Bernadette Boas presents the ACTS Method: Aspirations, Calling, Training and Coaching, and Structured Support. When leaders invest in these four areas, employees feel genuinely known and valued, creating deep reciprocal commitment that salary and benefits alone cannot build.
Chapters
The ACTS Method is a methodology that I developed designed to drastically enhance engagement, and the underlying magic of it is to create a deep sense of reciprocity in your people. But you had somebody who gave you this wonderful balance of tough and tender love, and they challenged your fears and insecurities and immaturities, and they gave you the balance of this tender love when you have fallen on your face and you had done everything, you didn't know how you were going to make it, but that person stepped in and they help to pick you up and dust you off. Is there anything you wouldn't do for that person because of how instrumental they were in your life? So the A in the ACT method stands for aspirations— helping people to achieve their greatest goals and dreams, irrespective of what their current position is or maybe what they aspire to within the company. So the C is calling— helping people to discover and demonstrate what they're called to do. How is it that I could help you not just professionally, but transform you when you go home personally. This is not just good salary and benefits, but when I come to this particular place, I've never experienced anything like it. They're helping me achieve my personal goals and dreams. They are helping me to discover and demonstrate what I'm uniquely called to do. But when I go home, I'm a better husband. When I go home, I'm a better— I love my kids better. So it's not just training to help you for your current position or one that you may aspire to. It is training and coaching to help transform your life both professionally and personally. The last letter is similar or akin to employee assistance programs in that we work with the executive leaders to say, hey, how can we put in a system of communication and structural support with budget and leadership where we are there for our people during life's most critical moments? And we're there when the doctor says to the spouse, there's Nothing else we can do. We're there when the kid is getting in trouble. So that's the ACTS method. And all of that, based upon a psychology perspective, is designed to create a deep sense of reciprocity. They're going to give you everything that they have because again, you didn't just buy their hand, you really got to know them and you won their heart and you're spurring them on in a way that all of us want to be spurred on.
