'From Both Sides of the Desk'
ISSUE NO 13 - OCTOBER/ NOVEMBER 2006
What Kind of Leaders Do We Need?
Much has been written on the subject of leadership. In fact a search on Amazon.com resulted in over 16,000 books with the word leadership in the title! But despite all of the help that is available it appears that business leaders around the world are still not getting it right.
Great leaders get people excited about and committed to their organisation’s vision, they get people engaged. And yet the Gallup Organisation’s research shows that only around 30% of the Australian workforce is engaged.
One thing we need to understand about the role of the leader in employee engagement is that leaders are either increasing engagement, or they are decreasing it. There is no middle ground. Everything a leader does that impacts on employees either increases or diminishes engagement.
The Truly Engaged Employee
Before looking at what kind of leaders we need, I suggest we should get really clear on what we mean by a truly engaged employee. That way we can better understand the kind of leadership we need to provide.
When looking at human motivation, I think it is helpful to do so in the context of The Whole Person Concept or the Iceberg Model. The underlying principle in this model is that all motivation comes from within the person. More specifically, motivation comes from the Needs or Values levels of our model. In other words, people do what they do either to satisfy a need, or because they believe they should because it is consistent with their values.
Full Engagement rarely comes from just satisfying employees needs. Receiving a pay rise or bonus, extra benefits or even a promotion can have a temporary impact on engagement, but it doesn’t last long. The fully engaged employee is one whose needs and values are aligned with their work and their organisation.
Five Leadership Skills that Increase Engagement
After almost 30 years of research I have determined that there are five essential skills that leaders must have if they are going to succeed in increasing employee engagement. They are:
1. Building Trust
Trust is an essential ingredient in increasing engagement. The first thing leaders need to know about building trust is that it does not happen just because you are trustworthy. People do not know how trustworthy you are until you demonstrate it by using trust building behaviours and the most important of these behaviours is to trust others. We build trust by trusting others. This requires a basic belief in people, a belief that people are essentially trustworthy. After all, if you have untrustworthy employees, why did you hire them and why are they still there?
2. Mentoring
The relationship between the employee and his or her immediate manager is a critical factor in how engaged the employee will be. We have to get away from the idea that Managers cannot mentor the people who report to them. The Gallup research is very clear on this point. Employees need feedback, they need to know how they are performing regularly, not just once a year at review time, and be able to discuss their needs for growth and development with a Manager who cares about them. Effective leaders need to give and receive feedback and to coach and counsel employees in a way that increases engagement and commitment.
3. Inclusion
Whether employees feel like an insider or an outsider also impacts on their level of engagement. Effective leaders know that everyone on their team has strengths the team needs and they know how to get the best out of each person regardless of their ethnic background, gender, age or sexual orientation. They understand that people with different personal values can work together effectively when they commit to the same values about trustworthiness and standards of work performance.
4. Alignment
Engaged employees feel aligned with their organisation’s Purpose, Values and Vision. Their work is meaningful to them because their leader helps them see the connection between what they do and the success of the organisation. The effective leader also understands that gaining their team’s commitment to the organisation’s values increases the team’s performance standards as well as their engagement.
5. Team Development
Effective leaders understand the potential for significant increases in performance through high performing teams. They make sure that all team members understand the strengths they and other team members bring to the team and work at developing a process that capitalises on all of these strengths. The leader’s focus is on developing the leadership potential of each team member and ultimately implementing a shared leadership approach to continuously improving performance that is owned by the team.
All of these skills are needed to fully engage employees. Engagement will be diminished if any of them is missing. The challenge in developing these skills is that they are dependent on each other. That is, you have to build trust before you can be effective at mentoring and you will need your mentoring skills to be effective at inclusion and alignment. You won’t have much success at getting all employees aligned unless they feel like an insider and to build a high performing team the leader needs all of the above skills.
The reality is that these skills don’t come naturally to many managers, and yet they can be learned. But extensive research by Daniel Goleman (author of Primal Leadership) on leadership learning has established that they cannot be learned during a single training event. Developing these skills will for many managers require the unlearning of old habits, often habits of a lifetime and the learning of new habits. It takes time, reinforcement and practice and a serious commitment from both the organisation and the managers involved.
With all the evidence we now have about the significant increases in organisational performance as employee engagement increases, can anyone afford not to make the effort?
Written by Keith Ayers
President
Integro Leadership Institute - USA
I wish to thank Integro Learning Company for allowing us to publish 'What Kind of Leaders Do We Need'. To find out more about Integro please visit their website - www.integrolearning.com or email to support@integro.com.au
- A Recruitment Thought for the Month -
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Theodore Roosevelt
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