Employee engagement – Why, How and Who!

It is surprising how many organizations at the root still operate by directing people by inducing fear in them. Sometimes it comes across as a reward, so the fear is about losing a reward or losing face as the one not getting the reward. Fear is twice as effective as rewards in controlling people’s behavior.

At the same time, people are told to be engaged. A likely story! First of all, you cannot order people to be engaged, that can only happen through the individual choosing to be part of the community of engagement. There is also serious doubt about whether you buy people’s engagement, if people do things to get rewards, it always undermines the intrinsic motivation – which roughly is the same as engagement. Finally, in an environment of fear, self-preservation is always the dominant driver and, as a consequence, overrides other drivers of behavior.

Engagement plays on the individual actor “wanting” to be here, to contribute, and to grow. The engaged individual typically respects others who engage and do their best. Mutual respect is at the core of collaboration among diverse people – as we typically have today – it mitigates a host of issues that otherwise could become dominant.

But the “Why” question of course is important. Does it make a difference if people are engaged? I guess most are ready to accept that it is important, if you have doubt, consult Gallup for example, their 2022 research into the matter reveals that practically every conceivable metric in an organization is affected. In high-engagement organizations, there is 65% less intention to leave and about 50% fewer safety incidents. The list goes on and on.

The “How” question then. How do we achieve engagement? There has to be an environment in the organization, where people more or less explicitly find it attractive to join. It has to provide enough income so that this is not an issue, then it has to provide the following:

• A purpose that I buy into
• Autonomy so that I matter
• Mastery so that I can grow and flourish
• And finally positive relationships in the collection of colleagues I interact most with

There have to be some structures and agreements – guardrails around this setup, – that introduce checks and balances, clear agreements, ways to handle conflicts and decisions, and finally clear communication about all of this.

That is what we try to accomplish with Agile Lean Leadership creating a Constitutional Organization, where there is the rule of law and not the law of the ruler. Please join us for this webinar and discussion, if this interests you.