OK, Boss... Engage Me!

Engagement is a choice- the employee's choice.

When I coach individuals, one of my favorite questions for the person being coached is, “What is your primary responsibility as a leader of this organization?” The responses vary, and I’ve found a number of replies that certainly seem to make sense.

One common answer is, “I am responsible for engaging and motivating my team.” While motivation, engagement, and leadership are often mentioned in the same breath (and rightly so), I’m not so sure I fully agree with this response. I tend to agree with Jim Collins that, as he reasons in his classic Good to Great, great companies don’t spend time figuring out how to motivate their employees. He states, “If you have the right people on the bus, they will be self-motivated. The real question then becomes: How do you manage in such a way as not to de-motivate people?”

The thought of a boss-turned-motivator brings to mind images of Ricky Gervais and Steve Carell (David Brent and Michael Scott in The Office) dressed in their finest workout gear, flailing about the conference room while the boom box accompanies with a rendition of Queen’s “We are the Champions.” Entertaining, somewhat sad, but not motivating.

As a consulting firm focused on improving the Employee Experience, we have organizations that approach us with the goal of increasing employee engagement. This is certainly a worthwhile goal. By measuring employee engagement, we can then address those areas that will create the circumstances and processes by which engagement can occur or increase. But there is also a flaw in the way many companies approach the idea of engagement.

Organizations generally start off with the question: “How do we motivate them to… (insert your latest change initiative here)?” This implies that motivation is something done TO your employees—something inflicted upon them. The second flaw in this thinking is that those in the executive suite have the power to pull the levers to increase engagement. The annual employee survey then becomes an executive report card, and the top 10 people in the organization make a hurried push to “drive engagement.”

This also assumes that employees are extrinsically motivated. In other words, that they are “motivated” through external reward (or punishment). As an employee, these rewards may help me in my desire and efforts in moving toward that reward, but I then establish a pattern of moving to the next reward or perk. This is not motivation. This is, as psychologists point out, operant conditioning (behavior modification in which the likelihood of a specific behavior is increased or decreased through positive or negative reinforcement). My “motivation” then becomes hopping from reward to reward, rather than in intrinsic motivation to perform and help the organization achieve. This is not to say rewards don’t work— of course they do, to an extent. However, they do not ultimately result in motivation or engagement, and are generally short-lived.

While the overall organization does impact motivation, the reality is that the top of the organization chart plays only a secondary role. Employees are not likely to find satisfaction in a job where they are underpaid, where they worry about whether they will be employed tomorrow, where they don’t have the equipment they need to succeed, or don’t have “the basics.” These areas are within the purview of the senior team. However, motivation is local in that it occurs at the individual level, and is largely impacted by that individual’s direct manager and working environment.

Does this mean that motivation is not a component of a manager’s duty? No. Going back to Collins’ theory, if we have the right people in the organization, they will be self-motivated. The role of a manager becomes:

1. Get the right people on the bus (team) who will then be self-motivating
2. Create the environment in which these people can choose to be motivated (notice that we are not motivating them)
3. Manage in such a way as to not de-motivate

Most organizations today are adding emphasis on attracting and retaining top talent. However, while talent is a very important piece, it’s only part of the “right people on the bus” equation. Talent without engagement means you have a bus full of bright passengers who are sleeping through your entire journey.

Engagement is a 50/50 proposition. Half of the responsibility is on the organization to create an environment in which top talent can choose to engage. However, that leaves the other half of the engagement equation—the employee half. Employees much choose to engage.

As our firm, DecisionWise, reviewed combined results of employee surveys, 360-degree feedback, and other psychometric assessments (we reviewed over 14 million data points overall in conducting research for our book, MAGIC), we found an interesting split. Just over 10% of the general population will engage nearly wherever they are. Regardless of the work, they will find a reason to engage. On the other end of the spectrum, just under 10% of the population will disengage most in any environment. They simply won’t engage in any situation for the long term, regardless of the culture, perks, work, or advantages of the organization. The rest of the population, about 80%, engage when the environment is right.

Going back to our original question, one of the primary responsibilities of a leader does relate to motivation. A direct supervisor, regardless of his/her level within an organization, has tremendous impact on motivation. However, he or she can only get the right players on the bus, create the right environment, and then not blow it. That means that engagement is still a choice—the employee’s choice—when the organization has created the right environment.