Have you ever shopped at IKEA?

Pretty amazing isn’t it?!  Where else can you buy a kitchen and put it together with an Allen Key.

IKEA was founded in Sweden in 1943 by Ingvar Kamprad when he was 17 years old.  The acronym IKEA is made up of the initials of his name, plus those of Elmtaryd, the family farm where he was born, and the nearby village Agunnaryd.  IKEA is the world’s largest furniture retailer.  In 2015 the company generated global revenues in excess of 32 billion Euros.

According to Millward Brown Optimor’s “Brandz Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands 2015″, not only is IKEA the fifth most valuable retailer in the world, it is also the most valuable furniture retailer brand in the world, valued at over 17 billion U.S. dollars.  IKEA operates 375 stores in 47 countries.  More than 750 million customers visit IKEA stores every year.

They have got to be doing something right.

Doug McCann, a former IKEA executive and now a speaker on employee engagement, recently shared with me a very interesting HR philosophy at the heart of IKEA.  He referred to it as the Hands, Head and Heart philosophy.  Simply stated it is this:

You can buy people’s hands, you can train their heads, but until you get their hearts you don’t have the whole person.

And, if you don’t have the whole person is that person really engaged in their work?  And if they’re not engaged, are they really that productive?  I would suggest “no” on both counts.

According to Doug, the Gallop organization did a global survey on employee engagement and discovered that close to 66% of the workforce is disengaged to a certain degree, and 19% are actively disengaged.  What impact do those kinds of statistics have on the productivity of an organization?  You can bet it’s not good!

Do you believe that more productive organizations are more competitive?  I certainly do.  Organizations that find ways to improve the productivity of their people definitely have a competitive advantage.

So, if engaged people are more productive, and more productive people create a competitive advantage for their organizations, then it would behoove leaders to focus on employee engagement as a powerful means to move their organizations forward.  And, if according to IKEA, employee engagement is all about engaging the hearts of your people and not simply their hands and heads, then we need to learn how to connect with people at a heart level.

Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

I would suggest this can be paraphrased to read, “Never doubt that a small group of wholehearted people can change the world, it’s the only thing that has.”
So what is the “heart”?

I would like to suggest that the heart is your deepest place of passion, purpose, commitment, conviction, identity and life.  We tend to think that the heart is all about “touchy feely” stuff.  However, your heart is not just about emotion, it is the place of your deepest convictions, commitments, passions and purpose.

What would you think if someone came to you and told you they have lost heart?  You would think they have lost their will to continue on.  To work and/or live half-heartedly is to do so without passion, purpose, conviction and commitment.

So, how does a leader engage the hearts of those they lead?  That is the million dollar question.  We understand how to engage people’s hands and their head, but the area of the heart is largely uncharted waters.

There are many ways you can do this, but it all comes down to one thing:  care about people.

Care about who they are, and not just what they do.  Care enough to acknowledge, affirm and appreciate them.  Care enough to listen to them, to help them grow, and to hold them to a high standard.  Care enough to envision them in regard to the importance of what they do, where they can go in the company, and where the company is going.

Don’t just settle for hands and heads – go for the heart!