Every day the Gallup Institute tells us about poor workforce engagement in the U.S. The message is always a slap in the face of everyone classified as leader. Just go to http://www.gallup.com and check the “Gallup daily box” on the right.
Today Gallup says the number is 30,6%. This means that only 30,6% of the 160 million employees in the U.S. are involved in, enthusiastic about, and committed to their work and workplace.
If you dig deeper into Gallup`s insights (state of the american workplace), you will find that 50% of U.S. employees are not engaged in their work and 19,4% are even actively disengaged. Actively disengaged means that employees harm their company. They pilfer from the warehouse, skip work or even sabotage their employer.
The reason for the disaster? According to Gallup, clearly, it’s poor leadership.
Gallup`s findings are consistent with my own experiences. In all the companies I have worked or consulted for, employee engagement was on Top Management’s to-do list. Sometimes it was an open secret that leadership’s bad habits caused the disappointing results, since some were known as choleric, some acted like know-it-alls who were highly involved in micro management, others lacked integrity and character, and some even intimidated people. However, the main reason for low engagement levels was that leaders failed to provide the very basics of leadership, since it’s impossible to do so without engaging with your employees in the first place.
Engagement clearly starts with goal setting and expressing expectations. How can people be engaged in something if they don`t have a clue about what the leader wants them to be engaged in?
It is always surprising if you talk to employees about how many of them lack any knowledge of their company’s goals, why these goals are in place, and what these goals mean for them in person. In fact, most employees don`t know about the importance of their individual contributions to overall goal setting and how their work affects their company’s success. If you don’t believe it, just go and talk to your own people. It might be an eye opening experience.
Most people want to become champions, but the leader has to let them know where and what the championship is.
The second essential of leadership is relationship building.
The engagement level in your company gives you an indication about the relationship your employees have with your enterprise. If your people are not engaged or even disengaged in their job, they very likely don’t mind if they are employed at your company or somewhere else. They just do their job and are always ready for a move. Most often it is just out of convenience that people don’t leave and it is pretty obvious that they are not going to engage in something they don’t have a relationship with. I do believe that the direct leaders of employees play a major role in building and strengthen the relationship between them and the company.
Relationship is about trust and mutual understanding. It is about shared values and goals and care taking, and it has to be actively built by leadership.
A good leader always bears in mind that the person that comes to work is a human being, complete with anxieties, sorrows, hardships, dreams, needs and wishes. He always has an open ear for his employees’ needs and he doesn’t want them to feel like numbers. He makes sure that people feel validated as human beings, because recognition and appreciation are strong forces in fostering people’s engagement in a corporate environment. Relationship building takes time, but engaging people in achieving goals is the very reason leaders are in place.
People who hold a leadership position and have no relationship with their employees are just superiors, deriving their influence from the disciplinary power that is connected with their position. In this case, employees do what their superiors want them to do because they don’t want to be harmed. They just do their job and don’t show more engagement than necessary, which is exactly the case for 50% of all employees in the US. A tremendous waste of brain power, energy and creativity
Number three of all leadership basics is communication
Dear reader, please take this opportunity and ask yourself how often you talk to your people.
How long are you talking to them if you talk to them?
For what reason are you talking to them?
If you are at the higher ranks of the hierarchy, when was the last time you found yourself talking to people at the bottom level?
Communication is at once foundation and lubricant for any social interaction, which is a big part of leadership. And yet, communication seems to be the most neglected element in many leadership relationships.
Let me clarify that I consider communication as a two-way interaction. I am an advocate of spending more time listening to employees than talking to them.
The common obstacles for most leaders in providing appropriate communication are a shortage of skills, time and opportunity to do so. However, if leaders spend most of their time attending meetings or dealing with daily stuff rather than talking to their employees, they simply misunderstand the purpose of their job.
Employees want to know how they are performing. Therefore, feedback is an important element in engaging people. How can one be engaged if she doesn’t get any feedback about her engagement?
As a rule of thumb I recommend that 50% of a leader’s time should be spent interacting with his employees.
Leaders who fail to establish appropriate communication routines simply don`t lead and that´s the main reason for low employee engagement.