Leadership Trainer & Coach - I write a monthly newsletter to share curated content and resources on leadership and personal growth. Suscribe today!
Leaders that Care - Ep1: Employee Engagement
Episode 1: Employee Engagement
Employee Engagement is the maximum level of involvement and investment an employee can experience in their current working situation. It’s a great predictor of employee and team performance, and yet we fail to prioritize engagement initiatives and train leaders on how to boost engagement in their teams.
In this newsletter, I’ll help you:
- Understand what employee engagement really is
- Access the latest research to build a robust case for employee engagement in your organization
- Get tools and ideas to increase employee engagement in your team
Let’s get started!
DEFINING EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT
Meet William Kahn, the father of Employee Engagement.
In 1990, when everyone was worried about motivation in the workplace, he publishes “Psychological Conditions of Personal Engagement and Disengagement at Work”.
His work was so powerful that it’s still difficult to find a better model today.
He defines it as “the harnessing of organization members' selves to their work roles”, dividing engagement into three clear components:
- Psychological Safety: being able to show up at work as yourself, without fearing judgment or retaliation. You fit in without assimilation, in an environment which is built on trust and respect.
- Psychological Meaningfulness: being fulfilled by the content of your work to the point where you feel energized by it; your work matters and you are proud of it.
- Psychological Availability: when your body, mind and emotions are letting you do your job in the best possible way.
Leaders that understand this equation work relentlessly in the three things that matter the most:
- creating a safe environment where everyone’s opinion is heard,
- clarifying once and again the purpose of the roles/teams/organization, and
- caring about employee’s wellbeing.
The research below will show you that we are still getting engagement wrong. It will also give you insightful data on how engaged employees impact the business outcomes.
Keep on reading!
LATEST RESEARCH
Recent data on the leading predictors of employee turnover that can help you put the topic at the center in your organization.
MIT SMR/Glassdoor Culture 500This research blew my mind. Special mention: very innovative companies lose more employees than the rest. read the research highlights (12 minutes) - read my main take-aways |
2022 Global Workforce SurveyPWC surveyed 52,000 workers across 44 countries. People that are very or extremely likely to look for another job (vs. people who are extremely or very unlikely to look for another job), are less likely to: - find their job fulfilling (-14 percentage points) read the findings (12 minutes) - read how this links to Psychological Meaning and Psychological Safety |
Employee Engagement & Performance StudyGallup says this “study of engagement and performance is the most thorough in the world”. |
Workshop: the Anatomy of Employee Engagement (english-spanish)I can help train your team and the leaders from your organization on understanding Employee Engagement and how to positively impact each of its elements through our daily activities. This workshop not only provides useful tools that are simple to put into practice, but also presents a safe, nurturing and experiential space for leaders to share their struggles and help each other succeed in developing an engaged team.
|
PRACTICES, TOOLS AND IDEAS TO BOOST ENGAGEMENT
Do you want to learn some practices to increase your team’s engagement level? Whether you like to read, listen or watch, find below some great resources for you!
 |
BOOK - 120 pages
Humble Inquiry - The gentle art of asking instead of telling
Listening is a great resource that can help you build psychological safety and trust in your team.
Edgard Schein explains why Listening does not come naturally to us: “We are biased toward telling instead of asking because we live in a pragmatic, problem solving culture in which knowing things and telling others what we know is valued.”
He explains the different inhibitors that prevent us from listening better, and proposes Humble Inquiry as a skill that builds relationships based on genuine curiosity and interest in others.
 |
ARTICLE - 3 minutes
What people SAY and DO when they are disengaged
In this LinkedIn article I give you a list of things that people might say and do when they are disengaged. And I connect those hints with each one of the elements of Employee Engagement (psychological safety, meaningfulness and availability).
The intention is to help you identify disengagement before you get those Pulse Survey results. And if you want to use these cues to help your team members re-engage, you can read part 2 (3 mins) where I share a coaching technique that can help you check if the red flags you spot are real signs of disengagement.
 |
VIDEO - 15 minutes
How to tame your Advice Monster | Michael Bungay Stanier
I love this video from Michael because it shows in a fun and effective way that when you go into the advice giving mode (or the Advice Monster, as he calls it) you are in fact diminishing the capabilities of the person that is in front of you, among other things.
And, if I may add, when you give advice instead of listening, you lose the opportunity to create a strong connection and you steal the chance of a true learning moment from the other person.
Michael also gives us a simple technique to tame our advice monster and to really help others. Enjoy!
 |
PODCAST - 35 minutes
Raising the Leadership Standard: Ep 55 - Employee Engagement
In this podcast the hosts dissect the 11 factors that Gallup defined are critical to predict employee engagement and propose pragmatic actions to tackle them. They suggest every day actions to deal with recognition, expectations, feedback, opportunities for growth, among others.
 |
LAURA GUOLO
I have 20+ years of experience working in organizations on talent and leadership development, engagement and cultural transformation.
I currently run my business, where I provide leadership coaching and training to help people become their best version.
Laura Guolo
Leadership Trainer & Coach - I write a monthly newsletter to share curated content and resources on leadership and personal growth. Suscribe today!
EPISODE 6 THE COACHING LEADERSHIP STYLE If you are concerned about how to grow your team, how to enable their autonomy and increase their capabilities, then you can probably benefit from a coaching leadership style. Although effective leaders use more than one leadership style (situational leadership), the complexity of the problems we face and the diversity of skills we need to solve these challenges make the coaching leadership style one of the must-haves. But first, why coaching? What is...
EPISODE 5 LEADERSHIP LESSONS FROM 2022 What word would you use as a leader to describe this year? Mine would be "restart". This year began with a desperate need to go back to something that felt normal. However, we were forced to learn that the "new normal" was much more than just hybrid or remote work: The Great Resignation followed by the Quite Quitting trend has shaken employee engagement metrics and efforts The spotlight on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion dimensions pushed companies to...
EPISODE 4 THERE IS NO LEADERSHIP WITHOUT SELF-AWARENESS How can we lead if we cannot read our own emotions? How can we inspire and challenge if our purpose is unclear? How can we coach and develop others if we have never reflected deeply about our own passions, fears, strengths and weaknesses? We can't. Self-awareness is transformational; I've seen it in the many leaders I coached during my career and it has also helped me through my professional challenges. If you want to dramatically change...