What Leaders Can Do To EARN Engagement

I wrapped up last time by mentioning that we’d soon work through some “simple things” that we can each do to EARN engagement from the teams we’re leading, and more specifically, some actual steps we can take to put those things into practice. Here’s the thing: just identifying those “simple things” - let alone taking action to sustain them over time - ain’t always very simple! But it sure should be…

I found one article on Forbes.com called Six Ways Leaders Can Boost Employee Engagement - And Why It’s Important that shared, well, six things the author suggested as necessary for getting the 60% or so of folks who are in our boats but just along for the ride to pick up their oars and actively contribute to the cause. Another article from Forbes titled How Leaders Can Improve Employee Engagement - Even During Challenging Times referenced “The Three C’s of Employee Engagement” early on so I was hopeful for something more condensed than the lengthy six listed in the other article. I had to read the article twice to even find the three C’s - clear, consistent communication - because they were buried by the EIGHT things the author of that article was suggesting.

In complete transparency, I didn’t take issue with any of the things (14 in total) that were outlined in those two articles. That said, I’m a fairly simple guy so I want to provide you with a simple list - and throwing fourteen things at you just doesn’t seem all that simple to me. Further, I don’t know that I’ve ever met someone carrying any significant level of leadership responsibility who’s had an abundance of spare time to add anything else to their to-do list, let alone more than a dozen things…

In his book The Truth About Employee Engagement, Pat Lencioni shares a fascinating fable about a retired executive who buys a minority stake in a rundown pizza joint to scratch his itch for being in the business world. Through that process, the executive lands on three things he’s convinced are just as critical to the evening shift crew in that small restaurant as they were to his previous corporate team - and anyone in between. Lencioni lists immeasurement, irrelevance, and anonymity as what he believes contributes to a miserable work experience. His fictional pizza joint story goes on to tell how the main character works to offset each with the individuals working the evening shift and how much their overall results improve.

If you’ve ever read any of Pat’s work, I have no doubt you understand why I connect with it so much! His stories are short and fun, but he weaves in a solid message every time. The reality I’ve had to come to terms with over the last twenty years is that we, as leaders, may never have enough time to do everything that demands our attention. We need to build systems into our routine so we can achieve as much as possible - every single day. And even then, we’d better make sure those systems are simple so we can sustain them on the days the stuff hits the proverbial fan - and it absolutely will… If we truly want to EARN engagement from the teams we lead, being intentional about providing them with clear measurement for their work, the relevance of that work, while removing the anonymity that’s far too common in even small businesses today, we’ll do all that so much more effectively when we build simple systems for doing it so that’s exactly where we’ll pick up soon…