Brett December 21, 2017

The Gallup organization conducted the mother of all employee engagement surveys.

Over a thirty-year period, they surveyed over 17 million employees and the data confirmed what many leaders fear – employee engagement is down, way down.

Imagine ten staff on a multi-seat bicycle. Three of them are working hard peddling together. Five aren’t peddling at all, just observing the scenery. The last two are dragging their feet or putting sticks in the spokes of the wheels, actively trying to stop or even crash the bicycle. That is the average workplace.

According to Gallup, only 31% of employees are engaged at work. The other 69% are not engaged. 50% percent are passively disengaged which means they are at work but they are neither productive nor committed. The remaining 20% are actively disengaged. Not only are they unproductive, they have a negative influence on the culture, frustrate their co-workers and drive people away from the organization. Disengagement is a systemic problem that could sink any enterprise.

It is estimated that disengagement costs $450 billion each year in lost productivity. Regardless of how you measure it, disengagement is a big problem.

Some organizations have invested a lot of money attempting to overcome the engagement crisis but the needle isn’t moving. Why?

The words of Henry David Thoreau ring true, “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one striking at the root.” Disengagement is a symptom of a much bigger problem.

Disengagement is a symptom of a much bigger problem. It rises and falls on leadership. Click To Tweet

Engagement Rises and Falls on Leadership.  The biggest factor influencing employee disengagement is poor leadership from supervisors. Victor Lipman, a contributor to www.forbes.com suggested that engagement hinges on, “the employee’s relationship with his or her own leader.” Could it be that simple? Yes, thirty years of research confirm this truth.

The real problem is a lack of leadership in managers. Gallup CEO, Jim Clifton, said, “Here’s something they’ll never teach you in business school: the most important decision you make in your job is naming your leaders.”

So, how can one lead for engagement?

Understanding Engagement. True engagement is a function of discretionary effort.

Every employee in every organization makes a personal choice to be engaged or not. People are not machines. Their highest outputs, their most significant contributions come if and only if they choose.

The engagement gap is the difference between the level of discretionary effort required to produce desired results and the level of discretionary effort actually expended. A truly engaged employee will meet or exceed the effort required every day, all day.

People are not machines. Every employee in every organization makes a personal choice to be engaged or not. Click To Tweet

Measuring Engagement Across a Continuum. Engagement levels can be plotted along a continuum. Your staff may choose to rebel in active disengagement. They may choose something slightly better like mindless obedience or willful compliance. Your staff may be even choose pleasant cooperation but the ideal is wholehearted commitment.

Engagement is not an event, here today and gone tomorrow, it is a disposition of the heart. It involves making a deliberate decision to bring forth the best effort (aka – enthusiasm, creativity, sustained effort, ingenuity, collaboration, strategic thinking, discipline and/or passion). Real engagement happens by choice.

What does it mean to lead for engagement? If you want to lead for engagement, then understand the difference between having power over people (authority) and having power with people (influence).

Leaders that exercise authority over people usually lean on their position or title to get others to do what they want them to do. Leading for engagement means having  authentic influence with people by connecting with them in four dimensions: their heart, soul, mind and strength. Yes, Jesus was the Master of leading for engagement.

Connect with the Heart: To lead for engagement, connect with the hearts of your people by loving them. People don’t care how much a leader knows (or can do, or can accomplish), until they know how much a leader cares. Great leaders have genuine care and concern for their people. They can’t help but make it personal. They are interested in their hobbies and their health. They ask about their kids and their parents not in inappropriate ways, but in a ways the say, “I care about you and the total person that you are.”

To lead for engagement, connect with the hearts of your people by loving them. Click To Tweet

Connect with the Mind: To lead for engagement, connect with the minds of your staff by teaching them. Leadership thought leader Noel Tichy says, “Leaders have a teachable point of view.” They don’t just have opinions or ideas, they translate those ideas and opinions into a teaching. They can provide a compelling explanation or metaphor that convinces the minds of their people with evidence, facts and logic. Staff engagement will not happen unless your people are convinced you know what you ae talking about. You must develop, hone and perfect a teachable point of view.

Leading for engagement means translating your ideas and opinions into a teachable point of view. Click To Tweet

Connect with the Soul: Every human being is endowed with a birth gift to find meaning and purpose in all they do. God placed this hunger for meaning within them. It’s inside all of us. Leading for engagement means creating an organization that speaks to that pursuit for meaning and purpose. Leading for engagement means starting (and staying) with, why. Human beings are not robots or machines. Each person on your staff, especially the leaders, want to know why you do what you do.

Connect with their Strength: Not only are your staff hard-wired to find meaning and purpose, they are hard-wired to leave a legacy. They want to make a difference. They want to make a personal contribution that lasts. Leading for engagement means finding work that is uniquely tailored to align with the passions and gifts of your people. Managing others is a lot easier when you align the work that needs to be done with the talents and skills of your staff. Quite often because they are so motivated and excited about the work, they manage themselves.

Leading for engagement means finding work that is uniquely tailored to align with the passions and gifts of your people. Click To Tweet

At some point in everyone’s life, their inner fire goes out. All of us can lose our passion and become disengaged. Often it takes an encounter with another person to see that inner fire burst into flames again.

We should be thankful for the people that have ignited our passions and strive to be the kind of leader that ignites the hearts of others.

Leading for engagement means having power with people, not over people. It means connecting on all four dimensions of their being – their heart, soul, mind and strength.