We Invest in What We Value

Before jumping into the next employee engagement strategy that can make a significant difference as we work toward getting everyone in the boat to pick up their oars and actually ROW, I need to share a quick point that ties back to showing our team members the significance of what they do…

In talking about this idea of employee engagement with some friends recently, they mentioned a book by Patrick Lencioni on the topic, The Truth About Employee Engagement. Wanting to dive in right away, I went to my Audible account as soon as I got to my car and purchased what looked like the cover they had shown me. I ended up with The Three Signs of a Miserable Job, which was actually the same content but released by Lencioni nearly a decade prior. But let’s be honest, when employees aren’t engaged, it’s nearly always because they’re experiencing some level of misery in their job! The sign he explained that tied directly to what we looked at with regards to clarifying the impact our team members have on the people we serve - giving them a sense of purpose and earning their buy-in - was IRRELEVANCE. We all have a need to matter. And we rarely commit everything we have to something that seems irrelevant. You need to check out the book (or Audible) for the rest of his story; you’ll be glad you did!

Moving on now…

Another SIMPLE way we can increase employee engagement is by showing our team members that we sincerely appreciate who they are and what they contribute to the organization; we need to be sure to let them know that we VALUE them! This first way we should be doing doesn’t involve spending a single dollar but it will require some very intentional effort on our part - and every other person in a leadership role who really wants to earn the kind of engagement that impacts the bottom line. We’ll take a deeper look at that shortly…

Right now though, let’s look at something that will require us to put our money where our mouth is! Before you tune me out, this should NEVER be considered as an expense; this is absolutely an investment, but it has to be treated as such.

Consider this… When you bought your first home, did you take care of it? And as you became more stable financially, did you begin making improvements that would allow you to enjoy your home more right away but would also add to the long term value? Cindy and I certainly have over the years. And when we finally sell the home we’ve lived in for now more than 22 years, it will be far nicer for the next family who lives here than it was when we first moved in, and at a substantially higher price too - but not just because of inflation; because we’ve continued to add value to the house and the property along the way. I’m guessing you can relate…

If we want to make sure our team members know we value them, and earn a high level of engagement from them in the process, wouldn’t it make sense to take a similar approach? Shouldn’t we be investing in them so that they can perform better in their current roles and eventually grow into other roles within our company? I mapped out this idea in detail a while back in a Leading At The Next Level lesson called Being Intentional About Career Development so I won’t rehash all that here. I will emphasize though that when we’re intentional about the investments we make into helping advance our team members’ skills, as well as their overall careers, we’re investing far more than the money. This proves to them that we see value in them, we recognize their potential to become better than they currently are. This places a special kind of attention on who they are and how they can grow. And doing this eliminates what Lencioni refers to as one of the other signs of a miserable job: Anonymity.

Unfortunately, intentionality in doing what we’ll look at next is often far more difficult for executives than signing a stupid check. Until then, let me be clear about investing in our employees. We can’t do it blindly and we have to be clear about why we’re doing it as well as what we expect them to achieve once we’ve made the investment. While this may seem like doing this could diminish any perceived compassion behind our investment, I believe it serves to emphasize the potential we see in them! And doesn't it just feel good when someone sees potential in us that we haven’t yet seen in ourselves?

Building Deeper Connections With...

In The Three Signs of a Miserable Job, Patrick Lencioni mentioned that two of the signs were important for every team member to understand if we want them to have a clear picture of how they can engage and why it matters. We’ve already hit on IRRELEVANCE and we’ll touch on something that ties to IMMEASURABILITY next. For now though, let’s look at another piece of what we just started digging into, ANONYMITY, which is the one Lencioni depends almost solely on the team member’s manager.

This idea of ANONYMITY has little to do with whether someone is known far and wide for what they do, on an athletic field or within our organization, it’s really about how much they’re appreciated for who they are! Having just looked at how investing in our team members not only develops their skills and increases their technical ability, but it also sends a message that we see a level of potential IN THEM that makes the investment worthwhile - showing we value them. This second way of showing that value is less of a financial transaction and more of an emotional transaction…

A great way to solidify that “meaningful connection with” the team members we hope to earn engagement from is to work on making sure they know how much their presence matters to us personally and to the organization as a whole. As I emphasized previously, this will require intentional effort. 

In the decade or so that I led a safety initiative that required the involvement of several dozen volunteers to even have a shot at achieving what was expected, learning all I could about those who volunteered (as well as anyone I hoped to get to volunteer in the future) proved to be key. Eventually, I knew each of the 600+ people in the facility by name, I learned what most of them enjoyed in the few hours we weren’t in that building each week, and I got to know something about many of their families. The volunteers were certainly important to me, but everyone else we were doing that work for was just as important. And learning about them personally made that process more effective and more fulfilling. When I moved into a different role where I was responsible for hiring & firing, as well as for nearly any conversation that tied back to accountability, having those strong relationships bought me a lot of grace in what were often some really tough conversations.

If we really want to show our team members they matter in a way that just can’t be earned by simply throwing money at the issue, learning what they care about is a great starting point. As we build the foundation for a stronger relationship with them, we can communicate with them about the things that make them tick - and we can begin to do that in the way that they’ll most likely receive. Then whether the topic is the purpose of the organization, what we need to be doing right then and there, or how we need to correct an issue, we can craft our message to include what they care about most rather than just what we need from them at that time.

 I won’t hash it all out here, but learning to recognize and understand communication styles is the simplest way I’ve ever found for becoming really effective at doing that! And once we’re speaking the language they best understand and connect with, we have the groundwork in place for a third key strategy we can use in earning employee engagement...

What Gets Measured Gets Done!

Having started with the stark contrast between happy employees, satisfied employees, and engaged employees, then looking at the real impact employee engagement can have on our organization’s bottom line before we began working through these strategies we can put in place to earn that kind of engagement, let put a nice bow on it by looking one final thing that has to be in place for any of it to matter - and all too often IS NOT even considered as it relates to building engagement within our teams!

In all the years I worked in a manufacturing facility, it seemed like we tracked EVERYTHING! We had to document all the details of the first and last piece we ran for each order, we recorded any scrap produced in the set up process, and we logged the total number of parts we completed before sending them to the next step in the operation or to the warehouse. And most of those metrics needed to be added to multiple forms, not the least of which was a daily time sheet.

On a quarterly basis, the management team met with each business unit to review the results of all those metrics and how the departmental numbers tied to the overall facility goals. That was also when we’d learn whether or not we could expect any kind of bonus that quarter. In most cases, the majority of us had very little clarity about how our individual performance tied to our department’s numbers or the facility’s overall performance. And I’m still not sure anyone on the management team had a clue as to how any of that connected with the goals sent down from the corporate office - the ones that determined whether or not we’d see a kind of bonus… Even when we could connect just a few of the dots, there were so many things we had absolutely no control of as individual contributors (and in some cases, managers), that many of us tuned it all out.

That’s not to say we were disengaged; well, not all of us… The first four years I worked in that facility, I ran various stamping presses that produced parts for the assembly lines. I had a clear understanding of what the machines I operated were capable of and the estimated times for changing the tooling in those machines to produce different parts. Early on, that gave me a target to shoot for. As I learned the nuances of the process, I worked to beat my personal best each and every day. Some days I did and some days I didn’t, but I had a clear standard to measure myself against even when I wasn’t all that sure how any of it tied back to all the squiggly lines they showed us in those quarterly meetings…

I share that scenario from over twenty years ago to call attention to what each of us need to consider as we lead our teams, especially if we want to earn the kind of engagement we’ve looked at to this point. Even after we’ve ensured every single team member knows why their work matters and who it matters to (avoiding feelings of IRRELEVANCE), and we’ve been intentional to make sure they understand that their individual contribution is significant and we care about them (alleviating any potential ANONYMITY), we still need to be sure they know what they should be comparing themselves to on a daily basis - and hopefully that metric can be more meaningful that just making a bunch of parts… Having clear goals and expectations helps to avoid what Lencioni calls the third sign of a miserable job: IMMEASURABILITY. 

Don’t we all want to know our work matters? Don’t we all appreciate knowing that WE matter? And don’t we tend to put more effort into our jobs when we can know what’s expected and we can easily measure the results?

If we want to truly earn engagement from the team members we’re responsible for leading, this should serve as a solid foundation for doing just that!