7 March 2008
"Making people engaged" is the wrong approach
Tough role for engagement managers.
Last month saw the publication of The Extra Mile, a new book on engagement. The book says that although top managers are confident when talking about engagement, figures show they're still under-achieving.
Frazzled engagement managers
The Hub recently spoke to Caryn Vanstone, business director, Ashridge Consulting, about the subject of engagement. She says her chapter in Melcrum’s “Essential Techniques for Employee Engagement” discusses the organizational factors that help people feel engaged. “These aren’t the things engagement managers are paying attention to, which is why they’re getting very frazzled,” she says.
“The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) view of engagement is typically something for HR to solve, which generates another load of initiatives that try to make people be engaged. The harder they try to do things that make people engaged, the less engagement they get. We’ve got into a habit in organizations where the most obvious solution is actually the problem,” Vanstone says.
Many directors would like to see a shift in mindsets, but want to avoid the pain barrier – like wanting children to go from 12 to 25 without going through the teenage years.
Avoid the "parent-child" pitfall
She explains that by trying to make people feel engaged, rather like trying to motivate them, we end up in a typical “parent-child” relationship. Vanstone acknowledges that engagement interventions are designed to help people be more adult, engaged and self-directing.
“But they subtly and unconsciously continue to teach people that someone else is responsible for making them happy, motivated and engaged,” she says.
Vanstone goes on to explain that the natural reaction to under-performance is to intervene and take responsibility. Over the years, senior leaders can become habituated as the people to make decisions and send out directives.
“The more they tell people, ‘Be empowered’, the less power these people have to fail.” The difficulty in this situation is that the least powerful people in the dynamic are not able to make the first move – because it would be an act of revolution.
Creating engagement is down to the directors
“The only people who can make the first move are the ones in power – the directors,” Vanstone says. “They have to back off and start to let people fail. That’s why engagement is really tricky.”
She says that many directors would like to see a fundamental shift in people’s mindsets, but don’t want to go through the pain barrier. Vanstone likens this to wanting your children to go from being 12 to 25 without going through the teenage years.
Ease off the controls
Paradoxically, senior leaders can be creating a culture of non-engagement by owning it too much. “If you’re an engagement manager, it’s almost impossible to take on your own board at such a fundamental level of philosophy of how to be in the organization,” she says.
Vanstone believes that engagement managers have to become internal coaches, but recognizes this is sometimes impossible. “That’s why they pair up with people like us. The construction of a project often says, ‘We have to make our employees engaged’, but this is the wrong construction.
We have to teach our directors to allow people to be adults.
Instead it should be, ‘We have to teach our directors to allow people to be adults’. As soon as they change the pattern then it’s a natural phenomenon for people to be engaged,” Vanstone says.
Have your say
Anyone involved in employee engagement these days seems to be extremely busy. The big question is, “How to work with senior leaders to create a culture of true engagement?”
From what Caryn Vanstone says, many engagement managers could have an impossible task on their hands. Creating true engagement is more than initiatives – rather, it involves a fundamental change in leadership philosophy. To what extent has your executive team understood that? Have you?
Discuss these issues with other comms practitioners by joining the Internal Comms Hub members' group on the Communicators' Network.
Hub member offer: Hub members receive a special 25% discount on Melcrum's practitioner's guide Essential Techniques for Employee Engagement, which is discussed in detail in an interview with Melcrum's Graeme Ginsberg.
Related articles and resources:
Mercer Delta’s
three layers of leadership
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