Hey, this is christ with acking your leadership. On today's discussion on employee
engagement, we're gonna be over a third of these new rules for employee engagement,
as spoken about by Tracy Brower in the New Rules for Increasing Engagement at
Work article from Forbes. We started this series two thursdays ago talking about proximity.
Last week we talked about presence and attention, and on this week we're
going to talk about performance. You know, I think there's a lot of
discussion about performance because the employees who perform well typically are more engaged, because
it's really difficult to perform at a high level if you are not engaged.
But it's shortsighted to think that that's all it is. Meaning there are employees
who are actively disengaged or they have a lack of engagement, and they will
still perform for you because of different reasons. Either they don't want to lose
their job, or they're afraid of what the outcomes will be if they aren't
performing. And so I want to be clear on this. This isn't just
about oh, you know, if you have high performance, you have high
engagement. But if you have high performance, it is a it's a good
thing in terms of you know, uh, you know, kind of a
gut check for employee engagement. And I think that the leaders who do what
they can to make sure that people are engaged in the work that they're doing
in a way that drives performance, I think that's the right way to go.
Yeah, I agree. I think that there's an element of this where
especially over time, like like long long term high performance, uh, it
is typically driven through an element of kind of a great culture and high levels
of engagement. For sure. I think we've talked about this before where you
can have short spikes of performance and it be it's engagement, but it's not
positive engagement, right. You know, they're they're engaged because maybe they're they're
feeling like their you know, careers are you know, potentially being threatened or
those types of things, but like you cannot sustain that over long period of
time. But it's absolutely one of those types of things where it's a good
indicator, especially over time. It's interesting because I think it's also like low
performance as well to a degree, tends to get associated with disengagement, and
so it's like if it's a low performance, they're disengaged, well, not
necessarily the same type of thing as like, well, maybe they haven't been
trained correctly, maybe they haven't been spent spent enough time doing the task over
and over again to gain confidence and that type of thing. But that's why,
from a leadership standpoint, the ability to step in and to have the
dialogue conversations, to be able to observe the behaviors, be able to understand
the motivations behind the person's performance is really more of a way to truly understand
engagement and be able to adjust strategies or just connections or just conversations to then
be able to raise engagement and then raise performance. That's exactly right. The
employees who have the highest level of engagement, there's also a mix of you
know, they're they're put in place to use skills they have that you know
their work is aligned with, but that they also are in situations where they
are stretched a little bit too. No one wants to feel like they're stretched
all the time because that will lead to burnout very quickly. You can't operate
that level all the time. You have to have wins that are associated with
being able to you know, the correct application of the skills that you already
have into wins and so it's it's majority of that, but with challenges that
stretch you. And so it's like in sports, if high school football team
was constantly playing against NFL teams, Yeah, it's going to stretch them,
but they're not going to be in a position to ever showcase the skills that
they've learned and the effort they've been putting in because they're going to get creamed
every single time. And so you have to have this this kind of mix
of you know, being able to showcase your skills because the work is aligned
with things you know how to do in a way that lets you show that
you can operate at a high level a perform at a high level, but
then also some opportunities to you know, be up against some things that are
more challenging where you might not necessarily have the clear cut win. You might
have something where it's you know, kind of a half win or the win
is a learning as opposed to the outcome you're looking for, and you take
that away and show that you can retain that knowledge for next time. So
it's it's a mix. Nobody wants to feel like their job is so easy
that it never challenges them anymore unless you are looking to be out of that
job already and you're just looking to get away as a little as possible.
But if it's a job that you generally enjoy and you're not looking to leave,
it's really difficult to remain highly engaged if the job is just almost you
know, autopilot for you, like you just you know, kind of put
the blinders on and you move through the day. That can get very boring
very quickly, and most people I know would start disengaging after a certain amount
of time. With that, I want to go over some of the things
that leaders can do to raise employee engagement using performance But first I want to
give it word from our sponsors. All Right, if you're a leader of
PEP and you're trying to increase employee engagement through the use of performance metrics,
what you want to do is make sure that your people have kind of a
healthy mix of things that they can they do throughout the day that showcase the
skills they have and that they enjoy doing, but also things that kind of
stretch them a little bit. And so it's important you meet with each of
them to find out what it is they love doing about their job what it
is they don't like doing about their job, so that you can kind of
funnel the things they like doing more into their lane and try to take away
some of the things that they don't like doing as much. And it's not
always possible to get it exactly right, but any effort that you can show
from a leader standpoint that you're taking steps to do this, that you're trying
to get them doing things throughout their day that are more aligned with what they
believe they're good at, while also keeping the challenges coming. You'll increase employ
engagement that way, because they'll know that you have their back in terms of,
you know, kind of filling their day with the things they enjoy as
opposed to, you know, the grunt work or the work they don't enjoy
doing, and they would write be you know, doing the things they want
to do instead. When you start doing these things with your employees, what
you'll notice is that this kind of a cycle of performance and engagement feeds itself
because highly engaged employees typically perform better, and then when you're performing better,
you're able to kind of celebrate the wins internally, which leads to greater engagement.
And so it becomes this virtuous cycle that feeds itself, and if you
can get your employees into them, I think you can get some some serious
wins. As a leader, I immediately think of all the things that are
part of a job where you're like, that doesn't bring me a whole bunch
of either joy or there are things that like you just don't enjoy doing,
like I put it to you that way, like the stuff stuff on my
calendar, m just like I really don't want to do that, but I'm
gonna do that because it's a part of my role. But then there are
things that really do bring you joy and that you that you have a passion
for, that you would like to do more of, that fill your cup.
And the thing that I appreciate most is like, that's most of where
I spend my time. And so like the things that you have to do,
you know, becomes just a small part of the or a small part
of the week, and they're easy to kind of get through because you will
know and understand that most of the time that you get as a leader of
people and a leader of leaders, you get to do. And then there
are things that really bring you joy. That's The power of the conversation and
connection with your people in these spaces is to start to understand what are those
things on both sides, What are the things that they might be really good
at but they actually don't enjoy doing, And then what are the things that
they really enjoy doing they have a passion for, they have a talent for
that you're able to then help them to do that more often or apply that
in different types of ways. When you start to get to that point,
then you start to see a good uptick in performance and a really big upticket
engagement. And I love kind of what you talked about is like this virtuous
cycle is like, once you get into that space, then those things that
I was mentioning earlier around like, ah, these are the parts of the
job I really don't like to do. You quickly forget about those or you
work through them quickly you realize it's just a part of your role that you
have to get stuff done, and you don't spend any time in that space
because you're so engaged excited for spending the time where you want to, and
you're getting the outcomes and the performance that allow you to have more bandwidth to
do more of that type of stuff right and over the It doesn't just matter
from us from like a monthly or annual standpoint. This applies to your entire
career. And so if you were in tune with this, then the higher
performance will drive getting steps in your career, you know, more and more
promotions, and if you enjoy the work that you are doing in the new
roles that you're taking on, then it continues to work itself. And you
know, the people I know who do all this correctly and then and they
end up unhappy are the only the ones who took on roles and assignments that
they thought they were supposed to do even though they genuinely didn't want to do
it. And if you asked them in hindsight they didn't want that role.
They just thought that was the next step, so they took it on and
it led to them, you know, kind of a kind of a career
change at some point in their life. But if you're if you're aware of
the things that you enjoy doing when you're making these decisions, and you are,
and you start going for roles in your career that align with those things,
then you can make this cycle work through your entire career, and eventually
you get to a point where the vast, vast majority of what you do
every day is something you enjoy doing, and it's just kind of peppered in
with things that you don't enjoy doing as much. But the higher up you
move within an organization or within your career, typically the more control you have
over your time and the more you can, you know, delegate things that
can be used as learning opportunities for your people as opposed to taking all that
that work for yourself and letting you focus on where you want to where you
really want to be, which is leading people. If that's kind of the
Tortu're caring. Thank you all for joining us on this episode. Join us
next week for another one. We'll talk about the next new rule for employee
engagement. Have a great day,