Want Engaged Employees? Better Have Engaged Managers

Music. Welcome to the Manager Lab, where we delve into the increasingly dynamic world of talent management.

In each episode, we will unravel key insights, break down the most relevant books and articles, and provide actionable tips to optimize your approach in developing and retaining top talent. Stay tuned for a deep dive into the art, science, and strategy of unlocking your team's full potential. Let's enter the Manager Lab.

In this edition of the Manager Lab, we're going to do something a little bit different today. Instead of reviewing an article like we normally do, I'm going to review a session that I attended back in May of last year, 2024, at ATD, Association for Talent Development. The title of the session was, Do You Want Engaged Employees?

You Better Have Engaged Leaders. And obviously that title hooked me from the beginning because I really believe that if we want engaged employees, we have to have engaged managers. The speakers were David Yesford and Tom Roth from Wilson Learning Corporation. Okay, so instead of, you know, normally I go through these articles with a fair amount of logic and I kind of follow, you know, I follow their prescription, if you will.

I'm not going to do that today because this is a series of slides, so it'll be a little bit more conceptual, kind of jumping from maybe one concept to another. But I think that jumping will be worth it because there's some really good stuff in here. The premise of their opening slide was we're going to discuss the connection of energy and choice and why it's critical to engagement, employee engagement.

Explore and bring to light the hidden impact of disengaged leaders, and then finally discuss what leaders can do to reclaim their own energy, the fundamental and valuable currency of full engagement. So those were the three objectives. Then they went on to kind of do a spoiler alert. Everything has changed and nothing has changed. And what they meant by that was that business has changed.

Everything about business has changed. I mean, just think over the last five, 10 years of your career, everything has changed. But really, leadership has not changed. I'm talking about the same principles, the same values now as I was talking about when I was in the pharmaceutical industry 30 years ago. So nothing really has changed that much. And then they start shifting into this idea of employee engagement. What defines employee engagement and why is it important?

Well, the reason it's important is because, according to Gallup. Companies with highly engaged employees outperform their competitors by 147 percent. So they're citing a very specific example there. Bottom line is the more engaged employees you have, the better your company is going to do. Productivity, efficiency, safety, all the above. It's just very clear that engaged employees make a huge difference.

Now, the question on most employees' mind is, what's going to be different tomorrow than today? Change, right? That's what really drives the equation for most employees. What's going to change? What is the organization going to go through tomorrow that's different than today? And then do I have the energy to go through this yet again, right? And so what is engagement? How do we get to the point where we know what engaged employees look like? Gallup has their definition. I like their definition.

But according to these guys at Wilson Learning, they look at perceptions of employees and energy expended. Meaning they have a positive perception about the workplace and they, you know, will tend to be very positive and optimistic and very uplifting and collaborative and all those things. So that's one thing. They have very positive perceptions. And you can maybe, if you know the growth mindset versus fixed mindset, you might think about them being in the growth mindset category.

And then you have energy expended, high discretionary energy is expended towards the workplace, meaning, and Gallup uses this language as well. Employees who spend discretionary time and energy thinking about work, and discretionary is the key point here, they think about work when they're not working. And usually, again, in a very positive, constructive way, those are going to be your engaged employees.

Now, the session goes on to say what Gallup says is that 23% worldwide of our employees are engaged and 77% disengaged. So one out of every, basically one out of four are going to be engaged. That's a little higher in the United States where about 33% of employees are engaged. So about one in three. And with that mix of disengagement, you have people who are very quiet about it.

They just kind of go through the motions. They go through their, they have a job and then they come do their job and then they go home. They don't think about work after work. Those are the quiet, quietly disengaged. And then there's the actively disengaged who actually have something to say at work and it's usually never very positive. Those make up about 18% of the global workforce, or about one out of.

So if you think about global data, one of your team members are going to be engaged, one's going to be actively disengaged, and the other two are going to be somewhere in the middle. And our role really is to, as leaders and managers, is to really leverage the engaged employee, try to manage the middle, kind of towards the engaged, and really. Quite frankly, understand what's going on with the disengaged employee. They might be just a bad fit.

They may not be in the right seat on the bus, but there's some kind of evaluation that needs to happen there. Or maybe they just need to be managed out of your organization. That's probably more likely. Okay. So, leadership has the greatest opportunity to influence the energy of an organization. Leaders either give energy or they take energy out of the organization. I love that concept.

But then, you know, it goes on to say that, look, if our rank-and-file employees are in this mix of, you know, somewhere between highly engaged and actively disengaged, well, guess what? So are our managers. And this is the big take-home here, is that we sometimes maybe put managers in a different category. We think that they may be more engaged than anybody else. But really, is that fair? Is that accurate? Probably not. And so we really need to spend time as senior leaders.

If you're listening to this podcast as a senior leader, how many of our managers are really, really actively engaged? And so that's kind of what the rest of this session was about, is about thinking about leadership, trying to understand how we can get our managers to be more engaged.

And it talks about, you know, the leadership is about the essence and the form of leadership. And really what that basically, that's their words that really just say, who do you want to be as a leader and what do you want to do? Who do you want to be is the essence of leadership. Who do you want to, what do you want to do is kind of the form of leadership. And it goes on to talk a little bit about why character matters. And, you know, the company that I work for now, character is our strength.

I'm looking at the poster on the wall. It's one of our core values where we take integrity and transparency and character very, very seriously. Okay, so what are some ideas here that we can practice to really build on this essence of leadership? Number one, they recommend that we look at building your leadership foundation. So what does that mean? Well, if we're thinking about philosophy, ask yourself this question.

You know, what are my beliefs about leadership? So think about the people, the experiences, the learnings, the successes and failures that have shaped your leadership philosophy, right? So that's one question. As far as values go, what do you value? Being clear on what you stand for and acting on those values is a tremendous source of energy that gives you energy as a manager and it lets you exude energy as a manager.

What distinctive skills do I bring to my role so what specific talents and strengths are you passionate about that you can count on to succeed and that others appreciate about you all right and then finally purpose what's what's your reason reason for leading why do you want to be a leader. Use your responses to the above three questions, the ones we just went over, you know, on philosophy, values, and strengths, to begin to articulate your reason for being, your essence, if you will.

Your purpose as a leader. Prompts to get you started. Empowering others. How do you think about that? How do you think about building relationships? What about facilitating change? What about bringing out potential in other people?

Those are the things to think about in terms of building your leadership foundation, okay? So that's number one, you know, just kind of getting really clear on your core philosophies and strengths. Number two, serving through the eyes of those who serve or those you serve. When I was at Glaxo, we talked a lot about inverted management theory, which was, you know, you have a, you look at an org chart, you're at the top, and then you have all your direct reports underneath you.

They often just took that piece of paper and flipped it upside down and would say, look, these people are at the top. You, manager, at the bottom, you serve them. Now, I think a lot of times we spent a lot of lip service on that. I'm not sure we ever 100% bought into it, but we certainly were reminded about it a lot. And I think that that's right. It's servant leadership really at its core.

The slide here says a fundamental measure of one's leadership and a great source of energy can be found in the answer to this question. What have I personally contributed to others and to the growth of the business? Wow, great question. What have I personally contributed to others and to the growth of the business?

So a leader's foundation is strengthened by recognizing what their constituents expect of them as a leader, and then by demonstrating that they care about their constituents' expectations by the examples that they set. So leaders who serve ask themselves these questions. For whom do I set an example? So who is my constituency? What does my constituency expect from me? What do the people that follow me expect? What do, why do, why should they follow me?

You know, what's the reasons that they should follow me? And what is my vision for them? What is my vision for my constituency? So, again, serving through the eyes of those who serve you is the second tool.

Third tool, last one, assemble your board of advisors. So an important part of fortifying your leadership foundation is to have trusted individuals who can offer you counsel and support. Having a personal board of advisors or board of directors, I've heard it explained that way as well, or just a dialogue partner who can offer advice, give you unfiltered feedback or insight can be a very tremendous energy boost when you need help or a fresh perspective.

They may have only one thing in common, and that is you, but they need to meet the following criteria. So they're interested in you and in your growth and development. They care about you rather than just giving advice. They care about you as a person. They're honest with you. They feel responsibility to provide straight talk about how you're doing as a person and as a leader. They teach you. They are interested in giving rather than receiving.

They hold some form of wisdom that will fill experience or knowledge gaps, and they expect something of you. They expect that you will act on their wisdom, on their advice, on their counsel, and that you will show up in the world as a better leader, a better manager, and a better person.

So, their summary slide is committing full energy and being engaged is a choice for all employees, including us as managers and leaders. Leaders either give energy or they take energy out of the organization. So if you want engaged employees, you better be the one that gives energy to the organization, especially to your direct reports.

And then leaders who build their leadership foundation, who serve through the eyes of those they serve and assemble their board of advisors experience dramatic, even quantum, increases in energy, effectiveness, and fulfillment. Well, I hope this session from ATD24 really helps you think about some of the foundational pieces of leadership. And I hope it helps you in your management walk. And until next time we meet in the Manager Lab, do good work.