Good morning Team!  It’s Friday!

I’m sitting next to a distinguished gentleman on my regular flight from where I work back to where I live.  He dresses, acts and behaves like someone who was once retired and now reengaged.

After looking for an executive administrative coordinator/business partner for … an extended period of time, I reached out to a former colleague to gauge interest in filling the role remotely.  She respectfully declined indicating she is happily retired.  She reached a point where it wasn’t appealing to reengage.

Today, I modified an offer to a talented technician who no longer felt their efforts were appreciated and sought affirmation and recognition elsewhere.  I don’t normally make a practice of re-recruiting someone who has secured an offer somewhere else.  This was an exception in an attempt to get someone to reengage.

I feel I have a tremendous amount of experience in this area of reengagement over my career but specifically over the past three years and four distinct roles.  I can empathize with each scenario and a few more of my own.

It’s possible to be:

•Engaged and employed

•Engaged and unemployed

•Disengaged and employed

•Disengaged and unemployed

The common point in the examples here is that all people were disengaged for one reason or the other.  The art of reengaging is far from simple or easy and may require much more than a reintroduction.  It requires a level of trust, a reassurance that the environment will be more forgiving than the last reason to disengage and there has to be higher perceived value than simply staying disengaged.

That’s a detailed and specific way of engaging “your people”

Have a blessed weekend!