“The Engagement Manager role requires a mix of emotional intelligence, flexibility, and accountability.”
Dedicated staff support for scheduling, admin, and logistics is essential. No professional team can work to its full capacity without effective management, and lived experience led work is no exception. Our model includes the use of a dedicated Engagement Manager role. In our organization, this role is not explicitly defined as a role held for a person with lived experience of homelessness, though intimate familiarity with housing and homelessness through lived, professional, or academic expertise is of course essential. We have had positive experiences with both peer led and non-peer led management approaches.
The Engagement Manager role requires sensitivity to the life experiences of the team. This is a delicate skill set that the EST broadly describes as “getting it”. The Engagement Manager role requires a mix of emotional intelligence, flexibility, and accountability: someone who can hold boundaries without being rigid, offer support without being patronizing, and keep things organized without losing sight of the humans at the center of the work. The ideal Engagement Manager is someone capable of recognizing that this work may require a different management style than those used in workplaces not connected to the lived experience of its staff, but is able to differentiate between a supportive management style and a client/caregiver relationship.
Because of the nature of the Engagement Manager’s ideal skillset, organizations may want to seek Engagement Managers with frontline experience. As such, there is a risk that a new manager may, with good intentions, attempt to build therapeutic rapport with their staff. It is the responsibility of the organization to be clear about the nature of the working relationship, and why it must vary from a therapeutic relationship.
“This is management with empathy, not caregiving.”
This is not to say an Engagement Manager cannot respond to psychosocial concerns. Preserving the safety of employees and their work environments is part of the responsibilities held by all managers. However, it would be inappropriate for one’s manager to, for example, keep case notes on one’s personal life, attempt to monitor one’s substance use, develop a plan for anxiety management, etc. Conversely, in an office environment it may
be appropriate to carpool with staff, chat about how your family spent the weekend, or host a team lunch – which may not be appropriate in a therapeutic relationship. The context is simply different, and it is essential that the Engagement Manager understand the distinction. This is management with empathy, not caregiving.
Far more than a supportive presence alone, the Engagement Manager is also responsible for much of the backbone administrative work of the team. This offsets the administrative burden on team members and allows for the most impactful use of time and resources. Engagement Manager duties may include:
- Management of tools like team calendars and payroll.
- Bookings and invoicing
- Meeting facilitation and minutes-taking
- Supervision and professional development
- Human resources duties and team evaluation
It is also essential that the team members feel connected to the broader organization outside of the Engagement Manager. The Engagement Manager cannot act as the sole point of communication between staff with and without lived experience. Team members should feel clear on the role of their manager, and have tools to address concerns with a third party should they not feel comfortable reaching out to their manager directly.
In our model, team members evaluate the performance of their manager annually, and are encouraged to communicate frequently and openly.