After a long day of meetings and strategic level dialogue, the senior team and I went out for dinner. As the drinks were served and once the appetizers had arrived, I asked the team the following question: “What does engagement mean to all of you?” I brought this up that evening because over the course of last year, more and more executives and their teams have started using the word and talking about this subject.
Some leaders want their people to be more engaged. Some leaders think their people are very engaged, but not in alignment with the strategic commitments within the current strategic plan. Finally, some people are just plain tired of talking about engagement, because the term is so widely used for everything that it has become meaningless and a distraction. As for me, I just sit and listen to the many conversations happening and wonder how we have arrived at this point in time.
The concept of engagement really did not come into the world of leadership much until the following book was published: Buckingham, Marcus & Curt Coffman, First, Break All The Rules: What The World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently. (Simon & Schuster, 1999). Before that book showed up, the concept of engagement was mostly defined as the time period after someone proposed to someone else, they accepted, and before they got married, i.e. they were “engaged”.
When Buckingham and Coffman wrote the aforementioned book, Gallup started actively offering engagement surveys to measure the level of employee engagement that was happening in the work place. Then, leaders and companies went all in and started actively measuring engagement. It was a very hot topic and there were major investments made to make sure the company got a high engagement score.
I did not work for Gallup or analyze their engagement surveys. But I got swept up in the whole engagement survey process, because when the scores came in low, many leaders wanted to figure out what was going wrong and how to fix it. Thus, they hired me to go and find out what the problem was, and how to proceed.
For example, one time I was sent to northern Wisconsin to find out why a specific bank that was part of a large regional banking group was low on their engagement scores. Since I was not an expert on the subject, I mostly came in, asked a batch of questions, and then listened quite carefully.
I remember sitting around a large conference with the senior management team and the middle managers discussing their engagement results. The bank president was quite upset about the low score. He just could not believe their engagement number was so poor.
When the group analyzed and discussed the Gallup Q12, the survey tool for engagement based on twelve questions, the lowest score was around the following question: “Do I have a best friend at work?”
The president looked at the group and was stunned. “Do you all not have any friends here at work? I think this is a friendly place. What’s going on?”
There was a long period of silence until a middle manager spoke up. “The question doesn’t say ‘friend’, sir. It says ‘best friend at work.’ To me, a best friend is someone who meets me and my family down at the local diner after work on a Friday evening. We order a round of beers, share an order of fried cheese curds and talk about family, high school sports, and local gossip. I like the people I work with, but I don’t routinely go out for beer and cheese curds with them on a Friday night.” The bank president just sat there in silence. He did not know what to say.
So, I quietly stepped forward and said, “I don’t think Gallup is using the Friday night beer and cheese curds definition of ‘best friend.’ I think they are more focused on the idea of the work place being a friendly place to work. I think they are interested in whether or not people are kind to each other, trustworthy, and respectful. Do you have those kinds of friends at work here?”
The entire group nodded their heads. Even the bank president was nodding.
“Do you feel like someone has your back if problems happen?”, I continued. “Do you feel like the people you work with are committed to solving problems and working well together? Do you feel like they are very good at what they do and might even be the best at what they do in this town”
There was a slight pause and then the group engaged in a lively discussion about how well they worked together, supported each other, and solved problems across multiple departments. The bank president smiled. This was what he thought was happening all along.
As the conversation came to a natural conclusion, I offered the following insight. “In a small town in northern Wisconsin on a Friday night, beer and cheese curds with a best friend or friends sounds like a great way to end the work week. However, I don’t think the people who came up with the definition of engagement and the engagement survey have experienced this level of fellowship and hospitality. They are focused on a more academic definition rather than the more local, interpersonal experience you know. Keep this in mind when you fill out the survey next time.”
A couple of months later, the entire bank took the survey again and they ended up in the top 5% of the company. Once the results were announced, the bank president took the entire team out on Friday night for beer and cheese curds at the local diner. I just smiled when I heard the news. When people don’t understand the term and the concept of engagement, they default to their own local experience and their own local understanding.
Therefore, when the words “engagement” and “being engaged” surfaced during the later half of 2022, I became concerned that we were again walking into a place of misunderstanding. Thus, I began asking more questions at the individual and group levels.
Gallup, who started this whole thing, defines employee engagement as “the involvement and enthusiasm of employees in their work and workplace. Employee engagement helps you measure and manage employees’ perspective on the crucial elements of your workplace culture.” Furthermore, Gallup notes that employee engagement creates “a culture that ensures employees are involved, enthusiastic and highly productive in their work and workplace.”
Other organizations, who do this work, define engagement as “the degree to which employees invest their cognitive, emotional, and behavioral energies toward positive organizational outcomes.”
I think the above definitions are very good if you can translate them into specific actions at the individual or group behavior levels, and if you have experienced this within and outside of work. Without having the experience of feeling like you are involved, enthusiastic and highly productive, many people may not be able to relate to the concept of engagement because they have never really felt it or experienced it. In short, we as leaders often forget that engagement is an idiosyncratic experience, namely I do it in my own way, which may or may not conform to how the team or company defines it.
Having visited with many people about this subject, I want to share two answers about what is engagement that have continued to make me think. The first was by a woman executive who told me that “engagement means that some one has agency. And they know what this means and how to act accordingly.” As she explained to me,”having agency means that an individual feels like they can control their actions and their consequences.”
I think this is a powerful insight and reflects a larger understanding, namely the blending of engagement with DEI work. For an individual to have agency at work, they need to have the capacity to take purposeful action and pursue goals, free from the threat of violence, intimidation, and retribution. They also have to work within an office environment where no one feels like they are not good enough, “less than”, or needs to hide their best selves in order to work there.
From my experience of being within a work environment where people have agency, I have seen and experienced inclusiveness, non-violence, unconditional and loving kindness, and compassionate acceptance of myself and others. There is the recognition at all levels of the organization that we must never create an environment where people need to hide their true identities or attempt to fit in. It is the understanding that each of us belong just the way we are. It is an understanding, and then the action of respecting each of us are unique.
FYI: To be continued on Tuesday.
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