Hey, this is christ with acking your leadership. On today's discussion on employee engagement, we're gonna be over a third of these new rules for employee engagement, as spoken about by Tracy Brower in the New Rules for Increasing Engagement at Work article from Forbes. We started this series two thursdays ago talking about proximity. Last week we talked about presence and attention, and on this week we're
going to talk about performance. You know, I think there's a lot of discussion about performance because the employees who perform well typically are more engaged, because it's really difficult to perform at a high level if you are not engaged. But it's shortsighted to think that that's all it is. Meaning there are employees who are actively disengaged or they have a lack of engagement, and they will
still perform for you because of different reasons. Either they don't want to lose their job, or they're afraid of what the outcomes will be if they aren't performing. And so I want to be clear on this. This isn't just about oh, you know, if you have high performance, you have high engagement. But if you have high performance, it is a it's a good thing in terms of you know, uh, you know, kind of a
gut check for employee engagement. And I think that the leaders who do what they can to make sure that people are engaged in the work that they're doing in a way that drives performance, I think that's the right way to go. Yeah, I agree. I think that there's an element of this where especially over time, like like long long term high performance, uh, it is typically driven through an element of kind of a great culture and high levels
of engagement. For sure. I think we've talked about this before where you can have short spikes of performance and it be it's engagement, but it's not positive engagement, right. You know, they're they're engaged because maybe they're they're feeling like their you know, careers are you know, potentially being threatened or those types of things, but like you cannot sustain that over long period of time. But it's absolutely one of those types of things where it's a good
indicator, especially over time. It's interesting because I think it's also like low performance as well to a degree, tends to get associated with disengagement, and so it's like if it's a low performance, they're disengaged, well, not necessarily the same type of thing as like, well, maybe they haven't been trained correctly, maybe they haven't been spent spent enough time doing the task over
and over again to gain confidence and that type of thing. But that's why, from a leadership standpoint, the ability to step in and to have the dialogue conversations, to be able to observe the behaviors, be able to understand the motivations behind the person's performance is really more of a way to truly understand engagement and be able to adjust strategies or just connections or just conversations to then
be able to raise engagement and then raise performance. That's exactly right. The employees who have the highest level of engagement, there's also a mix of you know, they're they're put in place to use skills they have that you know their work is aligned with, but that they also are in situations where they are stretched a little bit too. No one wants to feel like they're stretched all the time because that will lead to burnout very quickly. You can't operate
that level all the time. You have to have wins that are associated with being able to you know, the correct application of the skills that you already have into wins and so it's it's majority of that, but with challenges that
stretch you. And so it's like in sports, if high school football team was constantly playing against NFL teams, Yeah, it's going to stretch them, but they're not going to be in a position to ever showcase the skills that they've learned and the effort they've been putting in because they're going to get creamed
every single time. And so you have to have this this kind of mix of you know, being able to showcase your skills because the work is aligned with things you know how to do in a way that lets you show that you can operate at a high level a perform at a high level, but then also some opportunities to you know, be up against some things that are
more challenging where you might not necessarily have the clear cut win. You might have something where it's you know, kind of a half win or the win is a learning as opposed to the outcome you're looking for, and you take that away and show that you can retain that knowledge for next time. So
it's it's a mix. Nobody wants to feel like their job is so easy that it never challenges them anymore unless you are looking to be out of that job already and you're just looking to get away as a little as possible. But if it's a job that you generally enjoy and you're not looking to leave, it's really difficult to remain highly engaged if the job is just almost you know, autopilot for you, like you just you know, kind of put
the blinders on and you move through the day. That can get very boring very quickly, and most people I know would start disengaging after a certain amount of time. With that, I want to go over some of the things that leaders can do to raise employee engagement using performance But first I want to
give it word from our sponsors. All Right, if you're a leader of PEP and you're trying to increase employee engagement through the use of performance metrics, what you want to do is make sure that your people have kind of a healthy mix of things that they can they do throughout the day that showcase the skills they have and that they enjoy doing, but also things that kind of
stretch them a little bit. And so it's important you meet with each of them to find out what it is they love doing about their job what it is they don't like doing about their job, so that you can kind of funnel the things they like doing more into their lane and try to take away
some of the things that they don't like doing as much. And it's not always possible to get it exactly right, but any effort that you can show from a leader standpoint that you're taking steps to do this, that you're trying to get them doing things throughout their day that are more aligned with what they
believe they're good at, while also keeping the challenges coming. You'll increase employ engagement that way, because they'll know that you have their back in terms of, you know, kind of filling their day with the things they enjoy as opposed to, you know, the grunt work or the work they don't enjoy doing, and they would write be you know, doing the things they want
to do instead. When you start doing these things with your employees, what you'll notice is that this kind of a cycle of performance and engagement feeds itself because highly engaged employees typically perform better, and then when you're performing better, you're able to kind of celebrate the wins internally, which leads to greater engagement. And so it becomes this virtuous cycle that feeds itself, and if you can get your employees into them, I think you can get some some serious
wins. As a leader, I immediately think of all the things that are part of a job where you're like, that doesn't bring me a whole bunch of either joy or there are things that like you just don't enjoy doing, like I put it to you that way, like the stuff stuff on my calendar, m just like I really don't want to do that, but I'm
gonna do that because it's a part of my role. But then there are things that really do bring you joy and that you that you have a passion for, that you would like to do more of, that fill your cup. And the thing that I appreciate most is like, that's most of where
I spend my time. And so like the things that you have to do, you know, becomes just a small part of the or a small part of the week, and they're easy to kind of get through because you will know and understand that most of the time that you get as a leader of people and a leader of leaders, you get to do. And then there
are things that really bring you joy. That's The power of the conversation and connection with your people in these spaces is to start to understand what are those things on both sides, What are the things that they might be really good at but they actually don't enjoy doing, And then what are the things that they really enjoy doing they have a passion for, they have a talent for that you're able to then help them to do that more often or apply that
in different types of ways. When you start to get to that point, then you start to see a good uptick in performance and a really big upticket engagement. And I love kind of what you talked about is like this virtuous cycle is like, once you get into that space, then those things that I was mentioning earlier around like, ah, these are the parts of the
job I really don't like to do. You quickly forget about those or you work through them quickly you realize it's just a part of your role that you have to get stuff done, and you don't spend any time in that space because you're so engaged excited for spending the time where you want to, and you're getting the outcomes and the performance that allow you to have more bandwidth to do more of that type of stuff right and over the It doesn't just matter
from us from like a monthly or annual standpoint. This applies to your entire career. And so if you were in tune with this, then the higher performance will drive getting steps in your career, you know, more and more promotions, and if you enjoy the work that you are doing in the new
roles that you're taking on, then it continues to work itself. And you know, the people I know who do all this correctly and then and they end up unhappy are the only the ones who took on roles and assignments that they thought they were supposed to do even though they genuinely didn't want to do it. And if you asked them in hindsight they didn't want that role. They just thought that was the next step, so they took it on and it led to them, you know, kind of a kind of a career
change at some point in their life. But if you're if you're aware of the things that you enjoy doing when you're making these decisions, and you are, and you start going for roles in your career that align with those things, then you can make this cycle work through your entire career, and eventually you get to a point where the vast, vast majority of what you do every day is something you enjoy doing, and it's just kind of peppered in
with things that you don't enjoy doing as much. But the higher up you move within an organization or within your career, typically the more control you have over your time and the more you can, you know, delegate things that can be used as learning opportunities for your people as opposed to taking all that that work for yourself and letting you focus on where you want to where you really want to be, which is leading people. If that's kind of the
Tortu're caring. Thank you all for joining us on this episode. Join us next week for another one. We'll talk about the next new rule for employee engagement. Have a great day,