Bidiversity

In this article, originally published in Bloomberg Businessweek (all rights reserved), Dov Seidman argues that managers who think of employee engagement as a goal rather than a way of working have it all wrong. And  we can’t help but agree with him….

Chief executive officers are concerned about employee engagement—and rightfully so. Senior management teams are investing great time, effort, and money in improving their workforce-engagement numbers. They shouldn’t be—at least not until they are prepared to harness the full energy of an engaged workforce.

Despite significant effort to improve employee engagement, it remains at an all-time low among the U.S. workforce. This has sparked a surge in valuable guidance on how to transform disengaged workers into engaged employees.

Unfortunately, the majority of engagement-improvement initiatives continue to treat employee engagement as an end goal. Employee engagement is a condition—manifested by the inspiration an employee unleashes in his or her work when he or she is deeply connected to a mission, purpose, and the values that connect us.

What Masquerades as Engagement

This problem was illustrated in a recent IBM (IBM) television commercial, in which a motivational speaker decked out in an “Innovation Man” costume struts in front of a line of office workers standing at attention. Innovation Man singles out one of the professionals and peppers him with repeated taunts and questions as to whether he is “fired up” to innovate. The worker dutifully responds, “Sir! Yes, sir!” Innovation Man then questions the employee’s commitment: “Why are you fired up?!” The befuddled employee pauses before replying, “I don’t have any idea.”

We cannot “motivate” engagement (or innovation, growth, or succession for that matter); instead, we must inspire the kind of outcomes we want by rooting ourselves in a set of values, being in the grip of an idea worthy of dedication and commitment, connecting around a meaningful and shared purpose, and aligning around a common, deep, and sustainable set of human, societal, and environmental values.

Why? Because sustainably engaged employees generate ideas, innovation, creativity, processes, and other outcomes that deliver long-term competitive advantages, and they also collaborate with others to make progress.

How well do you think other companies fare in developing cultures based on thick rule books and other carrots and sticks? Not too well, as I’ve written about before and according to new research. Pay and benefits figure as only one of the four key drivers of job dissatisfaction, according to a recent study by the Conference Board, and compensation barely rates a mention in the study’s engagement-improvement steps.

And a 2008 study by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business examined the relationship between financial performance and senior leadership skills. Inspirational and ethical leaders were most strongly associated with stronger financial performance. The Duke study identifies specific behaviors that exemplify inspirational leadership: “engaging employees in the company’s vision”; “inspiring employees to raise their goal”; and “promoting an environment in which employees have a sense of responsibility for the whole organization, its mission, and constituencies.”

A Valuable, and Values-Based, Alternative

This is the new frontier, where companies work in a systemic manner to ensure alignment of their purpose and mission to their business strategies and vision, and then cascade this inspiration through their core values into specific leadership behaviors. Only when observable leadership behaviors are identified, communicated, measured, tracked, managed, and integrated into business processes and talent-management systems can an organization evolve on its cultural journey.

Read the rest of the article here.