Is active leadership essential to achieving engagement?

Commonsense tells us that active leadership will affect just how engaged employees are, but is it essential? There are many factors at play in the engagement debate, including communications, involvement and collaborative decision making, to name just a few.

Many specialists in employee engagement focus on the process and practice of corporate communication as being the essential ingredient in achieving high engagement levels rather than the collective efforts of leaders and managers.

We could probably all agree it is helpful, but is it sufficient on its own?

After all, people choose to engage with organisations. The relationship is personal and begins with the individual establishing the fit between their own value system and that of the organisation. When they choose to join the organisation, they have agreed to accept the values they believe the organisation holds: those they read in corporate communications, and those displayed by the recruitment team during the interview. At this stage, their experience of the organisation is limited to its public face and led by corporate communications and media reporting.

A recent client engagement survey showed highest engagement levels amongst new recruits in their first 6 months. Within 6-12 months, however, the engagement level had reduced significantly, reaching its lowest point after 5 years employment. This indicates a potential misalignment between espoused and practiced values and shows the likely impact on the individual of day to day management and internal work practices.

When new people start working for you, they continually assess whether their experience of the organisation aligns with its espoused values and with the values of the individual. If it does, the employee’s engagement with the organisation is positively reinforced and increases. If this doesn’t happen, doubt and disillusionment begins and the employee begins to question the wisdom of their choice. Eventually, cynicism and dissatisfaction result, and the individual disengages and may or may not leave.

So, internal communications have a very important role to play in helping to personalise the relationship each employee has in working for your company. I recently observed an excellent example of internal communications using several interactive channels to communicate personally with each employee. The virtual shopping mall was a very popular benefit and definitely influenced people’s positive feelings about working for the organisation. It was new and different and created an internal community of like minded people who believed they worked for a progressive, cutting edge company. It helped set the tone for the relationship between the individual and their manager but didn’t on its own make that relationship more likely to work.

The personal relationship between the individual and their boss is dependant on the intention and action of each party. And the quality of the relationship is largely determined by the line manager and how they perform their role. A line manager who does not take employees calls and who is not available when support is required will not demonstrate a positive intention. As the saying goes, people join organisations and leave managers!

How does active leadership encourage engagement in employees? Clearly the top team creates the culture and develops the climate for engagement through their approach to involving employees, and the support systems made available to the organisation. But should leadership be confined to the top team?

Current leadership thinking promotes the idea that leadership is most valuable when it is practiced at all levels within the organisation. It differentiates leadership and management, and recognises that both need to be effective in order to achieve excellent business performance. What is the difference? For simplicity we could define leadership as activity that develops and maintains a future focus and management as monitoring and mastering day to day performance. The concept is one where acts of leadership occur within day to day management.

So how does a line manager show leadership? By

recognising that you create the culture and climate for engagement within your own domain and

taking responsibility for developing work practices that encourage your team to get involved in day to day decision making and process improvement

Specifically, involving work practices consist of four elements:

giving employees more control over decision making, increasing employee access to information, rewarding high-performing employees, and supporting developmental opportunities for employees.

There is no question that employees respond positively in all cultures to efforts that develop open, involving work practices and provide support for their learning and development, as shown by successive research studies. Concentrating on both the formal structures within the work environment (a responsibility of top teams) and informal work practices (the responsibility of line managers) helps encourage the individual to engage. Is active leadership essential to employee engagement? Definately.