For instance, here in the Northwest there are two kinds of coffee shops. The first is staffed with people who don’t appear to want to be there. The person at the counter responds to your coffee order as if you’ve interrupted him to ask if he could tie your shoe laces for you.

The second kind of coffee shop is infested by alchemists who delight in your enjoyment of their products, service, and experience. Where do they want to be? Right here, right now, making coffee they believe could, in some small way, change your life. Every interaction for them is an opportunity to infect others with their passion for coffee. They know that not everyone will catch the bug, but those that do will return.

We’re instinctively drawn to people who are present and engaged. They want to be there. Which is why we should be mindful that the people we serve (students, clients, co-workers, and customers) ask this question of us: “Does she really want to be here?”

What’s fascinating is how we answer this question for people we serve. They study our facial expressions, attitudes, responses, and a host of other subtle cues. Research on this topic makes it clear that these cues don’t lie. They speak the truth about whether we want to here or not. We can all tell the truth, even without asking.

Listening organizations study us with Cousteau-like fascination. They engage us because we sense that they get us, know us, and understand what makes us tick.

Ace Hotel, Apple, and Starbucks study their clientele and create experiences for them that resonate at a personal, meaningful level. But they have to listen to do this well. So do you.

The DMV doesn’t get us or care to get us. They’re not listening.

What tools can you use to listen to the people you serve?

Surveys and focus groups alone won’t suffice as listening activities—not if you don’t dig deeper. Understanding the truth about people is an art. This is why one of the least effective ways to find out what people really want is to ask them. View content and data as windows through which we can better understand people. Look through the glass, not at it.

Listening organizations don’t merely collect feedback. They invest resources to decipher meaning—a commitment that reveals the depth and authenticity of their interest in us.

You strive to engage people each day. How do you listen to them, and, more importantly, how do you intuit meaning?

I was out running yesterday when I came upon an enormous oak tree that was actively dropping acorns. I gathered a few in my hand and noticed for the first time the enormous contrast between a single, simple acorn and an elaborate, ancient oak tree.

Simplifying the complex is a form of art that oak trees practice each year. In the course of a lifetime their ever-growing branches house generations of birds, squirrels, and tree forts. But each year they still produce simple, elegant acorns.

Too often the way we communicate about a topic mirrors the complexity of our knowledge of the topic. As our knowledge grows we need the discipline to refine the complexity of our knowledge into its essential, most defining elements.

This is how our knowledge grows more complex, according to George Loewenstein, behavioral economist at Carnegie Mellon University: we want to know more about what we already know. Through learning more about a topic we discover gaps in our knowledge. These gaps spike our curiosity and motivate us toward deeper understanding. In time, as we fill these gaps, our knowledge grows more elaborate and nuanced–like an oak tree.

The resulting depth and complexity makes us a resource to others. Your physician, for example, is a resource to the degree that she seeks to fill gaps in her knowledge base. But her inability to communicate her topic in relevant terms prevents her from engaging her patients, a shortcoming that renders her less of a resource.

The simplest, most refined presentation will draw people to your message and to you, the messenger. This discipline makes you and your message more accessible and engaging.

As you grow into a tree remember to ask yourself, “Am I still making acorns?”

Here’s how you can make the most of Own It:

1. Share this book with others. Email the link to co-workers, friends, and family members.

2. Gather a group of people from your team or organization to talk through the activities and strategies.

3. Invite me to talk with your organization. Email me here.

Click here to get the book. You can read it on a screen or download and print a paper version.

I hope you find it helpful.

Gratefully,

-Andrew

Next week I’m releasing an e-book called Own It . The goal of Own It is to help you cultivate the sort of engagement that enables others to own your message for themselves. Here’s an excerpt:

You own your own message. It’s personal to you, but how personal is it to the people you serve? Your message is most effective when you transfer ownership. Your message then becomes their message.

Own It features new exercises and strategies you can use to help others engage with and acquire your message. I hope it will encourage and challenge you professionally and personally.

Send an email to others who may like to receive Own It. They can sign up here on the site in the right column.

The industrialized model we inherited is built on information dissemination. It culminated in the ultimate information disseminating machine: the internet. So now what? Organizations that insist on disseminating information will go the way of the encyclopedia. They will be dinosaurs.

Organizations that thrive will do what the internet can never do. They will substitute dissemination for dialogue, information for interaction. The internet can never replicate the dynamic that takes place in a room full of people who are sharing ideas.

Make the transition. The world no longer needs you to be a reservoir of information. We need you to become something far more valuable.

This is a counter-cultural statement. Our culture values and rewards accomplishments, not engagement. But engagement is a requisite for great work. We produce little if what we produce does not stem from engagement: engagement in what we are doing, engagement with others, and encouraging others to engage with us and our work.

Engagement is complete immersion and involvement in what we are doing without a view to what we may or may not accomplish. A high level of engagement is accompanied with an equally low level of concern about a final product.

Engagement is obsession with process. When you lose yourself in a conversation or a project you are fully engaged.

Here’s the irony: it’s by losing yourself in the process that you create products of the greatest value.

I’m writing a new book about engagement. I’m completely immersed in the creative process. The book is taking directions I couldn’t have ever predicted and never would have experienced if I had predetermined what this product would become.

What projects are you involved with right now? What’s your level of engagement with these projects? Are you lost in the projects or just trying to accomplish something?

I find it helpful to answer these questions for each of my projects. It helps me leave the shallows of a mind focussed on product and dive into process’ deep-end. It’s there, where I’m fully engaged, that I know I’ll surface with things of value.

1. Listen to entire albums

I’ve become a serial user of sites like Pandora and Grooveshark. Albums contain entire stories. Songs are just the chapters. I’m get started I have sitting next to me Beck’s Modern Guilt, Radiohead’s, The Bends, Sinatra’s, September of My Years, and Van Morrison’s, Astral Weeks.

2. Check my email inbox about as often as I check my mailbox

If you’re trying to do work that is creative and contributes value to the lives of other people, multi-tasking is a myth (recent research is pretty conclusive about this one). Good work comes from deeply focusing on one project at a time. Email inhibits this kind of focus.

3. Draw one picture each day with my non-dominant hand

For many of us, our left brain (the logical, rational, and rather uninventive side of the brain) is like a cushy couch we can’t crawl out of. To wrest myself from its grasp I’m going to solicit help from my right brain. So I went to the university bookstore yesterday and purchased a drawing pad and nice black Copic pen. These drawings are horrid to look at and so fun to make, especially knowing I can’t erase.

4. Read better books

Good books make skimming impossible. You have to completely immerse yourself in the text. I’m a third of the way through The Brothers Karamazov. I’d say it qualifies.

5. Complete my next book

I’m near the completion of my first short ebook on how to engage people with important messages. This will be the first portion of a larger book on engagement that I plan to publish by January 2012. If you’ve ever taken on a project like this, you know it is like trying to wrestle Andre the Giant while wearing a blindfold. But I plan to see it through.

I better stop there. I hope you find this interesting, perhaps even inspiring. Make your own list. It’s nice to have a handful of things to tether to which you can tether your daily schedule.

In the marketplace, companies like Google and Ideo are more like gardens than factories. These companies thrive because they are full of fertile compost, permitting employees to be more creative, engaged, and productive.

Tragic is how pandemic the industrial factory sensibility is in many educational institutions, nonprofit organizations, and corporations.

Fortunately places like Gutenberg College and St. Johns College serve as gardens that cultivate creative, collaborative learners and thinkers. These skills have become the x-factor in the 21st century marketplace.

Here’s an activity for you and people you work with. Feel free to print it out. Just click on the image and save it to your computer.

Lest we forget, a life committed to being engaged is a life that values the care of one’s self. When we are spiritually, emotionally and physically balanced we are far better equipped to engage with life and others. We’re able to give the most when our own well is full. This means we need to find time each day, week, month, and season to immerse ourselves in those activities that restore our sense of wellbeing. Consider this thought experiment: If you had fifteen obligation-free minutes right now what would you do? Power nap? Read? Take a short walk? Think of what you might do for an hour, an entire day, or weekend, if you could release yourself from commitments and obligations. These pastimes don’t need to be extravagant. A “stay-cation,” in which you stay home, can be incredibly restorative—if you protect your time.

Taking time to fill our personal wells is a discipline in that it requires us to be proactive. It’s like making an appointment to see a doctor, only we’re making an appointment with ourselves. In some cases you may find it restorative to have others join you in your appointments. This isn’t a problem, so long as the time is rejuvenating. Some people, including me, require small and large chunks of alone-time for optimal wellbeing. I go on a fishing trip with some friends for a few days each year. This brief retreat offers the perfect combination of solitude and togetherness. I come home fresh, more grounded, and ready to engage with life’s many commitments.

For a host of reasons we often neglect to make such appointments. We think we’re undeserving and just too busy care for ourselves. Or we may think that doing something for ourselves, such as reading a book for an hour with a cup of tea, is selfish. But we must not confuse self-care with being selfish. Self-care is what we do to be more fully human and alive. In this state we resemble more closely who we were made to be. Selfishness, in contrast, is insatiable and interested only in what will better my welfare. In the end, self-care is a gift to ourselves and to those we care about.