Employee Engagement Starts with Leadership Engagement
When we speak of employee engagement, are we talking about ALL employees? Do we include the CEO and the executive team?
I suspect not. But aren’t they also employees of the corporate entity?
How engaged are they? And why does it matter?
Let’s explore these questions, beginning with a clear and tangible definition of employee engagement from Dan McCarthy,
Employee engagement is the emotional commitment an employee has to the organization and its goals, resulting in the use of discretionary effort.
Operative concepts: emotional commitment and discretionary effort
Meaningful Work
Why would someone, anyone, feel emotionally committed to a company, its vision and goals? Simply put, meaningful work.
“Deprived of meaningful work men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.” Dostoyevsky
What is or is not meaningful work varies depending on who’s working and making meaning. What if making the connection to what’s meaningful for each person, is part of the fun, the challenge, and the actual job of individuals, managers and leaders?
Consider Pam. She’s a highly engaged member of the sales staff in a woman’s retail lingerie chain. The meaningfulness of selling bras, underwear, and the like is not so apparent, on the surface. For Pam, meaning comes from helping women who have undergone mastectomies heal and claim their bodies. She’s engaged in a healing experience. Selling a bra is one of the outcomes of that experience.
Steve is a senior sales manager. He loves the challenge of growing a business. Although he and his sales teams work for a global company, he describes their annual challenge as follows. “We’re a start-up. We need to deliver results and proof positive that we can grow the business year after year, so our venture partners will reinvest.” At the end of the year, when next year’s budgets and investments are decided, Steve and his team know whether they’ve delivered convincing results to their venture partners.
Steve also loves to coach. His goal is to help people do things they never considered possible. His favorite leadership engagement moments occur during “windshield time” when one his team members has a Eureka moment, then goes out and wins a deal. The win, for Steve, is the score at the end of a most remarkable performance that exceeds the performer’s expectations.
Leadership Engagement
I know some leaders who love what they do, enjoy most of the people who work with or for them, and are driven by the vision they created, hopefully in collaboration with others. One SVP offered this advice to a senior manager being considered for an executive role. “It makes all the difference when it’s your vision. For me, there’s so much excitement and energy in leading hundreds of people to charge down a path I carved out, and to see them making progress.”
But I’ve also heard some employees describe their leaders as people who are,”Just phoning it in.”
Are you an engaged leader or a phoning it in leader?
To Test Your Leadership Engagement…
Rate the following statements on a 1-5 scale
1. To what degree do I love what I do? (emotional commitment)
2. How much effort would I put in if my salary + bonus + stock was cut by 60%? (discretionary effort)
3. How energized am I by the vision I set for the company? (emotional commitment)
4. If my salary + bonus + stock was cut by 60% would I continue to commit as much of myself to achieving the vision? (discretionary effort)
5. How invested am I in the people who work with and for me? (emotional commitment)
6. If my salary + bonus + stock was cut by 60% would I continue to spend time and energy on these relationships (discretionary effort)
If your scores are:
All or mostly 5s – CONGRATULATIONS – YOU’RE HIGHLY ENGAGED
Mostly 3 or lower – You’re not engaged or committed, and it’s likely your employees are the same. You’ve got work to do.