Employee Engagement is critical for sustainable business success, but perhaps we should re-focus our efforts onto Management Engagement in order to win the hearts and minds of employees?
Employee Engagement
As someone who helps clients’ with their staff performance, attraction and retention strategies I’m not about to disagree with the web. However, I wonder if the term Employee Engagement is misdirecting the mind from where the development dollars should really be invested?
Management Engagement
If we are to believe countless studies over many years (by Gallup, Right Leadership et al), not having effective leaders is constantly among the top three reasons given by employees for leaving their employee. For what it’s worth, my experience working in this sector in Australia since 1998 supports these global studies. So…
If we accept that poor leadership is the root-cause poor employee engagement, why are so many businesses focusing on providing employees with ‘benefits’ before/rather than developing their managers’ leadership skills?
Aren’t these businesses getting the pyramid upside down – trying to spread limited resources across a large population (with limited success) and not targeting the resources on a few managers that are the root-cause of the employee engagement issues?
Shouldn’t we be engaging our managers first?
- Managers need to be engaged themselves before they can/will engage others;
- People follow leaders, they leave managers;
- Leadership skills can be developed just as management skills are – if we invest in them;
- One engaged leader influences the engagement of a whole team, engaged employees becomes disengaged by one disengaged employee;
Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not for one moment saying that you should stop rewarding your employees, but I am saying that if you want to solve your employee engagement problems, focus on the root-cause of the disengagement first.
Engaged Managers Are The Catalyst For Engaged Employees
So why just manage when you can lead and have people follow not leave?
Onwards & Upwards!
JB
I have been passionate about developing people and business performance in small to medium sized businesses for over 20 years. As Founder & Senior Consultant at Invoke Results, my experience across the range of business disciplines that small business owners need to develop a better business is what attracts my clients. Be it developing website and social media strategies, or dealing with your people and performance issues. If you've got business headaches, I'm your pain relief!
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Wendy Huang, Full Time Blogger and YouTuber at A Custom Blog in 4 Minutes
Hi John, this article kept me captivated throughout, so thank you for taking the time to write this piece. Actually I've been reading a fair few books lately and one concept that really stood out was people confusing the concept of management and leadership quite often. Leadership is about vision and direction whereas management is a way of making sure we get to that direction. Without a sound direction it's no wonder managers struggle, they don't know why they are managing and where they are going and so all sorts of complications arise. Everyone that reads this article should be jotting down some action points for improvement because I think this is extremely important to keeping at it. Even if you're not in a leadership position there is nothing stopping you from making sure you lead yourself first :) That's something I'm actively working on at them moment. Again great article :) I look forward to more quality pieces from you!
John Belchamber, Owner & Senior Consultant at Invoke Results
Thank you Wendy, I'm delighted you found it thought provoking. I believe leadership comes from right across a high performing organisation, not just from the management/leadership roles. After all, leadership is about the behaviours you demonstrate nit just about how many people report to you.