that allow each party to grow. If we genuinely invest ourselves in every encounter in our work and in our families, we would find truth, goodness, purity and even holiness.

I believe I write the best of these columns when I attempt to connect with readers in a genuine way. When I speak and facilitate I always try to lock on to a few people in the audience with whom I can connect in an almost spiritual way. I have a friend who does some hospital chaplaincy work. He believes he has found the transcendent when he connects in a deep and true way with grieving parents.

I would argue he will never know what excellence is in counseling parents of a dying child. He will absolutely know when he achieves a “quality engagement.” You will know it too, when you genuinely connect to co-workers, customers and managers.

Tip for your search: Think of the most valuable thing you have ever done. It has to be something you threw your heart and soul into to make it work. It’s unlikely you commit yourself to every work relationship and every task in that way. Try it. See how much change there is in encounters and work product with that kind of engagement.

Resource for your search: “The Highest Goal: The Secret that Sustains You in Every Moment” by Michael Ray (Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc. 2004)