In previous articles I’ve written about the importance of Setting Direction and Executing Strategies. These are two of the three roles of an effective leader. As you may have guessed by the title of this article, the third role is to Engage People in your success. Notice I didn’t say “motivate.” “Engagement” goes way beyond motivation, and guess what – your people are already motivated. No one gets out of bed unless they are motivated. Motivated to do what? Good question. Usually they are motivated to meet their own needs (see Maslow’s Hierarchy). What you are really looking for is to get them engaged in your success; to be committed to being relevant to the future of your organization. A recent study showed that only 29% of workers were actively engaged in their work, costing the US companies over $1 billion a year in absenteeism, accidents/workers compensation, sabotage, and low productivity.
Close your eyes for a minute (after you read this, of course) and think about a job you had that you really loved. A job that you couldn’t wait to get to in the morning, and, on your way home, you felt good about what you accomplished during the day. I hope you’ve had a job like that, and I hope it’s the job you have now. Now close your eyes and think; what made that job so special? Why were you engaged in your work?
I’ve asked this question to thousands of people in my workshops, and the most common responses are:
- I was good at and knew what I was doing
- I understood what was expected
- I was able to make a significant contribution→
- What I did mattered
- I liked what I did
- I liked the people worked for and/or with
- I received recognition for my accomplishments
Notice what is missing from this list. Rarely does anyone mention money, and, if they do, it is in the context of being fairly compensated. The job I hated the most in my career paid very well (that’s the only reason I stayed). The truth of the matter is that money will never make you love your job.
So how do you engage your people and build a culture of commitment? Here’s the number one way (with a tip of the hat to Victor Vroom and his Expectancy Theory):
Effort → Performance → Valued Result = Commitment
What this means is that your level of Commitment to anything is equal to your belief that your Effort will translate into Performance that will create a Result that you Value. Anyone who has picked up a musical instrument or tried to play golf has felt the truth of this equation. Let’s take the guitar for example. If you are going to be Engaged in trying to play the guitar, you must believe that your Effort will enable you to string together enough chords (Performance), so that you will be able to play a song that people will recognize (your Valued Result). If you keep putting in Effort, and it doesn’t translate to Performance and create the Valued Result, you will quit. No one will keep hacking away at a guitar if they never get it to make music. This is why there are so many guitars gathering dust out there.
So if our Commitment equation is true, what can you do to increase the Commitment and Engagement of the people in your organization? You guessed it; you work backwards. The number one way to help people be committed is to define for them the Valued Result (1). Once you define the Valued Result, you can then work together to determine the Performance that is required (2), and they can decide if it is worth the Effort to get there (3).
Effort←Performance←Valued Result = Commitment
So what happens if you don’t define the Valued Result for your people? If you don’t define it for them, you leave it up to them to figure it out (and usually chew them out when they get it wrong). Most people want to do a job that they are proud of, where they feel they contribute, and where they believe in the company they work for. They don’t do a bad job on purpose; the do a bad job because the guessed wrong on what the Valued Result is.
It is truly that simple (notice I didn’t say easy). So why don’t more people do this for their employees? The number one reason is that they don’t know what the Valued Result is. So you have to start by figuring out the Valued Result for everyone in your organization. Once you do that, you are on your way to a culture of commitment and employee engagement.
Tags: employee engagement, leader development, leadership, motivation, role of leader
