Employee Engagement is More Than Motivation (Part 1)
I’m excited to bring you Dave Willis, one of our thoughtLEADERS instructors, for today’s post on employee engagement. Here’s Dave:
If you haven’t already done so, read Mike’s Leadership Principles. I love them all, but my personal favorite is number 7: He Drinks 7Up. Sometimes after reading this story I have visions of legions of managers frantically stocking up their office mini-fridge with all manner of beverages. Jolt Cola for the IT department; Evian for Susan from marketing; Zima for Bob from accounting. (Should you ever happen to be my manager, I like Honest Tea.)
But of course, the point of the story isn’t 7Up or Zima. Like many of the Leadership Principles, at its core this story is about engaging your employees. Notice I didn’t say “motivating.” What’s the difference? Engaged employees are “motivated plus.” Let’s define some terms. Engaged employees are:
Motivated – they give you their best effort, they help each other out, they find creative ways to solve problems for coworkers and customers
Loyal – they stick with you when things get rough, they don’t jump ship the first time someone else offers them a 5% raise
Advocates – they tout your products and services to potential customers, and they recommend you as an employer to potential employees.
Motivated, loyal advocates. And you can’t have enough of them.
In part 2 of this post I’ll talk about ways to create high levels of engagement among your employees (with no Zima jokes). But in this post I want to talk about why engagement matters. I could quote from dozens of consulting and academic studies, but instead let me make one observation: in ten years of management consulting I never once worked with an organization that was able to succeed without high levels of employee engagement. Have you? Or put another way, is there any strategy you currently plan to undertake that doesn’t require a whole heck of a lot of people giving you their very best effort (and sticking with you) in order to succeed?
I’ve had the privilege of working with organizations all over the world to improve employee engagement, and in almost every instance some cynical manager (who invariably was one of the least engaged people in the company) would ask, “But what’s the ROI of engagement?” I like to think this is the person Scott Adams had in mind when he first drew the Pointy-Haired Boss. My answer is simple: without engagement there is no “R” on any “I” you might care to make in any part of your company.
Look, engagement doesn’t guarantee success, but it’s a necessary precursor. And it’s the single most important responsibility you have as a manager. If you aren’t engaging your people, you are directly preventing the organization from being successful. But if you ARE engaging your people, then I don’t care what your title is or at what level of the org chart you find yourself. Guess what? You just made the transition from manager to leader.
About Dave: Dave is an executive with more than 15 years of line management, consulting, and entrepreneurial experience. He’s trained executives from many Fortune 500 companies while he led practices at The Corporate Executive Board and has entrepreneurial experience in the areas of executive coaching and business network building. He brings this wealth of experience to the classroom as a Senior Instructor here at thoughtLEADERS.
Photo: Engaged by Ged Carroll
Those are some great questions (especially for so early in the morning – I’m not fully caffeinated yet so it’s kind of making my head hurt). All the points above (and to be clear, this is a multi-part question you’ve asked) are a great conversation starter. I’ve asked Dave to take a first crack at a reply and I’ll probably pile on. I think you’ve also inspired some great fodder for a future blog post on how to manage up and get the proletariat to help reshape the culture. Would love if you could let us know who “anonymous” is (you can shoot me an email at info@thoughtleadersllc.com as opposed to publicly posting it if you like) and I’ll be sure to drop you a line when I post on that topic.
Just wondered if we are talking about engagement, or extreme compliance, here, because sometimes it sounds like the latter. If we are talking true engagement, doesn’t it require a little more than just knowing what someone drinks? Also, when the leader is like the pointy-haired guy, doesn’t it make it extremely difficult to change? I am currently reading Senge’s Fifth Discipline and intend to inspire bottom up pressure for change. Much of what i read on this blog is reminiscent of those ideas, but as I read, I am struggling with what to do when you are not the manager and you smack into heirarchy as you try to implement collaborative, reflective, fun working environments.
I’m guessing Dave’s flight was delayed so let me offer some thoughts:
– “Extreme compliance” comes with threats focused on job or punishment. What we’re talking about here is knowing someone AS AN INDIVIDUAL PERSON with different wants/needs/goals/desires/likes/dislikes. Beverage preference is a metaphor for that knowledge. Said more simply, if you actually know enough about an individual (in a non-creepy way) it demonstrates you care about them as an individual. Correspondingly, individuals will care more about their teams and organizations when they themselves feel cared for. How do you feel about your boss/team when it feels like they don’t care about your personal needs? See what I mean? This is all about being human and treating people like humans. When they feel cared for, they care back (also known as engagement).
– As far as having a pointy haired boss and starting a proletariat cultural revolution, just do it. Care about your boss. It’s harder for him/her to hate you then. Try to make them loosen up. Explain to them how you perceive their behavior is adversely affecting the organization. Have that intervention. Just launching a revolution without first personally speaking with the pointy haired monarch is disrespectful and ineffective. Help your boss see their blind spots and try to coopt them into being part of the solution. Have you spoken with your boss yet about your sources of discontent? If not, quit posting comments here and inciting riots and go schedule a lunch with them. Be candid and professional in providing them the feedback. They’ll appreciate it. If they don’t and they reject it/start making their hair even pointier, you’re free to incite revolution with a clear conscience or, better yet, vote with your feet and quit. Don’t stay somewhere where you’re unhappy. Remember – Burger King is hiring…
Whew…delayed flight and being far from internet access…but I’m back. Great comments and questions so far. As you surmised (and please see part 2 of my post) engaging employees is about a lot more than knowing what your employees drink. It’s about exceeding their expectations, in essentially exactly the same way that exceeding customer expectations drives long-term customer loyalty (another of Mike’s favorite topics.)
As for the problem of the manager who doesn’t get it, there are really only three things you can do: move to a different part of the organization; move to a different organization altogether; or drive change from within. Senge’s material is great (as is Figliuolo’s), but may I also recommend Covey’s work on expanding your Circle of Influence?
Sometimes those PHB’s can be converted. Often times they can’t, and since life is short, the first two options often look a lot more attractive, even in uncertain economic environments.
@Laura – bottom line, exhibiting good leadership behaviors (translation: truly caring about and for people) is always best practice regardless of your level or role in the organization. It’s contagious – absolutely. And maybe those managers who don’t have these skills will pick up some of yours by osmosis.
Re: generational differences – absolutely. Obviously boomers need to be managed differently than X’ers and Millenials. More importantly though, INDIVIDUAL desires, goals and preferences should drive how you lead that PERSON. Look first to cues from the individual on how they want to be managed. Assuming they’re a boomer and they want to be managed that way can be disastrous if they as an individual prefer to be led more like a millenial. Make sense?
Dave, I think the suggestion of Circle of Influence is a great reminder for all of us…often times in an organization, we will run into those leaders who may excel from an operational standpoint, and not do so well at the human side. Or, the attempts at empathy are off the mark. It’s been my experience that I can help shape the environment with good leadership behaviors; and in observing influence in a variety of organizations as a consultant, I’d say it can be successful in engagement. Oh, it’s not perfect; there are still frustrations and dead ends. But it will help the non manager develop his/her own toolkit for the future, and create loyalty in those areas of influence in the organization. Mike/Dave, would you agree? Have you seen this? Also I will add: generational differences can be at the core of failed engagement attempts. Different groups are known to need different things.
Laura, thanks for the great comments and for sharing your experience. I certainly agree with your observation on generational differences, though I believe the core idea of “exceeding employee expectations” holds across generations.
The key point that I think you are trying to make is that those “expectations” may be different for a 20-something than a 55-year-old (and then layer on geographic and/or cultural differences, and the fact that your manager may literally never have met you in person…man, this gets hard in a hurry).
By the way, for those interested, the best work I’ve seen on understanding Gen-Y is by Peter Sheahan (www.petersheahan.com).