Employee Engagement Is Not The Responsibility of the Employee. Here's Why.
Gordon Tredgold Globally Ranked Leadership Expert
Global Gurus Top Leadership Expert, Coach and Speaker - "RESULTS BASED LEADERSHIP"
If I had a dollar for every time I had a leader tell me "I wish they had given me an engaged team" or "why can't my team be bothered to be engaged" I could retire a rich man right now, and never have to work another day in my life. Seriously!
Each time I hear that alarm bells start ringing in my head and I think this person has no real clue as to what leadership is really about.
They just want to be able to bark orders at their teams, and then have them loyally followed, without any further involvement from them.
Newsflash - That's not how leadership works!
A leaders first job is to create a vision, set direction and get the team on board with that vision/direction.
Literally the first thing a leader has to do is to engage their team.
It is your responsibility to engage them, it is a key component of your job description.
It's like driving a car, as the driver it's you job to put the car in gear (or in drive for my automatic car friends) in order to engage the engine, without which the car won't move.
It's exactly the same with you team.
Now employees do have to be willing to be engaged, but it's you the leader that has to make that connection with them, and get their buy-in and get them engaged.
Employee engagement starts with you, and that means that you have to be engaged too, Leadership defines culture, and if you are not engaged then it's unlikely that they will be.
The first step to creating an engaged team is to accept that it is your responsibility.
If you don't, then no one else is going to engage them for you. And you're career as a leader is definitely going to be short lived, because disengaged teams rarely achieve their goals or deliver the expected results.
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Director Projects & Operation at SysLync Consulting / Solution Architect at Computer Research (Pvt) Ltd.
5 年The leader should engage their team otherwise the team will engage him/her :)
Non-profit Management
5 年If 1/10 of the contemporary leadership theories were digested and put into effect with honesty, we would be talking about a completely different working environment globally. Thank you Gordon. Your posts are highly addictive.