About LWD: The goal of this weekly newsletter is to bring to the fore quality articles –in a condensed format– that discuss leadership, with a focus on employee engagement. Much of the content comes from those I follow on Twitter, and/or members of the Employee Engagement Network.

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Want Your Organization to Change? Put Feelings First by Dan Heath

Chip & Dan Heath’s book Made to Stick was the subject of a previous post (including a presentation on the book), because of the simple step-by-step process it provides for turning ideas into action; probably THE most important element of this is the role of emotion. Rarely does simply giving people knowledge lead to desired change, and in this video shows Dan providing some concrete examples of how emotion is used to create action.

Why Controlling Bosses Have Unproductive Employees by Andrew O’Connell

This blog post warrants entry this week due to the visceral reaction it triggered upon retweet early this week; it seems to have struck a chord!

“People deeply value their freedom, so much so that even an unconscious memory of a controlling person stimulates a [negative] behavioral reaction.” is how Mr. O’Connell’s summarizes a study that illustrates ‘reactance’, or ‘the psychological mechanism that connects the love of freedom and the behavioral response’. When a the name of someone perceived by the test subject as controlling was introduced subliminally, researchers could detect a statistically significant drop in the effort made on complex tasks! He also notes that the magnitude of the reactance effect does vary based on the individual.

This immediately made me think of Hershey/Blanchard’s ‘Situational Leadership‘ model, and its recommendations on how much directive behaviour employees need at each stage of their development. A manager stuck in the S1 ‘directing mode’ (which could be perceived as controlling) isn’t taking into account that the employee has moved beyond the D1 ‘low competence – high commitment’ development stage (typical of a new employee or new role), and will not longer react well to being told exactly what to do. The manager has to realize that their style has to adapt to fit the employee’s stage of development.

Who Owns Engagement? by Georgia Kerr

The release of  Macleod Employee Engagement Report, a report commissioned by the UK Secretary of State for Business to look into employee engagement in the UK, has triggered much discussion on the definition of an engaged workplace, the importance of it, and how it can be improved.

Based on the definition from the report: “having a sense of personal attachment to one’s work and organisation, being motivated and willing to give one’s best to help their company succeed and, crucially, gaining a strong sense of psychological wellbeing through work”, Ms. Kerr poses the question: “So does this full engagement definition make it easier or more difficult to know who owns the term within organisations?” She then evaluates the following potential targets for this responsibility:

1. The CEO: “The CEO can, and needs to, take actions above and beyond strategy creation in order to bring vision into life, raise internal awareness and help to create a passionate workforce. The key to doing this is to keep engagement on the agenda and work with the organisation’s divisions as one team to avoid the silo effect of numerous agendas and strategies running in parallel.”
2. The CFO: “CFO is in a unique position to be able to bring to life the financial benefits of an engaged workforce and the only way to do this is to work with the HR/organisational performance function to properly understand the drivers to engagement unique to every division/team within the organisation, and quantify this understanding into meaningful financial language.”
3. The HR Director: “For the HR director, the responsibility in terms of engagement lies in seeing beyond the traditional siloed structure of responsibilities and initiatives (recruitment, talent management, health and safety, for example) and creating a vision and strategy of how these responsibilities can add value and actually work together to create an engaged workforce.”
4. The Line Manager: “Line managers who are given license to convert organisational strategy and vision into meaning for the individuals in their teams and, perhaps most importantly, line managers who recognise that they have this role and impact and regularly review the engagement of their team members, are the ones who really own engagement and make a positive difference.”
5. The Employee*: “Employees need to take a share of the responsibility for their own engagement, using the tools available to them both inside and outside of the organisation such as training and career opportunities, one-to-one discussions with the line manager, colleague and family support, performance feedback. And with these tools, the employee needs to be in a constant state of self-examination of their own career aspirations and goals.”

She concludes that, this more holistic definition of the term, makes it more straightforward to see that everyone from the CEO to line managers and employees owns engagement.

*Something always bothers me about using this word to conveniently describe those that aren’t in a leadership/management function. It seems to promote the impression that those higher up the chain aren’t also ‘employees’. But I guess it is OK as long as the context is clear.

Omission? If you think I have missed a really good article in the area of Employee Engagement & Leadership, there is always next week!  Drop me a line in the comments below.