LWD 2010WK32 - Is Employee Engagement a 'Trojan Horse'?

About ‘Leadership Weekly Digest’ (LWD): The goal of this weekly newsletter is to highlight quality articles from the past week –in a condensed format– that discuss leadership, with a focus on employee engagement. Much of the content comes from those we follow on Twitter, and members of the Employee Engagement Network.

You can also subscribe to the RSS Feed for LWD.

Is Charisma the Secret of Engagement? by Andrew Leigh

I started reading this post with apprehension, was the author going to make a case for Charisma? Many managers/leaders feel like they can’t even start with engaging employees because they think of themselves as masters of resources, not charismatic leaders. Any post proclaiming charisma as the silver bullet for engagement would only help but re-inforce this excuse for inaction.

Luckily, that is not the case, as Mr. Leigh comes to the following conclusion:

Charisma is not the answer to engagement, since in essence it rests with the individual themselves, not the person delivering the message. They have to arrive at the decision to become engaged and it is not something you can do to them… as Jim Collins has shown so convincingly, the leaders of really successful organisations do not rely on charisma to make their impact. Rather, they are modest yet wilful, humble yet fearless.

It is also worth giving this article a more detailed read for its quick –yet effective– treatment of Maynard Leigh’s ‘VIDI’ model for engagement: employees need to feel Valued, Involved, Developed and Inspired.

How to Write Job Descriptions That Mean Something by Margaret Heffernan

I always get frustrated when I read job descriptions, they devote all their focus to required skills, and what you will be doing (and what % of time you will be travelling). They usually read more like warnings than opportunities!

What Ms. Heffernan touches on in her post is the importance of discussing not just what the job is, but what it means to the company. For example, she uses a surprising example of a janitor to illustrate how human interaction can be a key element to a successful appicant!

I would add that if you want your employees to be truly engaged in their work, they should be able to see in the job description how the purpose of the role might align with their own passions and motivators. For example, if the raison d’être of the job is to help people, say so, and people who are motivated by helping others stand a much greater chance of applying for, and excelling at, that role.

The Trojan Horse of Employee Engagement by David S. Cohen

Considering hiring an Employee Engagement consultant? Read this post first. It does a really good job of critiquing this area of consulting, and arms you with some good questions to ask yourself –and that consultant you are considering (yes, us included)– about how the underlying philosophy will impact outcomes.

He attacks the lack of a consistent definition of ‘employee engagement’ and we agree that is frustrating, so it is worth asking your potential consultant how they define it and why. For the record, the one we work with is: “adding value by matching what organizations and employees have to offer to maximize mutual benefit” with attribution to Mike Klein.

He also challenges the survey approach, by providing 7 questions that pretty much shoot down any survey I have seen (but some survive better than others):

So, here are some questions I’d like to ask those who are conducting or buying engagement surveys and training:

If you are not engaged, i.e. not excited about the work you do, can engagement training get you more involved? Conversely, if you are excited about your work, is engagement training a waste of time?

What happens if the company’s and the consulting firm’s definitions of employee engagement do not align, but you go ahead with the consulting firm’s survey anyway?

Is it possible to feel engaged by your work and committed to your organization in spite of a negative environment, a stressful job, or a boss you don’t like?

If you happen to feel engaged on the day of the survey, what does it mean if you don’t feel engaged a month or even an hour later?

Is engagement a continuous process, in which employees who receive training ultimately reach some threshold of engagement, or is it a fluid process dependent on changing factors? Is it possible to feel engaged all the time? Should that be the goal?

Can the energy surge generated by engagement lead to burnout?

How does engagement relate to the individual employee’s sense of what’s right or wrong about the organization?

The only thing about the article I didn’t like was his last paragraph, where he quickly shifts into selling his own philosophy; he really should have saved it for another post, where he wasn’t criticizing others for selling theirs.

Creating Your Personal BestStress Zone in the Workplace by Carol Scott

You didn’t think we’d miss an opportunity for comment on Steven Slater’s colourful resignation from JetBlue did you? Wow, here is a case of a disengaged employee running into disengaged customers, and creating many more! In Dr. Scott’s post, she uses Mr. Slater’s example to suggests some methods to relieve the pressure before you ‘pull a JetBlue’.

Take a deep breath and take stock of what your current job really means to you. Whatever the case may be, it is likely you need your job– because of the income–even if you don’t like every aspect of the job. And that’s okay. That is reality.

Your personal wellness is important. You and only you can create and sustain a stress healthy work environment for yourself. Here are 3 simple steps (3 P’s) to make a difference for yourself–today: Perspective, Prevention & Pause.

‘Perspective’ is another way of exploring ‘What Stories Are You Telling Yourself?‘. Very often, when people react strongly to situations, they are reacting based on past experiences, not the present one; they tell themselves stories that may be more extreme than the situation warrants. In Mr. Slater’s case, his reaction was triggered by a particular customer, but clearly this incident must have been brewing for some time. Even if one customer deserved this treatment (not saying they did), the other customers on the plane did not, and they all suffered due to the ‘inconsiderate customers’ of Mr. Slater’s past.

The next thing to consider is ‘Prevention’, to keep those negative experiences from collecting, building pressure, and exploding. Dr. Cooper recommends keeping a log of all of the issues that trigger you during the day. Bin these triggers into things that are important for your life, and those that really aren’t. For those that are, think of ways to mitigate them in your personal and work life.

When you feel you are about to blow your stack (I call this ‘going non-linear’), Pause; complete silence or inaction will beat out an aggressive reaction any time. The cause of your frustration is probably going to use this pause to continue to vent, or begin to look at you quizzically, you can use this time to pull away from the emotion a bit and make a rational decision on how to reply with kind-honesty.