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The Engagement Dynamics Story

Engagement Dynamics is a Leadership and Organisational Development consultancy which builds exceptional solutions and relationships to inspire and support courageous future-focused leaders. 

We focus on enabling business leaders to ensure that the members of their teams are optimally engaged in the context of the complexities, on-going changes and conflicts which occur in the business environment.

We offer strengths-based coaching to individuals, leaders, teams and people practitioners. Our consulting offerings are tailored to each client's context and address some of the most pressing organisational issues and current development opportunities. In addition to developing our own programmes, our subject matter and creative expertise are also applied to the design and redesign of highly engaging and transformative learning and development programmes for our clients.

 

We have a pioneering spirit, challenge conventional thinking, understand how to lead people through emergent developmental processes and love to work as thinking partners with our clients; assisting them to figure out and implement adaptive strategies to engage people within a business environment where there are no proven success precedents.

Our proprietary Dynamic Engagement Framework can be applied to engagement challenges in the following interactional environments:

Engagement Dynamics was born in the natural sciences; in the study of human physiology and psychology. The starting point for all our work is an understanding of people as physical, social, emotional, intellectual and spiritual beings.

Engagement is a whole person construct. No one is optimally engaged unless they are engaged physically, socially, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually, although it is possible to be partially engaged in some of these individual aspects of personhood.

To understand people we need to actively tap into insights from the medical sciences, branches of psychology, anthropology, sociology, theology...... The list is endless.

These scientific principles help us to understand peoples' choices, responses and behaviours, their energy levels, motivation, competence and capacity, Our favourite theorists help us to make sense of our research observations, to craft effective transformative processes and to help people to understand each other.

The reasons that we embrace the arts in our practice may be less obvious than the reasons we tap into science. But there is in fact a science to the power of the arts in the work which we do.

Our work is fundamentally about people changing to become more individually or collectively effective. One of our core beliefs is that we cannot force people to engage. Nor can we force them change. We can only create an environment (milieu) in which they choose to engage or to change.

People change when their existing paradigms change, usually through an experience which challenges their existing physical, social, emotional, intellectual and/ or spiritual ways of being. Such a challenge can only be experienced through the 5 senses; taste, touch, smell, sight and hearing.

The arts provides one of the most powerful forms of experience through which paradigms can be shifted, with the power to tap into physical, social, emotional, intellectual and spiritual aspects of personhood and to impact taste, touch, smell, sight and hearing.

The reasons that we embrace the arts in our practice may be less obvious than the reasons we tap into science. But there is in fact a science to the power of the arts in the work which we do.

Our work is fundamentally about people changing to become more individually or collectively effective. One of our core beliefs is that we cannot force people to engage. Nor can we force them change. We can only create an environment (milieu) in which they choose to engage or to change.

People change when their existing paradigms change, usually through an experience which challenges their existing physical, social, emotional, intellectual and/ or spiritual ways of being. Such a challenge can only be experienced through the 5 senses; taste, touch, smell, sight and hearing.

Intentionality

We are purpose-driven and want to do work that matters and makes a positive difference in the world. We strive to make strategic choices and to activate them with intentionality

Emergence

The principles of complexity require us to ensure that all our work is emergent and takes cognisance of change – internal and external, individual and organisational.

Integration

Because organisations are interdependent and systemic, we seek to ensure that the work we do is integrated into the fibre and functioning of each client’s system.

Learning

We are passionate about the learning journey and personal and organisational growth. We believe that the absence of growth guarantees stagnation and death.

Collaboration

We are committed to fostering and practising collaboration, strategic partnering and co-creation, transferring skills as we do so.

Pioneering

In the current rapidly emerging and unpredictable business environment, it is vital that we are able to help our clients to navigate the dramatic uncertainties and opportunities which they encounter.

Transdisciplinarity

Diversity enables great thinking, and perspectives from all disciplines have relevance to the work that we do.

Thinking

Our choice is to act as thinking partners, assisting our clients to ask and answer powerful questions as they figure out the new business environment. There are no text-books. We have to engage our leadership minds.

Whilst we integrate many common leadership, human capital and organisational development theories, our work is particularly founded on 3 cornerstones.

Optimal contribution follows optimal engagement which we equate to organisational and personal investment. Engagement is a highly individualised concept and our proprietary Dynamic Engagement Framework© provides a useful sense-making frame for exploring engagement, culture and performance gaps, the challenges which exacerbate them and the leadership choices which result in positive change.

The Greatness Canvas is our transformational roadmap. Once a strategy has been established, we use the Canvas to enable individuals, teams and organisations to navigate a developmental journey, which focuses on the drivers which are most relevant to their objectives and customised to their unique issues, goals and environment.

We prefer to include a powerful assessment in all our strategic interventions which identifies the innate talents and wiring of role players. The results of this assessment quickly identify the vulnerabilities (mismanaged strengths) which are often the root of workplace challenges, as well as the strengths available for development and progress. Understanding genuine weaknesses and developing strategies for managing these, is also a vital part of the process. When people understand themselves and each other, they can begin to lead and develop beliefs, values, thoughts, emotions, actions and relationships to achieve outstanding, sustainable results.



 

We offer strengths-based coaching to individuals, leaders, teams and people practitioners. Our consulting offerings are tailored to each client's context and address some of the most pressing organisational issues and current development opportunities. In addition to developing our own programmes, our subject matter and creative expertise are also applied to the design and redesign of highly engaging and transformative learning and development programmes for our clients.

Janet du Preez

Janet is a very versatile leadership development practitioner with strong business acumen; a passionate, provocative and creative thinker who is at her best partnering with courageous leaders to co-create thriving 21st Century organisations. She is constantly alert for good people, good ideas and good systems which can be made even more effective.

Currently completing an MSc in the Management of Innovation and Technology and with a background in health sciences, psychology and business, Janet is uniquely qualified to understand people and the practical systems which underlie behaviour and outcomes. Her broad-based work experience includes leading in governmental, non-profit and volunteer organisations, small, medium and corporate businesses, service and trade enterprises, retail, financial and medical industries. As a result, the perspective which she brings to senior leadership training, facilitation, coaching and consulting is systemic, practical and focused on sustainable application.

Against the background of this diverse business experience, Janet has developed a particular interest in enabling the growth and effectiveness of leaders. She emphatically believes that business is about people and that leaders are responsible for creating organisations that inspire people and enable them to deliver optimally. Janet’s insight into individual and organisational change extends beyond static models and frames and she uses her well-honed coaching, facilitation, process development and strategic consulting skills to engage talent, passion, insight and action in pursuit of great leadership, meaningful interaction, effective systems and strategic effectiveness.

Janet is the developer of the Dynamic Engagement Framework© and Art of Greatness Guide©. She is founder of Engagement Dynamics and loves to work in collaboration with others. Janet has been extensively involved with the South African Organisation Development Network and the Flourish! OD Conference for 6 years and was on the Academic Board of Worldsview Academy for Organisational Change from 2011 to 2014. She has served on the Board of Cotlands, as an Organisational Development Consultant, since 2012 and was a member of a co-operative PhD research group studying complexity and spirituality in the workplace from 2013 to 2014. She speaks regularly at local conferences and events on a range of topics, including:
Engagement and Leadership
Whole Person Wellness
Collaboration
Congruent Capitalism
Leading in the Digital Economy
Organising for Scale

Women in Leadership

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