EE Bermuda Triangle

The Employee Engagement Bermuda Triangle (EEBT), a metaphor for mystery, misdirection and disaster in the work place, can actually have many different shapes and sizes.

The 'EEBT'

This week we will talk about the EEBT ‘Co-Deceptive State’. In our experience, this state is more common than the ‘Perfect Storm’, but can be just as perilous for employee engagement.

A well-meaning manager can spend a lot of time understanding what an employee wants out of work, but if the employee’s self-perception is far out of whack the manager can become complicit in assigning roles or tasks that continue to frustrate the employee. There may be strong agreement in career-advancement opportunities, but the employee will struggle to meet goals to take that step, and suffer from poor job fit. Without being able to execute effectively on established goals, the manager will be wary of giving the employee higher-stakes assignments that will prepare for that next promotion, and the employee may end up being resentful of the manager for not following through on career advancement commitments.

It looks like this:

: EEBT Co-deceptive State

How Did It Come to This?

Inevitably, the statement ‘the customer is always right’ leads to a lot of debate. While some people will say, ‘ask your customers what they want’ the discussion typically ends with someone quoting Henry Ford:

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

In other words, if all you do is ask the customer what they want, you miss out on an opportunity to add value in a way that the customer didn’t expect. Henry ford was in a unique position to see a new opportunity that the layperson did not: a mass-produced car.

Much like Mr. Ford, the manager needs to leverage their own unique position (experience, broader view of the business, objective view of the employee’s behaviour and abilities, etc.) to gain a better understanding of the employees innate talents and motivators. The co-deceptive state can happen when the manager relies too much on the employee’s (incorrect) opinion of themselves, instead of other means at the manager’s disposal.

Several things can increase the chances of this happening: If a person wants to be something they are not, they can certainly put on a good act, which may be very hard for even a seasoned manager to see through. The high paced work environment drives many managers to reduce the amount of time they spend monitoring their employees’ performance and behaviours. The increasing prevalence of teleworkers and geographically-dispersed teams can make it difficult to gain a good understanding of an employee. Finally, some managers just don’t have the knack for reading people (but are good at other aspects of management). If you are having trouble thinking about your own experiences with this, think back to the first few years of your career; who were you trying to be?

Sources of Engagement

Previously, we discussed some of the key elements of engagement, and it is worth noting how this co-deceptive state has a negative impact on these elements:

A Feeling of Security
A Sense of Purpose
To Satisfy a Desire for Mastery

Lets talk about Bob (not his real name), who has been made a member of a team deciding on technology direction for a high tech firm. Diligence in his past roles has shown that he is able to become a subject matter expert in any technical topic, and has proven that he can facilitate complex discussions with the top technical talent in the organization. What Bob and his manager don’t know is that 1) Bob has an innate desire to help and develop people, and 2) he just can’t bring himself to care about the technology in question. Based on biannual performance reviews, both the manager and the employee generally agree on the employee’s skills, strengths and motivators.

Security: This employee can’t help but feel insecure. He is surrounded by people who debate the subject matter with a passion that the employee just can’t find in himself. How can Bob compete with people that have so much passion for the technology? He is exhausting all his ‘self-control’ trying to stay remotely as interested as his peers in the subject matter, and wonders what is wrong with him.

Purpose: Bob understands that what the group does is important, it helps define the future direction of the company, but the purpose is very misaligned with his own (unknown) inner purpose, to help & develop people. Each week Bob finds himself asking, “Is this really going to be my contribution to the world?”

Mastery: Bob, is a fabulous guitar player. He practices –on average– 5 hours a week and most of his friends regard him as the ‘best guitar player they know’. He clearly has a desire for mastery in the things that he is passionate about, but in his job this is absent. He is constantly trying to find his niche, where he can find the purpose he desires; as a result he is falling behind his peers in his level of technical competence, and never feels ‘in the zone’. When his peers take home technical papers for review, Bob just picks up his guitar.

Bob’s manager is constantly perplexed at Bob’s unwillingness to grasp new opportunities that would extend his technical capability. They had agreed upon Bob’s development targets, and his next career move: an external representative in technical standards. Bob’s manager just can’t see how Bob will be able to take that next step; while his peers get into heated debates about the minutia of a new technology, Bob just seems to stare off into space.

How can you diminish the EEBT?

There are a lot of ways to approach the challenge of reducing the area of the EEBT. Suggestions for the Co-deceptive State closely follow the suggestions for the ‘Perfect Storm’, with the exception that the manager and employee already seem to be communicating.

For the employee, they can use assessment tools to better understand themselves, like the Strong Interest Inventory, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Career Drivers, 360 surveys or our favourite, the Clifton Strengthfinder. Another useful approach is to write down occasions where they experienced a state of flow –being “fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement and success in the process of the activity”– and trying to identify what were the common elements in those experiences.

The manager can suggest that the employee use the techniques above and then discuss the results. Or, independently and where possible, a manager can dig into the employee’s past roles and discuss with past supervisors where they tended to express their talents and motivations most. Asking peers about their perceptions of the employee can be a great resource for either the employee or manager.

Once their is a better understanding of the employee’s key strengths and motivators, techniques like Job Crafting can be used to make the existing role much more engaging for the employee. In cases where there just isn’t a way to create an alignment between the employee’s talents and motivators, and the business objectives of the group, other roles within the organization should be explored. Employees are a valuable asset, and engaged employees are many times more valuable to your organization.

More on the EEBT

There are other scenarios that still allow a lot of room to get lost in this Employee Engagement Bermuda Triangle, which will be the topic of future (and past) posts. These include:

The Misdirected Self-Aware EEBT
The Deceptive EEBT
The EEBT ‘Perfect Storm’

We will explore these with the intent to get to the ‘Ideal’ state where all three pebbles converge.

The Employee Engagement Bermuda Triangle, a metaphor for mystery, misdirection and disaster in the work place, can actually have many different shapes and sizes.

The 'Bermuda Triangle' of Employee Engagement

This week we will talk about the EEBT ‘Perfect Storm’, where employee engagement gets lost without a trace.

The Perfect Storm has an employee who is clueless about what talents, motivators & goals they have, and has a manager who has to time, interest or patience to find out what they are. In this scenario, the manager not only doesn’t know what the employee’s white pebble is, they don’t even know what the employee thinks it is (green pebble). Each of the deltas (white-green, green-brown, brown-white) are all at their largest, the area of the triangle is at its maximum, and employee engagement is at the greatest risk. It looks like this:

The Employee Engagement 'Perfect Storm'

How Did It Come to This?

How is it possible that any employee-manager relationship could experience a Perfect Storm? It seems unlikely that a manager would be so out of touch with their employee, AND an employee so out of touch with themselves.

In many business settings, this is actually the norm. Most minimum wage jobs have this dynamic, where employees are just ‘doing it for the money’, and managers don’t see any reason to invest their time in low-paid, usually high-turnover, employees. As a customer, I am sure you have experienced what it is like to be a patron of such organizations.

This dynamic exists far beyond minimum wage roles, as I am sure many readers will attest. This lack of introspection on the part of managers and employees alike is ingrained in us culturally, by our fast-paced work environments, and general lack of effective manager training and employee career counselling. For example, think about how much of your school career you spent studying topics that have no relevance to your life today (Shakespeare & calculus are likely candidates), and how much time was devoted to evaluating your talents, motivators and how they might align with your career options?

Sources of Engagement

Fulfilling jobs and workplaces are as varied as the people that comprise them, but there is a common thread that exists in all of them. For an employee to be fully engaged in their work they need:

A Feeling of Security: If an employee is constantly worried about losing their job, having their ideas stolen, being ridiculed or physically threatened, you can safely assume that their engagement will be near zero. If they feel hopeful about the future & secure in their job, they can focus the majority of their energy on performing their assigned role, personal growth, and growth of the company.
A Sense of Purpose: An earlier attempt to catalog sources of employee satisfaction resulted in over 50 different sources. How each of these map to an employee’s sense of purpose, from those who want to contribute to world peace, to those who just want a shinier car, is as varied and complex as each individual. This complexity is the main reason why it must be established between a manager and employee, and tied to the purpose of the job, and then to the company. When it is aligned, chances for engagement is significantly improved.
To Satisfy a Desire for Mastery: When you perform work that aligns with your innate talents and motivators, you can’t help but strengthen your mastery of the skills associated and even reach a state of ‘flow’. The more opportunity you have to do this as part executing your role, the more likely you are to be engaged by it. As you improve this mastery, you become more valuable to the organization, which has a supporting impact on purpose and security as well.

Why is the Perfect Storm so Disengaging?

“The void created by the failure to communicate is soon filled with poison, drivel and misrepresentation. “

— C. Northcote Parkinson

The distance from the green (mossy) pebble to brown: Both the manager and employee haven’t invested any time helping each other understand the employee’s innate talents, motivators and goals. In this case, even if this were to happen, the employee would likely have a hard time articulating what they are, because of the white-green delta. The very absence of this discussion almost ensures that the employee won’t be working on activities that promote mastery, will not have an idea of how their own motivators align to the purpose of the role (and its purpose to the company), and it is hard to see how they would feel secure in it. With a large employee-perception & manager-perception delta, the potential sources of engagement will only be found by pure chance.

The distance from the green (mossy) pebble to white: For the employee with little self-awareness, spending time on things that allow them to build mastery will be elusive. More likely, they will continue to be assigned work they are shown to be able to execute on successfully, but are not necessarily aligned with their innate talents and motivators. Without introspection on what brings them satisfaction in their work, this employee will not be able to find a meaningful way to link their own motivation to the objectives of the role, and the role’s contribution to the company. A feeling of security comes when an employee feels they are an indispensable link to achieving the goals of the organization; if they aren’t even sure they are good at what they do, this is unlikely.

The distance from the brown pebble to white: The manager is not aware of the innate talents & motivators of the employee. Even without a discussion with the employee (which, in this case, could potentially diminish green-brown, but increase brown-white), some experienced managers have the emotional intelligence (EI) to get a fairly accurate gauge on a person’s talents and motivators. In the Perfect Storm, this EI is either not present or is being impeded by the employee-manager relationship. This manager is at a loss as to why they sometimes get results from the employee, and others just disappointment. Sometimes their employee is keen to take on a task, just to lose motivation as the task progresses. This leads to frustration that can hurt the manager-employee relationship, and make things even worse. The employee feels that the manager ‘just doesn’t understand them’. The manager cannot find appropriate tasks that will align with the employee’s talents, and won’t feel comfortable offering the risky stretch objectives that might lead to mastery of a skill. When performance is discussed, the manager can provide little feedback that will make the employee feel secure about their future in the organization. Because the manager can’t help the employee stay in their ‘zone’, sustained engagement is not possible.

How can you diminish the EEBT?

There are a lot of ways to approach the challenge of reducing the area of the EEBT. As you can see in the Perfect Storm, the manager and the employee both have a role in improving the situation. The good news is that a willing employee can improve the situation independently, as can a manager, but best results will come with both involved.

For the employee, they can use assessment tools to better understand themselves, like the Strong Interest Inventory, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, or our favourite, the Clifton Strengthsfinder. Another useful approach is to write down occasions where they experienced a state of flow –being “fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity”– and trying to identify what were the common elements in those experiences.

The manager can suggest that the employee use techniques above and then discuss the results. Or, independently (and where possible), a manager can dig into the employee’s past roles and discuss with past supervisors where they tended to express their talents and motivations most; some of these past supervisors may have been in a better position to observe behaviours that the current manager cannot. Asking peers about their perceptions of the employee can be a great resource for either the employee or manager.

Just the act of initiating a discussion on this topic can increase the level of engagement, as a manager expressing an interest in these topics shows the employee that the manager wants to invest in them, and when initiated by the employee, shows a manager the employee wants to excel in their role.

Beyond the Perfect Storm

There are other scenarios that still allow a lot of room to get lost in this Employee Engagement Bermuda Triangle, which will be the topic of future posts. These include:

The Misdirected Self-Aware EEBT
The Self-Deceptive EEBT
The Co-Deceptive EEBT

We will explore these with the intent to get to the ‘Ideal’ state where all three pebbles converge.

Luckily, there are ways to reduce the size of these knowledge gaps, and the area of the triangle, and in the ‘Perfect Storm’ there is clearly a lot of room for improvement!