A View Of Engagement

[Peter A Hunter]

I have not been a member here for very long but I am becoming worried at what seems to be a disturbing trend, at least in the UK.
Some time ago when working as a consultant in the drilling business I discovered what happened when the workforce were allowed to care about what they do.
Their performance became astonishing and they became hugely proud of what they achieved and, apart from the financial implications, it finally felt like the right way to manage people.

I wrote about it and spoke about it and slowly discovered others who had learned the same lessons.

It wasn’t until I came across this forum that I realised that the word “Engagement” pretty much described what I had been talking about.

What is beginning to worry me now though is the way that the word engagement is being used to describe something that managers are doing to their workforces in order to get them to do what they want.
The MacLeod – Clarke Report “Engaging For Success” repeatedly quoted statements from companies who did precisely that, engaged their workforces in order to make them do something that otherwise they may have objected to.

Then this week Mr David Fairhurst, Senior Vice President, Chief People Officer at McDonald’s Northern Europe, in an interview with an online HR magazine said pretty much the same thing, that it was managements job to engage the workforce so that they would do what management wanted. (The full interview is here http://www.hrzone.co.uk/topic/managing-people/david-fairhurst-inter...)

My concern is that we are in great danger from industry leaders who use the term “Engagement” to describe this sort of manipulative management.
The word may soon become associated with their failure.

My real question is:
“Are MacLeod and others reflecting what managers really think that engagement means, or is there a deeper feeling about what happens when a workforce are allowed to care about what they do that is more representative?”

Peter A Hunter
www.breakingthemould.co.uk

[Rob Fox]

Yep,

Unfortunately too many managers confuse management with manipulation.

Best,

Rob
www.engagingideas.co.ukl

[Peter A Hunter]

Rob
I think that you have it in a nutshell.
It is not what managers do to the workforce that causes the problem, it is the fact that they feel the need to do anything.
When you do something to someone they resent the pressure to do something that someone else wants.
This is what causes the resistance that leads to failure.

Managers seem to have taken the concept of engagement from being a powerful way to allow the workforce to reach their massive potential and turned it into a cheap trick to make them do something that otherwise they may not have.

As you say, they have confused management with manipulation.

It is a pity but I think that it is probably what they have done with every other good management strategy. Management have made them fail by forcing them onto the workforce instead of allowing the workforce to choose for themselves.

May I use your reply as a quote in my newsletter, it will of course be attributed to you.

Peter A Hunter

[Shereen Qutob-Cabral]

I completely understand where you're coming from Peter. I just got off a conference call where the tone about our career development initiatives was something the organization was "doing" to the employees rather than they actively being a part of it.

In my case my utter shock over the Ready. Fire. Aim approach, the tick box exercise of "doing" certain things that make us seem on the surface as an engaged organization rather than actually going out there and "talking" to our employees openly and honestly and allowing them to have a say in their careers. Especially our field engineers whom we rely heavily on for the success of the business.

Regards,
Shereen

[John Schonegevel]

Peter

this is the problem in many organisations and with many (but not all managers) and most, but perhaps not all politicians. Don't forget it was the politicians who commissioned the McLeod report, so perhaps its not too surprising that the authors have responded in the way they have.

My sense is that it helps to consider the situation using Ego States from Transactional Analysis. Our management majority see themselves as Parents and their staff as Children. As Parents they define their role as telling people what to do and checking that its been done. When Children (the staff) do what they are told, managers are happy and reward them. When they don't managers discipline them. When seen in this way, engagement becomes just another tool to get people to do what managers want them to do.

Your example fits with another way of operating - of being in the Adult Ego State and with the expectation that our followers (staff) will be in the same Adult Ego State. Starting with this expectation, engagement becomes what I suspect we here intend it to be - a series of conversations between equals that leads to the willing application of extra effort.

[Ben Simonton]

John,

To get complete engagement with most employees unleashing their full potential of creativity, innovation, productivity, motivation, and commitment, we need more than a series of conversations. We need to approach the employee as if they are more important than the boss, because that is the truth.

Quite simply, we need to give our undivided attention to these very important people, find out what each thinks they need to do a better job, and then give it them. We need to stop dictating to employees and start serving them.

Best regards, Ben
http://www.bensimonton.com/articles.html

[John Schonegevel]

Hi Ben

I'm interested in understanding a bit more about your perspective here - particularly your points about approaching the employee as if they are more important than the boss and 'stop dictating to employees and start serving them'.

I note that I'm sensitive to thoughts that all employees are equally important and that every staff member is more important than their manager. This is my interpretation, but would like to hear more from you as I'm not sure if this is what you mean.

And I'm also sensitive to the idea of anyone being a 'servant' to another. It leads me to think that this approach may end up swapping one version of the prevailing Parent - Child state for the opposite.

Hence I'm interested in your thoughts to help me understand and for us to explore this fascinating (at least to me) area.

Regards

Johnt

[Ben Simonton]

John,

Thanks for your interest. I will try my best to be brief.

Let's look at responsibilities.

It is the boss' responsibility to provide to employees training, tools, parts, material, procedures, direction, policies, information, discipline, technical advice, and other elements of support. It is the employee's responsibility to use these to produce products for customers often requiring interaction with customers. So the boss' job is to support employees so that they can do their work.

So who is more important, bosses whose responsibility is to support employees or employees whose responsibility is to do the work? The answer is that no matter what the boss does on any particular day, the company will never be better than the sum of the output of all employees. So the employees are far, far more important than the boss.

And it should be obvious that if the boss' support is poor, this will limit the excellence employees can achieve. But there is also the issue of employees being human. All humans have needs, feelings, hopes, cares, and woes.

The most basic human needs are to be heard and be respected. If the boss' support includes lots of orders in the "shut up and listen, stupid" mode, the employee will feel disrespected and knowing that the boss does not care about them will rarely care about their work and will think the boss is lucky to have them even show up for work. If the boss' support includes hard to find and poorly maintained tools, humans conclude again that the boss does not care about them so why should they bother to care about the work. I could go on about this for hours and hours.

Another human characteristic is that all humans have a certain degree of creativity, innovation, productivity, motivation, and commitment residing in their brain. Whether or not and if so to what extent these are applied to their work will be dictated by how they are treated by their bosses. They can be highly motivated and highly committed with very high morale lliterally loving to come to work, or demotivated and demoralized or somewhere in between. Where they are in this spectrum is decided, knowingly or not, by the quality of the actions of their bosses. The difference between the spectrum's bottom and top is greater than 300% in productivity per person. Managers of sports teams know all about this, but managers in business generally don't seem to have a clue.

Fortunately for bosses, there are a set of consistent laws that dictate how humans (employees) respond to the boss' actions (their support). So it is quite easy to develop how to produce the highest quality support. The most difficult and potentially damaging is the support function of direction, but even this one is easy to understand. All of this was taught to me by the hundreds of people I managed over 30+ years.

I don't understand what the prevailing Parent-Child approach is and thus am unable to comment.

Hope this answers your questions, Ben

[John Schonegevel]

Ben

thanks for a great and comprehensive reply. I think I see what you are getting at - a firm, department or team can only be as good as the combined total output of its staff.

And the boss has the responsibility for creating the environment in which employees can each give of their best. And there are a set of laws that can be applied (but generally aren't) - I wonder why?

What about employees? What can be done to help them understand these laws and push their boss into applying them? Power to the workers?

John

[Ben Simonton]

John,

A few comments to yours.

Environment? I don't actually like the word since it is too amorphous. We need to talk about the elements of support I mentionned and how to do each of those in such a way to meet the very highest standards. Support elements are not amorphous and can be defined with great specificity IF and only IF one knows the "laws" that govern human behavior. The quality of management's support constitutes their leadership (please see this article)

What about employees? They are the only ones who know precisely how they react to managerial actions, to support. They know exactly the effect an inadequate or dated tool has on their ability to perform work. They also know exactly the effect such a tool has on their willingness to perform work and on their respect for management and the company. The same can be said for direction (the most dangerous element of support because it is fraught with hazards) and every other element of support. Discipline is another element fraught with hazards.

Yes, employees are well aware of how they react to support and the leadership it projects. As I said, they are the ones who taught me the "laws". Management can choose to take advantage of those "laws" and create huge performance improvements, or they can choose to become victim of those "laws" and create extremely poor performance. OR SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN.

Push their boss? Surely you jest! In my 30+ years of managing people and watching others do likewise, that tactic very, very rarely succeeded and often led to bad outcomes for the pusher.

Best regards, Ben
http://www.bensimonton.com/articles.html

[John Schonegevel]

Hi Ben

I've taken a look at some of your articles in addition to reading the above. Essentially I recognise what you've identified and accept that if someone implements your suggestions they should achieve better outcomes - and have great followers.

So if the logic stacks up, what does it take for someone to change their management approach from command and control to a 'servant' approach?

You mention that you changed after 12 years of command and control; what sparked your intent to do something different? What was the catalyst?

And what blockages do you see others facing, that results in them not changing?

As to pushing their boss - I was joking, but only partly. Reason is that I see many people who spend their lives complaining...and it's generally someone else's fault and therefore responsibility. As in - my boss doesn't understand, doesn't care etc. etc.

This is the way of the victim - a type of Child ego state behaviour, which re-enforces the Parent (Boss) to continue with their Parent behaviours.

With careful and respectful challenge most eventually manage to identify something they can do about the problem. I don't mean something dramatic but just some low risk actions they can take and so begin to exert some influence on the situation.

They also recognise that the way they follow their boss affects the way he/she operates. So by taking steps to change they way they follow, they can have some influence on the way their boss leads.

But I do appreciate they this means taking a risk. And the alternative may be to just continue to be unhappy, continue to see yourself as a victim and continue to give the least you can get away with to your work.

[Ben Simonton]

John,

What sparked me? Good question.

I learned early from my father that there is a God and that he is a good guy who made everything good. That means that what is truly good is good for everything and everybody. (My Dad demonstrated this to me and then explained it as I am doing. He did not tell me first.) So if I had a solution that was not good for all, then there does exist a solution that is good for all and I should not stop until I found it.

Armed with that knowledge, it became apparent to me during my first 12 years of managing people that my best people were 3-4 times as productive as my worst and at least twice as productive as my mid-level performers. So why could I not find a way to manage them that would make them all extremely productive, cause them all to really care about their work and doing their best?

I also believed that I should try hard to be a good Christian. I knew that I was supposed to "love my neighbor" but spent most of my time trying to figure out who my neighbor was. It was hard to swallow, but I eventually had to admit the everyone was my neighbor and that included subordinates, peers and seniors.

I was fortunate to be able to attend postgraduate education in computers, the first time I got away from shipboard duties requiring a large commitment of hours. I had been reading everything I could lay my hands on about management, but had an especially good library to choose from at PG school. I found a very large organizational theory book with many case studies by Harvard professors, the authors of the book. This taught me the Copernican theory that the boss is the earth rotating around the sun, the employees.

That was the first time I realized they did not support me as I had always thought, but that I supported them and they were more important than I. So how come I had I spent most of my time ordering them around and figuring out my next order and never carefully listening to them. So I began to listen to these VIPs, to their complaints, suggestions and questions and responding to them as respectfully as I could. And the more I addressed their complaints, instituted their worthy suggestions, and answered their questions openly with great integrity, the better they performed, almost in lockstep.

And later they taught me how to convert them from being followers into strong, independent, self-directed self-starters who are the very best producers.

Blockages for others? They are so varied it is impossible to list them all, including the "moon was blue" last night. Mostly, they have never experienced people who are so hugely productive, so committed to their work, so they don't believe it to be possible. You have identified the biggest problem and it is mental.

You said -
"But I do appreciate they this means taking a risk. And the alternative may be to just continue to be unhappy, continue to see yourself as a victim and continue to give the least you can get away with to your work."

There is another alternative and that is to be positive, refuse to have a bad day or think bad thoughts and always have a very positive attitude. Why would anyone chose to feel badly because of something someone else did wrong. Choosing to be a victim is the worst possible choice and results in the most damage to self, loved ones and friends. Feeling badly is a choice and not something automatic or even human. If anyone wants to get rid of such dysfunctional behavior, they might chose to apply the procedure provided in my article on stress.

Hope this helps, Ben