How Effective Leadership Drives Employee Engagement
By this point, we should have a solid understanding of how much profitability is being killed in our respective organizations by just an average number of employees who aren't actively engaged. But knowing the issue exists and having a plan for addressing it are two VERY different things! We'll wrap up this look at the cost of disengaged employees with a few very practical steps any leader can take to begin capturing that lost profitability. Before we work through HOW, though, let's think about WHY it matters, not why it matters to our bottom line but to each team member.
Think long and hard about the kind of leadership you'd need to deliver that "57% improvement in discretionary effort" that the HBR study I referenced before suggests. Let's be honest when considering this-it's a huge statement! This isn't a factor of someone already performing at 100 percent capacity simply dialing it up a few notches to give it 157 percent; there's no such thing.
I remember hearing a story about John Wooden, the famous UCLA basketball coach who won ten NCAA National Championships in twelve years, telling his teams that the most anyone could ever give at any one time was 100 percent. He explained that on the days they decided only to give 80-90 percent, they could never make up. One hundred percent is all anyone ever has, so making up the 10 or 20 percent they didn't give the day before was physically impossible.
So how could it be possible for ANYONE to deliver a 57 percent increase in discretionary effort? Some quick calculator math tells me that the most someone could have been giving before a 57 percent increase was 63.5 percent of their individual capacity... (I played around with the base percentage multiplied by 1.57 until I got as close to 100 as possible.)
For the sake of argument, let's stick with the folks who were neither actively engaged nor actively disengaged. Let's assume our actively engaged folks are already rowing as hard as possible. As I mentioned before, I think it would be a far better use of our time to remove the actively disengaged folks from our boats rather than wasting much effort trying to convince them to row as hard as they could. Using the numbers I shared before from Gallup's "State of the Global Workforce" 2022 report leaves us with around 60 percent of our team who may well only be performing at (or below) 63.5 percent of their total capacity. I've certainly never accomplished much-and definitely nothing significant-by only giving 63.5 percent of my effort! With that likely being just as applicable for most of our team members, I don't think there's much question about how critical this profitability killer is to address.
So, back to my previous question: what does a leader need to do to EARN that 57 percent improvement in discretionary effort? Pounding their chest and reminding us that they're in charge ain't gonna get it... This is one of the most significant separations between supervising or managing and genuinely leading a team! Covering even the best talking points without solid follow-through won't make much difference. For now, I'll challenge you to list the specific things the best leader you've ever worked with has done to earn that extra from you. While it's likely a bit different for each of us, some basics apply across the board.
HR May Talk About It, But Leaders EARN It
Think back to the comment I referenced a few times about this so-called "fuzzy initiative driven by someone in human resources that never yields tangible results." The fellow who made that comment went on to explain that this was because "most CEOs continue to sit on the sidelines and let HR whack away at the problem." I believe we've covered enough firm data to eliminate the question of whether or not tangible results ARE achievable by working to intentionally improve employee engagement... Quite frankly, I believe that's the ONLY way to address this particular profitability killer: The Cost of Disengaged Employees.
Now, I want you to think about the list I just challenged you to make, detailing the specific things the best leader you've ever worked with did to earn that extra discretionary effort from you. Before I start working through a list of my own here, I need to ask you one more thing related to your list: were those things that inspired you, motivated you, and earned your active engagement done solely by someone in the human resources department? If you're wondering, this is definitely one of those rhetorical questions! I would be utterly stunned if anyone could answer this affirmatively, including folks who work in human resources! Having been that guy in human resources, I know all too well the need for someone higher up the food chain to be casting the vision and earning engagement. When I no longer had that, after nearly two decades with the same organization, my work lost most of its purpose, and I chose to move on.
If that fellow I traded comments with on LinkedIn had only ever seen HR folks deal with anything related to engagement, I can understand why he had that perspective. But it absolutely should not be that way! Here's what I found in an article from Gallup called "Who's Responsible for Employee Engagement" backing my opinion:
Engagement isn't just an "HR thing." Managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement. There are no quick fixes when it comes to human relationships. It is essential that managers effectively interact with and develop each team member over time.
Don't misunderstand me here; I'm not bashing the human resources profession (this time). They have a very distinct and critical role. In many cases, they're the ones who provide the tools to the supervisors, managers, and executives they work with so they can "effectively interact with and develop each team member over time." Still, they're rarely going to be the ones doing it with every individual team member on a routine basis.
Before we move on to listing and detailing the specific steps you, or any leader on your team for that matter, can take to earn the kind of engagement that leads to the "57% improvement in discretionary effort" and "20% individual performance improvement," it's essential to keep one thing in mind: it's rarely a matter of a manager not wanting better performance or simply not being willing to develop their team members. It's nearly always because they just don't know how to go about it. As the Gallup article said, "There are no quick fixes when it comes to human relationships," and so many supervisors, managers, and executives today have worked their way through the ranks based on a completely different expertise. And the tools that got them there aren't often the ones they need most to interact effectively with their teams!
Since that's the case, let's review a list of some simple things we need to do. Then we'll wrap up our look at this particular profitability killer by laying out the practical steps to implement and sustain each one.
What Leaders Can Do To EARN Engagement
I just mentioned that we'd work through some "simple things" that we can each do to EARN engagement from the teams we're leading and, more specifically, some steps we can take to put those things into practice. Here's the thing: identifying those "simple things"-let alone taking action to sustain them over time-ain't always simple! But it sure should be...
An article on Forbes.com called "Six Ways Leaders Can Boost Employee Engagement-And Why It's Important" shared, well, six things the author suggested as necessary for getting the 60 percent 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 even to find the three C's-clear, consistent communication-because they were buried by the EIGHT things the author suggested.
In complete transparency, I didn't take issue with any of the things (fourteen in total) outlined in those two articles. That said, I'm a relatively simple guy, so I want to provide you with a simple list-and throwing fourteen things at you 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 even one thing 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 tiny restaurant as they were to his previous corporate team-and anyone in between. Lencioni lists immeasurement, irrelevance, and anonymity as what he believes contribute to a miserable work experience. His fictional pizza joint story tells how the main character works to offset each individual on his evening shift and how much the business's 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 always weaves a solid message. 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 to sustain when the stuff hits the proverbial fan-and it absolutely will! If we genuinely want to EARN engagement from the teams we lead, being intentional about providing them with clear measurement for their work and 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...
