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Leadership and employee engagement

Published on October 31, 2021   11 min

A selection of talks on Management, Leadership & Organisation

Please wait while the transcript is being prepared...
0:00
Hello everybody, this is Gordy Curphy from Curphy Leadership Solutions. The title of this talk is 'Leadership and Employee Engagement'.
0:09
We define leadership as: the ability to engage and develop employees, build high-performing teams, and achieve superior results. Engagement is a very important component in this definition, but what exactly is employee engagement?
0:24
Employee engagement pertains to people's attitudes about work. Do people feel their performance expectations are clear? Do they know what's expected of them, on the job? If I'm a barista at Starbucks, or I'm working the drive-through at a McDonald's, I know exactly what the performance expectations are for me. Am I committed to success? Do I want to see my team succeed? Do I want to see our organization succeed? That's another important part of engagement. Do I find my job meaningful? That could look really different, depending upon whether or not I'm a house-cleaner for a Marriott hotel, or I'm a software developer for Apple. Some people find their jobs really meaningful, some people may not. Do I feel like my opinions count? If I have an idea to improve work, to save money, to provide better customer service, and I offer that up, do people listen? Employee engagement gets at: do I know what I'm supposed to do?; am I committed to success, do I want to see the organization succeed?; do I like what I'm doing?; do I find my job interesting and feel my opinions count? Highly engaged employees typically come to work early, they're oftentimes a source of innovation and new ideas, they really want to have an impact. But you can look at the other side, look at people with low engagement. These are folks who don't like showing up to work, or maybe doing only the minimum. It may well be because they don't know what the expectations for work are, they're not particularly committed to seeing the team or the organization succeed. They may not find their job particularly meaningful, or they don't think their opinions count. They've more or less 'checked out'.