Hey, this is Chris Attacking your leadership. On today's discussion on employee engagement,
we're going to be wrapping up this Forbes article called the New Rules for
Employee Engagement written by Tracy Brower. We've been going through this article for the
past four thursdays and there's some you know, pretty good conversations on the different
rules for employee engagement that are kind of, you know, popping up as
being things for leaders to consider. On today's episode, we're going to go
over the last one, which is purpose. And you know, I have
to admit we'll put the link to the article in the podcast description, but
I have to admit that, you know, this is the one where the
writing of the article I don't one hundred percent agree with, where I kind
of want to, you know, pick it apart a little bit because I
think there's some good stuff in here in theory, but in practice, I
think there's more to it than just what the article states. You know,
it is absolutely true that when people have a sense of purpose, they're going
to feel more engaged in their job. There's no question about it. When
people feel like they're contributing towards a greater good or something that's bigger than themselves.
They are more engaged when doing it. There's the data is clear on
that, and so making sure that your people feel a sense of purpose around
what they do is really important for you as a leader in order to make
sure that employee engagement is increasing. But I also think there's an element of
reciprocity here. There's an element of the responsibility being on the employees as well,
not just on you as a leader. But we can get into that
in a little bit. Yeah, I think it's definitely, you know,
being really really conscious about when you're when you're looking at engagement and building culture
to recognizing behaviors that you have yourself seen. There's always the easy way is
always look at the outcomes and the results and be like great job. Like
great job, you had this oulcome, you have this result, you met
this deadline. Great job. But the real element of engagement is in recognizing
very specific observable behaviors and understanding what it is that each person brings in recognizing
for those types of things, and that requires a good amount of heavy lifting
on the leader. But to your point, it also requires an element of
you know, someone doing a level of work that is kind of you know,
should that should be recognized from a unique standpoint. Yeah, I think
that's that's a great way to say that. If there's if the the article
states that creating purpose by reinforcing a bigger picture and clarifying how each employees contribution
is making a unique contribution to it, I think that's true. But if
the employee isn't making a unique contribution and you try to word slid it into
it being a unique contribution, all that does is they it's patronizing to them
because they can see through it. It devalues the actual unique contributions being made
by people who have taken steps to make a unique contribution. And I think
it does more to disengage people than to engage people. But if you,
as a leader have employees who are making unique contributions, then you need to
be recognizing those things if they if you're not in a position to notice those
unique contributions, then you need to be. And this is this is your
responsibility as a leader. But but it's not your responsibility as a leader to
take an employee who is doing exactly what the job description is, which is
which is not unique, Like it's the same for all their peers as well,
and and then trying to make sure that that that they know that they
have a unique contribution to the to the business. You can appreciate their contribution
to the business, and they need to feel appreciated for it, but trying
to make it seem like it's contributing towards a greater good or or a bigger
picture is much harder when a person hasn't taken the steps to, you know,
kind of raise their hand and say, hey, I want to do
more. I want to do more than just what this job is because I
want to make a unique contribution. That really has to start from the perspective
of the employee. And as long as you, as a leader are doing
right by the people who have raised their hands, that will kind of spur
that on in people who are considering it. If they can see that no
one is getting any recognition for the unique contributions they are making, they're less
likely to raise their hand and decide they want to make one as well.
But that's where the responsibility of you as leader comes in. I want to
go over some of the things that people do in organizations where this is done
well, But first I want to get it towards one of our sponsors.
All right, if you're a leader of people and you want to do this
well. The leaders that I know who do this well, they do two
things. One, they don't mix up making a unique contribution with just making
a contribution. So if someone has made a unique contribution and there's some bigger
purpose around it, absolutely recognize those people for what it is they're doing.
And if they're not making a unique contribution, they're just doing their job well.
Being able to look and see where the potential for making a unique contribution
is. That's where your role as the leader comes in and where you can
make this happen better. And so if you see your one of your employees
having an interaction with somebody, a client or a customer and it appears that
the interaction went well and the employee has said something that you maybe haven't heard
before in an interaction, going up to that employee later on and saying,
hey, I noticed you said this. That was really good and it seemed
to work well. Have you have you used that before? Have you said
those things before? And if they say yeah, that's what I say to
my clients or my customers, and we have great conversations being able to say,
you know, I like that a lot, would you mind sharing that
with some of you some of your team members, or can I share it
with some of the team members as something that you've done and we can see
if it works for other people as well, and then if that grows into
something where their team members or the people start using it and it changes something.
Now they've made a unique contribution. Now that you've taken that little thing
that someone has done which is just their job, and you've helped fan the
flames on that little spark and it turns into a fire, and now they
have made a unique contribution to their team. But trying to take something that
they've done that is not a unique contribution and shoehorning it into something that is
what it sounds like that they are making a unique contribution and that they will
have greater purpose behind it. That doesn't go over very well. So,
you know, find out where the contributions are being made, recognize people at
the level that is deserved of the contribution they're making, but do your best
to figure out where you can grow those things, because because growing them is
your responsibility as a leader, and you'll have more and more employees making unique
contributions. Yeah, this is one of those things that sounds really good on
paper when you read it, like, yeah, that makes total sense.
Like we want to recognize the uniqueness of every individual person. It is not
an easy thing to do because you can get caught up and being too general.
You can get caught up in giving credit where honestly it's not due yep.
And you have to spend a lot of time in the spaces to not
only again observe what you see with the behaviors, but also like be attentive
enough to understand what you were mentioning, which is like, how do you
how do you cultivate this? How do you help this to grow as a
behavioral aspect of your team or as of the individuals, And you have to
meet these things where they're at. There's gonna be those major elements where somebody
has a unique contribution that dynamically shifts the outcomes or the team or the strategy,
and you want to recognize that in a big way. And then you're
going to have those moments where somebody is figuring something out for themselves, where
they are approaching something in a uniqueness that you know works for them, but
it works well for them. It's not scalable necessarily, you can't say,
hey, can everybody do this like how Chris is doing this? May maybe
this only works for you, but it is something that's working for you,
and it's helping you to achieve goals, exceed goals, be more productive.
There could be things like that where that's also extremely important, and you know,
you want to recognize those types of things so that you will continue to
do those types of things. And I think that you know, if you're
really trying to con or this from an engagement standpoint, you're gonna have to
spend a lot of time considering each of these things with each person on your
team. And then this is where when you're a leader of leaders, when
it becomes way too many people and you have layers of leadership, this is
where you're have to spend time teaching these things and role modeling these things with
your leaders and showing them and giving them examples of how this comes to life.
Because you can't do this when your team exceeds a certain amount of number
of employees, Like you just can't personally do it. You have to work
through others. But they have to be attuned to your filters, to your
approach, and to the strategy to make sure that they're not maybe you know,
pushing somebody up who should not be getting the credit or didn't do the
thing, or whatever the case is. So like it is a tricky strategy,
but it's definitely you know, you can do it, but you really
have to be attuned to what's going on and spend a lot of time making
sure that you're not either overdoing it with credit for everybody or or giving credit
when it's not due. Right, I think it's bought on. I think
the last thing and not to a another element to this, but it is
important to consider as a leader is it has to be recognition for something that
the employee themselves believes is worth recognizing or that is important to them. And
so if you want, if you start recognizing an employee for their contribution and
the contribution was to the bottom line, well, this person did this number
of sales and this amount of margin and this amount of profit to the bottom
line, and that employee doesn't care about the bottom line margin because they're not
a shareholder. They don't they don't get profit sharing. They make a salary
and that's it, and what they care about is doing right by their customers
or their clients. They care about creating a good experience for those people.
And you start recognizing them based on the financial outcomes, that's not going to
land well either. So you have to know what's important to each of your
people and make sure that the recognition you're giving them is around those things.
If they're making a contribution to the financial aspect of the business, but they're
doing it through the behaviors that they are that you can see with their their
clients are customers, and what's important to them is how they treat their clients
and customers. Then don't recognize them for the financial outcome. Recognize them for
the great experiences that they get they're giving their clients or their customers. It
needs to be important to them, not just important to you, or it's
not gonna lamble either. Thank you for joining us for this episode. I've
liked this series a lot, and I think we have some good conversations about
these new rules. Again, read the full article it's in the podcast description
for the Last you Know five Thursdays and you Know send us a message if
you have comments on any of the discussions we've had about this. Have a
great day.