Understanding and Exploring Engagement

Engagement is a state of being passionate, connected, motivated, and willing to give your best efforts to benefit yourself, your leader, and your organization. Every individual is engaged in some way, although their level of engagement may vary. The three different levels of engagement can be viewed on a continuum (see Figure 1-1). On one end of the continuum individuals are engaged, while on the opposite end of the continuum, individuals are actively disengaged.

The Engaged Individual

Engaged individuals leverage their strengths to help themselves become high achievers. They proactively build relationships with others. They demonstrate commitment to their own development and success, the success of others, and the success of their organization. Engaged individuals have high aspirations, and they work positively and proactively to better understand their assignments and excel in them. When assignments are not available, they create work for themselves by volunteering for additional tasks. Energetic and enthusiastic, engaged individuals always seek to improve their effectiveness. They foster and facilitate conditions that contribute to their own success and to the success of others. An engaging environment is a catalyst for individual, group, and organizational success. Employee engagement can even drive customer engagement, stemming from highly positive and enjoyable experiences with engaged individuals.

FIGURE 1-1 Engagement Continuum

Consider a time when you felt really tuned into your work, a time when you had a great relationship with a supervisor that was built on mutual trust. Your supervisor gave you challenging assignments and rewarded you in ways that made you feel valuable. In essence, the supervisor knew how to inspire your best effort and performance. By working together, you fed off of each other‧s excitement and energy. In other words, you were engaged in your work.

The Non-Engaged Individual

Non-engaged individuals are neither actively engaged nor actively disengaged; they are neutral. Non-engaged individuals do not invest much effort in going the extra mile for themselves, nor for internal or external customers. They tend not to be innovative. And while they do not necessarily work against their organization, they do not proactively work to better it either. Many just hang out, biding their time day-in and day-out, simply riding the work wave.

Non-engaged individuals make up the majority of the modern workforce. Because this group is simply floating along, they are the group with the most potential to become engaged. Leaders should spend the most effort trying to engage this group of people. This potential exists because these individuals are not frustrated and jaded, as are actively disengaged employees. Instead, they haven‧t had a leader who sparked their sense of passion and excitement.

Visualize a teeter totter—one of those dizzying playground rides where kids ride up and down until they practically fall off. If engaged individuals are the ones who are “up,” and actively disengaged individuals are “down,” non-engaged individuals are right in the middle. Their ups and downs are not quite as dramatic. However, because of their neutral position on the teeter totter, they can potentially slide to either side—up or down. Leaders have the potential to engage this group in the middle so that they join side that‧s “up.”

The Actively Disengaged Individual

Actively disengaged individuals thrive on negativity. They give the minimum amount of effort possible because they perceive that nobody cares about them or what they do at work. They arrive each day, perform a little work—typically work of lower quality compared to engaged individuals—and leave. They display negativity by complaining and nagging. They are purposely contrary, often going against the grain. When given feedback, they ignore it. Actively disengaged individuals let everyone know about their unhappiness, and some even try to perpetuate negativity in hopes of getting others to join them—sort of a “misery loves company” perspective.

Active disengagement occurs when individuals feel they work under negative or toxic work conditions, perceive their supervisors to be insensitive, and have unmet emotional needs. They feel subjected to office politics that distract them from their goals, or they feel they are not receiving individual attention in a meaningful way. This lack of personalized attention can cause resentment and be a catalyst for “checking out” of work.

Current data suggests that most individuals working in organizations are not actively engaged (see Figure 1-2). The percentages in this figure were determined by an informal meta-analysis of three different studies on engagement by three different organizations.

FIGURE 1-2 Employee Engagement Percentages in Organizations

Looking at the percentages of people within a given workforce, there are a number of interesting points:

Only about one-fourth of people are passionate, committed, and connected to their work.

What is worse, about one-fifth of people are working against their organizations through active disengagement!

Setting aside those two ends of the continuum, over half of people are simply floating through their work days, not working against their organizations but also not feeling connected and committed.

Knowing that engaged people give their best work to their organizations, about three-fourths of people have some amount of discretionary effort they are not giving to their organization or their leader.

Discretionary effort is the amount of energy kept in reserves that someone chooses to use or not depending on how they feel about their work. Every person has a certain amount of discretionary effort. High performers bring plenty of discretionary effort to the table, and most leaders wish all their colleagues brought just as much.

Everyone has a certain amount of discretionary effort they can choose to deliberately leverage—or not leverage—on behalf of their leader.

PRINCIPLE

Engaging leaders believe in people. It is people and their use of discretionary effort that differentiate high-performing organizations from the rest.

Leaders who successfully engage people can tap into their discretionary effort. Without draining that reservoir of discretionary effort, engaging leaders find ways to replenish it. Think of engagement and discretionary effort as renewable resources. With an engaging leader, people are inspired to achieve more. For many organizations, the quality, commitment, and passion of their employees drives the effort to accomplish all missions.

Engaging leaders must believe in people. Today, individual talent and a willingness to exert discretionary efforts differentiate successful organizations from the rest.