Here’s a task for you: Find me one person who has never in their life experienced disengagement at work.
Impossible? Probably not. But the fact is, most of us have experienced at least some days, in which we didn’t feel like solving the problem at hand, writing that email or breaking down that complicated procedure to make it more understandable.
Occasionally having those kind of feelings towards our work doesn’t necessarily mean we’re disengaged. The more often they pop up though, the more likely we are.
Whether you yourself are disengaged, will be easy for you to figure out. What is much harder, is to spot disengagement in our employees. We can’t look into their minds to determine how they’re feeling, but we can reach out to them and ask about their feelings towards work. Chances are, they will tell you all is well, while actually they’re already applying to work for different organisations.
Another option you have is to observe their behaviours. Disengaged employees often call in sick, are low in energy, lack enthusiasm and spend more time on social media or drinking coffee than actually working. Maybe they’re not performing as well as you want them to. Maybe they’re coming up with one excellent piece of work after the other, while being bored to death, because their work isn’t challenging enough.
In short, there are many ways in which employees’ disengagement can display itself. The best thing you can do is not to run after your disengaged employees, but to be the leader who actively contributes to engaging them. Here’s how:
Engagement is a result of positive workplace attitudes. You want your employees to be enthusiastic about solving challenges, excited about diving into an unknown future and confident enough to take on the work you provide them with. Helping colleagues, sharing ideas, participating in activities that aren’t work related… these are the attitudes you want to see in your employees.
Research has shown that there are specific leadership practices that lead to these positive workplace attitudes and in turn to engagement of employees. Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner, authors of The Leadership Challenge®, have specified these into five exemplary leadership practices. Once you’ve mastered these, you will be the leader who is able to inspire your employees to be engaged with their work.
Be the leader who practices what you preach, setting the foundation for people to trust you. To do this, you must be clear on what it is you are actually preaching every day. What is the message you want people to get from you? This is not only about what you say, but about how you behave, respond, react on things or don’t even react at all.
Modelling the way is about first finding your voice, by clarifying your personal values. What is important to you? What convictions do you hold? Once you’re clear on this you can set the example for others by aligning your actions with these values.
Being constantly busy with work but not knowing where things are leading to or why the work needs to be done in the first place (aside from brining in the money), your employees will lack their reason why.
Work on painting a vision for the future by imagining exciting and ennobling possibilities, and then share this vision with your employees by appealing to shared aspirations. Let them be inspired everyday by having a greater sense of purpose to their work. A shared vision that excites them to work towards.
There is nothing more uninspiring than a leader who constantly answers with ‘no, sorry that’s not possible’ or ‘we can’t do that, it’s too…’. Aside from that, this kind of attitude won’t bring you far in today’s VUCA world either.
Push yourself to challenge existing processes, looking for ways and opportunities to change, grow and improve. Seek out innovative approaches, experiment with new ideas and don’t be afraid to take risks by generating small wins and learning from mistakes.
Enabling others to act is to make people powerful through our actions and our words. Saying things like ‘you know this is your responsibility, why didn’t you do this?’, or ‘do you have any idea how badly your performance effects our the company?’. Ignoring your employees in meetings, not listening to their differing point of views - these are great examples for disabling others to act.
Make sure what you say and what you do empowers your employees to act.
When employees work overtime, respond to all of your requests, go out to buy your lunch and the only thing they hear is ‘why haven’t you finished this yet?’, they are not receiving the encouragement their heart needs.
If you look at the word ‘encourage’, you will notice that it entails having the necessary courage. It doesn’t always come easy to us to express our gratitude and encourage the people around us. But just one sentence can go a long way. Thanking your employee for her effort, patting him on the back saying ‘we can do this’ or telling your employees how greatly their work effected the positive outcome for your customer will make them feel valued and contribute to their sense of achievement.
These five practices will help you be the leader who contributes to greater engagement of your employees, inspiring them to explore innovative ways, empowering them to face challenges, being their role model, providing them with a shared vision to work towards and encouraging them to keep going even when this seems hard.
Being engaged, your employees will find that they’ve been working on a task while completely forgetting about checking how many new likes their photo received. They will speak positively about your organisation, and will want to stay with you, highly motivated to go along with the mission you set out for them.
Find out more about The Leadership Challenge®