Nurture Employee Engagement

10 ways TetraMap can help nurture employee engagement

How is engagement faring in the organisations you work with?  Global Head of Learning, Emma Mauger, shares how TetraMap can help boost employee engagement.

As a TetraMap facilitator, I’m sure you talk a fair amount about synergy and performance. I know I do.  When I read about the decline in employee engagement published by Gallup earlier this year, it got me thinking about a mutual relationship – between engagement and synergy.

When we’re engaged, we’re more willing to collaborate effectively and more likely to be open to the possibility of synergy.  Synergistic experiences in turn will increase engagement by making work more meaningful and rewarding.  So here we have a mutual relationship, as we often observe in nature, when two species benefit from interacting.

Globally, employee engagement is in bad shape.  Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace Report, (published in April) tells us that global employee engagement declined from 23% to 21% in 2024, with a notable drop from 30% to 27% in managers being engaged at work.   

Aside from synergy, what’s the effect of this decline? 

Well, financially, the report tells us that ‘disengagement cost the world economy $438 billion in 2024… and $9.6 trillion would be added to the world economy if the global workforce was fully engaged”’

Beyond the financials, cultures suffer, morale nosedives, employee turnover climbs, the standard of customer experiences dip… we could go on. My Water preference is really coming to the fore.  I find it incredibly sad to understand that around the world, people are feeling this level of disengagement at work. 

A person who is disengaged will naturally not be able to contain this.  There’s the ripple effect on a team of a manager being disengaged. Gallup reminding us of this, sharing that 70% of team engagement is influenced by a manager. 

As facilitators of learning and coaches, we know very well that learning and development has a crucial place in helping to boost engagement, offering people opportunities to grow, to develop and for organisations to align learning initiatives to their goals.  The report points to this too, flagging a decline in training opportunities for managers: ‘active disengagement is cut in half for those who received training’.

Of course, many factors influence engagement. Let’s focus on how, with TetraMap, we can make a difference. What value can TetraMap add and how can we share its potential to help lift engagement?

Here are 10 ideas for you to play with:

1. TetraMap learning experiences increase team collaboration. And very quickly, with people exploring how to more effectively collaborate with others in the moment, seeing positive results in real time.  Teams develop a shared language for discussing differences and can more easily navigate conflicts or misunderstanding by their new awareness of different Elemental preferences.
2. TetraMap raises self and team esteem.  By showing that all four Elements across all combinations are valuable, people quickly see their own worth and appreciate what others bring to the team.  By fostering an environment of open feedback through your facilitation, participants will see new ways to value themselves and one another.
3. The TetraMap of Behaviour helps people to understand that everyone is motivated differently. The exploration begins when people are introduced to the Elements.  Then, this catalytic question posed to Elemental groups – ‘what motivates you and keeps you motivated under pressure?’- sparks conversations that help people learn practical ways to support each other’s and whole team success.
4. The playful, hands-on approach that’s central to TetraMap makes learning fun for participants.  When people learn through play, they get to know each other better, build stronger relationships and practice working together to solve problems.
5. TetraMap creates a sense of inclusion and belonging through knowing that we are all four Elements and that any system needs all four Elements too. When everyone gets to express their preferences and hear from others, people are in a great position to notice what connects them and to strength the sense of interdependence.
6. Exploring the TetraMap Elements under stress, helps teams to take better care of each other. The exercise in the WAYLT workbook helps you to frame team wellbeing conversations. Discovering what is likely to place the different Elements under pressure and stress always draws interest and can be extended into workplace specific contexts – whether you use the full Leader Guide exercise or your own materials. The goal is for better mutual support and more meaningful wellbeing conversations.
7. TetraMap helps people to take responsibility for communicating more effectively, including how to relate to each other, the practice of listening to different Elemental needs, enabling each person to feel ‘seen’.
8. TetraMap’s holistic learning approach allows people to consider their Elemental preferences in different contexts. It’s an amazing self-development opportunity for any person because it can yield results in lots of different areas of a person’s life and offer them opportunities to test out and form new habits.  In this way, the learning can be a multi-faceted gift from an organisation to any team member.
9. With TetraMap, there’s a unique opportunity for many people in organisations to try out learning in, with, and from nature. Beyond the TetraMap material, how does nature feature in the learning settings you create?  Depending on how you set out the learning environment, the opportunities to encourage participants to deepen their relationship with nature as they learn are far and wide with TetraMap.  If you want to enable creativity, wellbeing, fun and stimulate cognitive function – then bring nature into the setting as much as possible.
10. Crucially, TetraMap learning experiences build trust and openness which are crucial for psychological safety.  Through metaphor and the Elements, participants discover a new shared language for talking about behaviour. This offers the opportunity to depersonalise behaviour in more difficult conversations. Overall, participants will find a more objective, creative approach to talking about behavioural differences as they quickly identify new pathways to engaging with each other.