How does incongruent behaviour impact engagement?

Engagement is an interesting state. It occurs at a psychological point where the employee chooses to give their extra effort. A lot of small decisions will have preceded that choice, during the process of the employees’ coming to the conclusion that it will be worth giving their extra effort.

They will have decided they can and will:

achieve a good result

be allowed the freedom to contribute effectively

trust their manager and company to recognise their efforts

get help when they need it

be treated fairly if things go wrong

trust the colleagues they work alongside

But what happens if they then discover that their trust or belief was misguided? What happens if they learn that the ‘expected promises’ of an engaging environment either did not exist, or no longer exist?

I have recently observed a situation where this has occurred. The client has created for his employees a picture of an enlightened organisation where high performance teamwork is valued, where all individuals are included and involved with equality across roles. In this, he has allowed team members to believe that autonomy and self management are expected and rewarded, and mature, open communication channels exist.

Imagine the impact of his apparently sudden change in approach, where individuals find themselves working not to these high quality ideals, but to less positive work practices. Team members’ efforts now meet with the resistance of scrutiny, differing objectives and increased cycles of communication, causing frustration, conflict and negativity.

Moreover, they are beginning to question their earlier judgement in choosing to give their extra effort. Each team member is responding differently, but all in their own way are pulling away from the situation, ‘taking their marbles home’.

In a situation like this, the employee can become confused and unhappy and feel justified in stepping back enough to reduce the level of difficulty in the role until the situation resolves itself, or until they can remove themselves altogether.

From this point forward, their trust has been damaged and they will continually be looking for evidence to support either their positive belief in the manager or further ‘breaches’ on the managers’ part. Their attitude will be influenced by history and experience of past events.

In the current commercial environment, many organisations continue to face challenging times. In these circumstances, executives and managers are more likely to become stressed and exhibit inconsistent or incongruent management behaviour.

In engagement surveys in the UK, almost 50% of staff report that they will look for alternative employment as soon as the environment begins to improve. They are sufficiently disenchanted with their organisation to move themselves away from the situation and choose a different team to give their contribution to. They are expressing enough frustration with the organisation that they would prefer to work somewhere else.

Not only will that be costly for their current organisation in conducting the replacement process: it is also unnecessary. At any one time, up to 20% of people will be looking to move to new employment, for a variety of positive personal reasons such as career advancement or changing personal relationships. The other 30% would probably be willing to stay if conditions were right for them. Managing the environment in a way that attracts and engages them will save considerable resources in the medium term.

As a manager or business leader, how can you be sure you are doing enough to create and maintain an environment employees want to be part of?

Here’s a quick self check of the priority issues:

Are you being consistent in the expectations you set for all people in the team?

Are you ensuring equal, two way communication to achieve clarity and agreement on objectives and approach?

Are all team members included equally, despite your personal views?

Are you publicly recognising the efforts employees are making in achieving their work?

Are you supporting individual team members in the approach they are taking to their work?

If they are not meeting your expectation, are you discussing a clear and workable performance improvement route with them?

Are you enabling people to achieve their objectives with autonomy wherever possible?

Have you set and agreed clear written performance standards the whole team can understand and achieve?

Are your words and actions congruent?

It is not enough to espouse engagement principles. It is critical that day to day behaviour demonstrates understanding of those principles and an absolute commitment to ‘living’ them within management work practices and those of the people you employ.

We work on issues like these, helping organisations large and small to create engaging work environments. If you would like a discussion about your own workplace, please call us on 01767 631875 or email susan@cooteharvard.co.uk