GET MORE PLAYERS IN THE GAME

Imagine that you are the coach of a sports team and you suddenly have the ability to put more players in the game than the regulations allow. Just think of the competitive advantage you would have. Employee engagement can potentially give you this same competitive advantage as a leader. One of the most valuable benefits of employee engagement is that it helps get more employees involved in their jobs and fully using their skills, experience, and expertise. Employee engagement encourages employees to do more than just meet the minimal requirements of their job. Employees then have a greater sense of ownership over their jobs. In this sense, employee engagement gets more players in the game at work.

The really good news is that there are no regulations or officials dictating how many players you can have actively involved at work at any given time. The possibilities are endless. You can have all of your employees as active, engaged participants. Engaging your employees can get more people thinking about the problems and issues that you as a leader or supervisor must deal with at work on a regular basis. Many employees aren’t fully engaged at work, most likely because they were never given the opportunity to be more involved. Engaging your employees changes this and provides these opportunities for them. More people can provide input into a problem or issue, so better decisions can be made. Employee engagement reminds us on a daily basis that “All of us are smarter than any one of us,” including you, as the leader or supervisor of a group.

Employees want to be more active participants in their work by becoming fully engaged—they don’t want to just go through the motions either. But they have to be given the opportunity to work in such an engaged environment, not simply put in their time. Surveys conducted by employers have consistently shown that many—if not most—employees in organizations are at the least “not engaged,” and may even be disengaged when it comes to presently contributing as a team member. The question that should be asked in the survey is: Why are so many employees disengaged at work? The answer to this question may be found by looking at the leadership style of the supervisors. The level of employee engagement in an organization is directly related to the working relationships between supervisors and employees. Employee engagement begins with changing your employees’ attitudes about their role in the organization, which can yield significantly positive, productive, and rewarding results.

Employees who work on a job regularly are going to have the most knowledge about how to make their job more efficient and productive, as well as having many other valuable insights. This is perhaps one of the greatest untapped resources in most organizations today. You should more fully utilize the talents and abilities of your employees from a productivity standpoint. Your employees will appreciate and feel good about you and their work as a result of your asking for their opinions. Everyone wants to feel like they are valuable and contributing members of any work group or team. This recognition is such an important part of getting employees more engaged in their work, as well as improving the problem-solving and decision-making processes in the workplace today. This gives employees a sense of job ownership that gets them more interested and committed to decisions that they participated in—they are no longer just spectators or perhaps even critics of the way the “game” is being played. Employee engagement gets employees off the bleachers and onto the field of play in your organization or workplace.

In this model there are two continuums shown. Looking vertically at this model, you see the continuum of guide to direct. On the horizontal continuum, you see develop to achieve. These represent important leadership traits or characteristics that are present in one’s leadership style. Some leaders have a greater propensity toward developing people and others are more focused on achieving results. Both can lead to reaching the same objective but in different ways. Similarly, some leaders are more prone to guide others toward reaching goals and others more comfortable being more direct in leading others to reach goals. Both can get you ultimately to the same place.

This model does not mean to imply that one of these leadership tendencies is better or worse, but rather identifies how these may influence a leader’s ability to engage those employees who report to him. Each of these continuums represents important but differing leadership styles. Looking at the horizontal axis, you again see the leadership difference between developing the organization versus actually achieving results. The question is which is most important at that time. On one hand, if all you ever focus on is achievement, and you pay no attention to developing employees for future achievements, then what have you really accomplished? You may achieve your short-term goals, but at the expense of your long-term objectives.

Looking next at the vertical axis, you see the distinction between guiding and directing employees. Again, this may be a matter of a leader’s propensity to encourage employees to proceed on a path of self-direction or discovery or to direct them to goals they are expected to achieve. This too may have long- and short-term benefits to both the leader and the organization.

Although one might think this model implies that developing and guiding employees are the most desirable leadership characteristics to create and maintain a culture of employee engagement in a workplace, this is not necessarily true. These tendencies would be most supportive of the concepts of employee engagement, but they are not the only way to create such a workplace culture. The fact is that leaders bring different styles to their jobs, which become their strengths, and likely allowed them to aspire to a supervisory position in the organization. Leaders must lead within their comfort zones and be consistent with their personality and leadership traits. To expect leaders to adapt a leadership style contradictory to their own personal style would be a mistake, and certainly not a successful strategy. Rather, leaders need to have a greater awareness of their personal leadership style, which can help them better understand how their style influences and supports the concepts of employee engagement. A leader with a directive style can become an engaged leader by understanding how to lead employee engagement by using this tendency to direct employees in this path. A leader with a results or goals focus can similarly help engage employees by teaching employees how to focus more on the goals they are to achieve. The following self-assessment will help you better understand your own leadership style and how it influences your ability to be an engaged leader.

Supervisor’s Engagement Self-Assessment

It is important to take an introspective look at your own leadership style and see how it presently may or may not be supportive of creating a more engaged workplace. Some supervisors might not be aware that they are part of the problem because of their leadership style or behaviors. They may unintentionally inhibit or even discourage employees from engaging more in their jobs. This might be caused by many reasons, such as leadership styles, misunderstanding the concepts of employee engagement, and conflicting expectations of others including their bosses, organizational culture, and so on. You need to better understand how important your role is in employee engagement. This is critical to creating a workplace in which every employee wants to get more involved. The following Supervisor Engagement Self-Assessment can help you better understand your own employee engagement leadership style. Select the answer from the multiple choices presented that best describes how you would respond to or act as a leader in each of the following circumstances:

Supervisor Engagement Self-Assessment

1.	An employee who reports to you is struggling to finish an important project that must be completed within a few days. Which of the following would best represent how you would deal with this situation?
		a.	Provide guidance to the employee on how he could use his experience and knowledge to get his job done on time.
		b.	Provide guidance to the employee on how to complete the project on time based on your experiences.
		c.	Direct the employee on how he should complete the project.
		d.	Due to the time constraint, specifically tell the employee exactly what needs to be done to complete the project on schedule.
2.	Your work group needs to expand due to increased business demands that require a higher level of expertise and performance within your team. Which would be your most important priority?
		a.	Explain to your existing employees the benefits of learning the new skills required as a result of this expansion to gain their interest.
		b.	Encourage your existing employees to learn the skills necessary to perform these new responsibilities.
		c.	Choose the best qualified existing employees in your work group to be trained on these new skills.
		d.	Assign or hire the employees who have the skills and experience you need as a result of this expansion.
3.	As a supervisor, you know the answer to a problem that your employee has been struggling to solve. Which of the following would you most likely do in this situation?
		a.	Work with this person to help her discover the solution on her own, so that she learns how to deal better with these types of problems in the future.
		b.	Provide guidance to the employee to help her find the solution.
		c.	Direct the employee toward the correct solution without providing her with the answer to the problem.
		d.	To save time in this situation, tell the employee the answer to the problem to ensure that it is solved immediately and explain to her why this was the best way to deal with the problem.
4.	What do you think is the best way to supervise an experienced employee who has a high level of expertise on the job?
		a.	Delegate the major decisions of the job based on her experience and expertise on the job.
		b.	Provide guidance as needed by the employee to achieve desired results.
		c.	Discuss with the employee areas she needs to develop in the future, providing guidance in this process.
		d.	Listen to the input of the employee before making decisions related to that employee’s job.
5.	If you had to choose between the following resources, would you:
		a.	Create training and development processes for employee development.
		b.	Create specific on-the-job training to enable employees to perform their jobs better.
		c	Select certain employees for developmental assignments or training to help your work group perform at a higher level.
		d.	Invest in process improvements to enhance product quality or customer service.
6.	What do you think is the most important leadership characteristic today?
		a.	Ensuring that each employee understands how to perform his job correctly.
		b.	Helping every employee reach his greatest potential in the performance of his job.
		c.	Developing a workforce able to meet the future challenges that the organization may face.
		d.	Ensuring that everything you are responsible for is operating correctly and is supportive of the goals of the organization.
7.	Who do you think should be held accountable for the results of a person’s job?
		a.	Primarily the employee, but also the supervisor.
		b.	Primarily the supervisor, but also the employee.
		c.	The employee.
		d.	The supervisor.
8.	Who do you believe should be given recognition for a work group achieving its goals?
		a.	The employee.
		b.	The entire work team.
		c.	The supervisor and employees directly involved.
		d.	The supervisor.
9.	What do you believe is the most important goal to focus on in achieving a workplace based on employee engagement?
		a.	Ensuring that every employee receives the training and information necessary to perform their jobs to the best of their ability.
		b.	Adapting a culture that supports employees on all levels of the organization concerning becoming more involved and accountable for their jobs.
		c.	Leadership that is supportive of the concepts of employee engagement.
		d.	Measuring the results of employee engagement.
10.	What do you think is the greatest benefit to a supervisor in moving toward achieving a workplace based on employee engagement?
		a.	Employees reaching their highest potential, enabling them to perform their jobs better.
		b.	Greater employee job satisfaction, ultimately enabling the supervisor to lead more effectively.
		c.	Changing the culture of the organization to be more supportive of the concepts of employee engagement to help everyone—including supervisors—reach their shared goals for success.
		d.	The organization becoming better able to meet or exceed the requirements of their customers.

Self-Assessment Results

It is important to understand that there are no right or wrong answers to this self-assessment, but rather, its purpose is to help you better understand your leadership tendencies. You will be oriented toward the specific directions presented in the Engaged Supervisor Model. Looking at the selections you made on this self-assessment, you can find where your leadership style or characteristics would be on this model shown below with four quadrants identified based on the combinations of the leadership directions presented in the model. To gain a better understanding of your “engaged leadership” style, count the number of questions in the Engagement Self-Assessment that you answered as either a, b, c, or d and plot them in the Engaged Leader Profiler below to see where your leadership tendencies are in relation to each of these quadrants. For example, if the majority of your answers fall into quadrant A, this would indicate that you tend to be focused on guiding and developing those who report to you.

Sometimes we have to be reminded just how important it is to keep everyone actively involved in their jobs to achieve the best results at work. In this brief story, the value of getting more employees involved in the “game” is realized by a new supervisor. She is reminded of the importance of asking your employees for their opinions and advice.

Alice Henderson had been the supervisor of the customer service group at the company’s largest call center for the past two years. She actually began her career with the company as a customer service representative (CSR) more than 10 years ago, moving first to group leader, then section leader at the call center. Over the years, Alice had seen the call center grow from about 50 CSRs to more than 400, matching the growth in the industry. Alice enjoyed her leadership role that she had aspired to through her hard work over the years. She felt especially prepared for this level of supervisory responsibility as she had worked her way up through the ranks in the organization. As a result, she did have extensive firsthand experience and knowledge of the jobs of the CSRs who reported to her and the problems and challenges they faced on a daily basis, dealing with the calls they handle from prospective and existing customers of the company. However, paradoxically, sometimes this experience and knowledge seemed to be as much of a liability as it was a benefit to her as the leader of the group. Because of her confidence in her extensive knowledge of this function, she would make decisions without consulting anyone else, including the CSRs, as she believed she knew how they would feel about any issue. She felt she was accurately representing their interests.

The problem was that this assumption on her part was not always correct. It had been several years since Alice had actually sat in a CSR’s chair and handled incoming calls. Even though she had been involved in making changes over time in the operating procedures of the call center, all of this experience had been from a supervisory perspective, not that of a CSR. This meant that Alice didn’t always know what it was like to be currently working as a CSR at the call center, yet she was making many decisions daily based on her outdated experiences as a CSR. There was a growing frustration in the call center that the interests of the CSRs were no longer being understood by the leadership of the company, including Alice. This was becoming apparent to the top management of the company, especially as a result of a recent employee engagement survey in which CSRs were asked to comment on their feelings about their supervisor. The survey questioned the level of engagement CSRs felt they had in making decisions about matters which directly affected them and their ability to perform their jobs. The results of this survey indicated that Alice’s direct reports felt they had very little input and that these types of decisions were being made almost exclusively at a level above them. Alice had thought she was doing a good job representing the CSRs interests, but was now realizing that she needed to change her leadership approach to such matters. This problem was not just that Alice received lower survey results than expected, but the performance index scores for her teams were also lower. This concerned Alice and her supervisor, who correctly associated both of these scores as related to one another.

Receiving these low survey scores was a somewhat shocking and emotional experience for Alice. As a CSR, she truly believed it was important for her voice to be heard about how to best serve their customers, and she realized she had forgotten this important principle. She also saw that the way she was currently trying to be a manager was creating a great deal of stress, not only for her, but apparently also for people in her group. They were increasingly frustrated with her leadership style. She remembered how infuriating it had been as a CSR to have great ideas about better serving the customer that were ignored. She had thought of solutions to work problems, but hadn’t been listened to by her supervisor. Alice’s intentions were good, but she wasn’t giving her CSRs a chance to be engaged. She just assumed that based on her experience and expertise, she knew better than anyone what decisions to make or how to resolve problems on her team. Even though she did have a great deal of firsthand experience in such matters, she was not one of the people currently working closest to the problems, and therefore was not in the best position to make many of the decisions. Alice realized she was taking on the burden of making all the important decisions at work without asking those who were in a better position to provide her guidance. She wasn’t truly using the most valuable resources that the company had provided her to help her perform her job. Instead, she was working literally day and night to try to solve all of these problems on her own without achieving the best results. Alice realized that she could not only make her job easier and much less frustrating, but she could also improve the jobs of her employees, by getting them more engaged in the decision-making and problem-solving process in their workplace.

From this story, think about how Alice was trying to do everything herself rather than engaging others, which actually caused her to be less effective on her job. Sometimes when you believe you are the only one who can or should make decisions, it actually makes you far less productive. Alice assumed that because she had previously performed the same job as her employees, she was the best person to make decisions about workplace issues. But what Alice quickly learned is that although she had prior experience on this job, those who were currently performing the job were still in a better position than she was to provide the best input into decisions about their jobs. This can be a difficult transition for any supervisor, especially in the situation which Alice found herself.

A fair question for you to ask as you explore the concepts and principles of employee engagement being introduced into your organization is: “What’s in it for me (WIIFM)?”

Are the advantages of employee engagement focused solely on employees who are becoming more engaged, and not on you as their supervisor? To answer this question, think about some of the advantages for you if you are able to get “more players in the game,” as this chapter discusses.

Think about the following questions.

1.  Will employee engagement make your job more rewarding and even easier?

2.  What impact could it have on your job if your employees were able to perform their jobs at a higher level of performance than they are presently?

3.  What would be the benefits to you? List some of these that come to mind below.

1.  What advantages could you gain if those who report to you are able to accept greater levels of responsibility and decisions? Think about the opportunities for you to focus on other responsibilities that could help you perform your job at a higher level. List some of these below:

2.  How different do you believe your employees’ attitudes about their jobs would be if they were to become more engaged in their jobs?

1.  Think about opportunities to get those who report to you more involved in their jobs and in helping achieve the goals of the organization. What would some of those be?

2.  What are some of the things that you would need to consider to allow employees to become more engaged in their jobs?