A few years ago, I (MG) had the opportunity to hear three CHROs speak on the topic of employee engagement. They reported that, in spite of companies’ efforts to address this issue, employee engagement scores were near an all-time low around the world. To deal with the problem, the CHROs provided a series of remedies such as “fair pay,” “empowerment,” “learning and development.”
Everything these CHROs said made perfect sense. I believe that companies should be fair, develop people and have respectful managers. The problem was that for the past 20 years, I had been hearing this same lecture.
Who Owns the Problem?
It then occurred to me that 100 percent of the employee engagement challenge was defined as either “the company’s problem” or “the manager’s problem.” Absolutely no responsibility for a lack of engagement was assigned to the employee. This is not an exaggeration. The message was that employees have no personal responsibility for their own engagement.
My reaction was: “This is insane.”
After flying millions of miles, I have seen countless flight attendants. Have you been on a flight where one flight attendant is positive, motivated and caring while another seems negative, demotivated and uncaring? We all have. These two flight attendants work for the same company, participate in the same training programs and have the same compensation plan. What is the difference? The difference is not the company; it is the person. Some employees actually try harder and can care more than others. Some employees don’t care and don’t try very hard, regardless of what the company is doing. While most employees take responsibility for their work, some love to play the role of victim and blame others.
Reviewing a series of employee engagement survey questions, I (KG) noted a universal pattern. Almost every question could be defined as passive, such as, “Do you have clear goals?” or “Do you have meaningful work?” When a person has a negative reaction to a passive question, they invariably blame the environment with comments like “They don’t communicate priorities” or “They make me do trivial work.”
I suggested that we do some experiments where people asked themselves active questions beginning with the phrase “Did I do my best to…” to encourage them to take responsibility for their own outcomes.
Rating Responsibility
Our results were amazing. When people asked themselves these six questions every day, dramatic positive change occurred:
Did I do my best to:
1. Set clear goals?
2. Make progress toward goal achievement?
3. Find meaning?
4. Be happy?
5. Build positive relationships?
6. Be fully engaged?
These questions get us to take responsibility for engaging ourselves, as opposed to blaming the company for our lack of engagement.
As a leader, start with yourself. Rate yourself on these six questions every day for two weeks and see what happens. We have done this with more than 4,000 people and have found that 34 percent of the participants noted improvement in all six areas, 67 percent noted improvement in four of the six areas, 91 percent got better at one, and almost no one got worse.
Answering these questions (on a 1-10 scale) every day takes almost no time, costs nothing and results in a very high probability that you will get better. After you try it yourself, try it with your team.
We will make a prediction: You will start to see more change in engagement with this simple process than you have found with your failed employee engagement efforts. Why? Everyone starts to take personal responsibility for engaging themselves.