The Employee Engagement Mindset: The Six Drivers for Tapping into the Hidden Potential of Everyone in Your Company (BUSINESS BOOKS) - Hardcover

CLARK

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0071788298 ISBN 13: 9780071788298

Verlag: McGraw Hill, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

When it comes to employee engagement, Timothy R. Clark goes where no one has gone before. One of today’s leading experts on the subject, Clark reveals that the business world has been focusing on only half the question―namely, the organization’s role in driving employee engagement. Clark points to the other interested party―the employee.

Through extensive research, the author has discovered that approximately 75 percent of employees are not fully engaged with their work―a frighteningly high number with frighteningly dire consequences for both companies and individual employees. The Employee Engagement Mindset is a step-by-step guide to reversing this pattern, one employee at a time. Clark breaks it all down into six key behaviors:

Connecting: Form solid relationships with coworkers and align your behavior to the organization’s culture and goals
Shaping: Seize opportunities for tailoring experiences based on your personal preferences
Learning: Take proactive measures to learn at or above the speed of change
Stretching: Move out of your comfort zone and take calculated risks
Achieving: Accomplish your goals
Contributing: Make personal contributions that drive lasting positive change to others and to the company

The Employee Engagement Mindset provides practical advice on how any employee can put him or herself on the fast track to true engagement using this six-part model. Simply put, every engaged employee is worth his or her weight in gold. Whether you’re in charge of driving employee engagement or feel the need to take personal responsibility for excelling at work, The Employee Engagement Mindset tells you everything you need to know.

"Clark and his team discovered some surprising truths about highly engaged people that cross cultural, demographic, and industry lines. The Employee Engagement Mindset unlocks the door to our own personal and professional connectedness."―Marshall Goldsmith, author of the New York Times bestsellers MOJO and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There

"[The Employee Engagement Mindset ] lays out in clear, practical terms how highly engaged people think and what they do. I highly recommend it."―Vai Sikahema, NBC Philadelphia sports anchor and former NFL All-Pro, Philadelphia Eagles

"[The Employee Engagement Mindset] captures the emerging search for meaning and purpose in organizations and offers fantastic concepts, tools, and examples of how to go beyond rhetoric to action and resolve."―Dave Ulrich, professor, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan and partner, The RBL Group

"There has been a lot written about employee engagement from the leader’s perspective. What excites me about The Employee Engagement Mindset is that it is written for employees. It offers a blueprint for high engagement that really works."―Patricia Longshore, vice president, Duke Corporate Education

"The six drivers introduced in this book have the powerful capacity to enrich your life, no matter where you are on the engagement spectrum. Read this book―for both inspiration and practical strategies to supercharge your organization!"―Elliott Masie, chair, The Learning CONSORTIUM

"Clark advances a well-considered approach to creating a culture of superior employee engagement. This is a worthy read for every aspiring leader."―Douglas R. Conant, former president and CEO, Campbell Soup Company and New York Times bestselling author of TouchPoints

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Timothy R. Clark is founder and CEO of TRClark, a consultancy that provides advisory services in strategy, large-scale change, employee engagement, and executive development. He is the author of Epic Change: How to Lead Change in the Global Age and The Leadership Test: Will You Pass? His clients include Accenture, Broadcom, Disney, Dow Chemical, Honeywell, Intel, Microsoft, Motorola, NASA, Stanford University, and Wells Fargo Bank. Clark earned a doctorate from Oxford University.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

The Employee Engagement Mindset

THE SIX DRIVERS FOR TAPPING INTO THE HIDDEN POTENTIAL OF EVERYONE IN YOUR COMPANY

By TIM R. CLARK

The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Copyright © 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-07-178829-8

Contents

1 Who Owns Your Engagement?
2 Connect: Plug into the Power!
3 Shape: Make It Your Own!
4 Learn: Move at the Speed of Change!
5 Stretch: Go to Your Outer Limits!
6 Achieve: Jump into the Cycle!
7 Contribute: Get Beyond Yourself!
8 Conclusion: Make It a Way of Life!
Notes
Index

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Who Owns Your Engagement?

"Life leaps like a geyser for those willing to drill through the rock ofinertia".

Alexis Carrel

In first grade she woke up in the morning, dressed in stretch pants and a brightpaisley shirt, gave her hair a quick run-through with the comb, and then stoodfor inspection before her older siblings. On the way to school, she rolled downthe hill, gathering up grass, leaves, and burrs. After dusting off, she walkedinto the classroom and found her desk. No one said anything until the reportcard came. "I always got an unsatisfactory mark for 'comes to school neat andclean,'" she points out. "It drove my mother crazy."

That's not a remarkable story until you learn that Lois Collins's parents wereboth blind. They knew people would cut their children slack if they didn'tperform to a socially acceptable standard. There would always be an out if theyneeded it. But her parents emphatically rejected that idea. "They taught us justthe opposite. We had no hired help at home. My parents lived very independentlives, so I learned that if Mom and Dad could go through life blind, what's myexcuse?"

Today, Lois is a widely respected journalist and senior writer for theDeseret News, the leading daily newspaper in Salt Lake City, Utah. Overa 30-year career, she has experienced all of the turbulence and dislocation ofthe print journalism world. And like everyone else, she has her own set of real-worldchallenges, including a husband who is awaiting a liver transplant.

And yet Lois is an engagement outlier. Her patterns of commitment, performance,and adaptability are strikingly different from those of the vast majority of thepopulation. Her work is of exceptional quality, and her productivity isstaggering. In her midfifties, she outworks and outproduces cub reporters halfher age. "Journalism is a calling," she says. "It's a privilege to tell otherpeople's stories. I give voice to people who don't have voice."

In Lois's case, we suspect that some of her high engagement comes from hersocialization. She developed a work ethic and learned self-reliance at a veryyoung age. She also gained a mindset to find joy and gratitude in her work, someof which has grown out of the kind of work she does. "I cover people in crisisand poverty. I tell the stories of the abused and the disabled, and I recognizethat I have a really good life."

The question is whether you can become highly engaged without the benefit ofsuch defining experiences. Can you become like Lois without being Lois? That'sthe question. Dr. Seuss said, "Sometimes the questions are complicated and theanswers are simple."

How to become highly engaged is such a question.

The Benevolent Organization

Imagine that you work for the most benevolent organization on earth—anorganization that believes in and practices fanatical employee support. Theorganization has anointed you with a big title, a big office, and a big salary.It assigns people to clean your house, do your laundry, and file your taxreturns. There are piano lessons for your kids, personal trainers and homedecorators, a pet photo contest every year, unlimited spa treatments, extendedfamily cruises, and ice cream socials. Not least, you have a great boss. In thehistory of the world, there has never been a more successful organization, andyou are exquisitely blessed to be right in the middle of it.

So let's ask: Are you engaged? Are you passionately connected and activelyparticipating in the organization and the work you do? Do you bring your bestgame to work every day?

Answer: even in these circumstances, you have only a 25 percent chance of beinghighly engaged.

The organization may lavish you with perks, but those perks don't hold the keyto engagement. Feeding the pleasure center of the brain through extrinsicrewards doesn't engage a person and bring real, lasting fulfillment. At best, itcreates security and short-term pleasure or hedonic well-being. This is a verydifferent thing from true and sustained engagement.

Most employees are either bored or burned out. We know that because that's whatthey tell us in survey after survey. Most are disengaged. Even whenorganizations practice fanatical employee support, they still have huge numbersof disengaged employees. Why? That's what we wanted to know. But instead ofasking disengaged employees why they're disengaged, we asked highly engagedemployees why they're engaged.

We studied deeply motivated and committed employees across industries,continents, cultures, and demographics. We interviewed them and observed them inall sorts of situations, organizations, and environments. What is absolutelyclear is that highly engaged employees think and behave differently. They have adifferent mindset. They may work in different organizations and do verydifferent jobs, but there's a consistent theme among them: They take primaryresponsibility for their careers, their success, and their fulfillment. They owntheir own engagement. They are the driving force. With very few exceptions, theybelieve that the burden of employee engagement falls on their shoulders, not theorganization's.

The highly engaged employees we studied seemed almost puzzled when we asked themwhy they feel this way. "What's the alternative?" they would ask in response. Torely on the organization, they said, is unrealistic. It might be nice to shiftthe burden to the organization, and certainly it has a support role to play, butto depend on the organization doesn't make any sense at all. The speed,complexity, and volatility of the twenty-first century make it utterly foolish.That's what they said—again and again.

What startled us was the consistency of this pattern. It cuts across culture,age, industry, gender, and any other demographic you may want to consider. Theproblem is this: many people don't seem to understand this principle, and wedare say that many do not believe it. In our research, two facts hit us rightbetween the eyes. First, engagement levels are static. In the averageorganization, only 25 percent of employees are highly engaged. In many cases,engagement levels have actually fallen, and they certainly haven't increased, atleast not in the aggregate. Many individuals and organizations have reached thepoint of diminishing returns; they can't seem to move the engagement needle anyfurther. The second fact is that among employees there is an abundance of whatwe call an "engage-me mindset." Employees are waiting expectantly for apaternalistic organization to engage them.

We consider this supremely dangerous.

In most cases, the single biggest obstacle to employee engagement is theemployee. Employees get in their own way by not taking charge of theirprofessional lives. In the end, it may not matter what we'd like the answer tobe to the question: "who owns your engagement?" A globalizing world has given usthe answer, whether we like it or not. Tory Johnson of ABC News puts it thisway: "If we learned one thing from the job market last year, it's that nobody'scoming to take care of our careers. We can't wait for a big bailout, a massiveeconomic turnaround, or some miracle to grow our paychecks. We're eachresponsible for taking charge and making things happen for ourselves."

As an employee, you have three choices: (1) Accept what you've been given. (2)Change what you've been given. (3) Leave what you've been given. We want tofocus on the second option. If you feel underused and undervalued, you can dosomething about it. You may be tempted to hold the organization accountable foryour engagement. If you still don't buy the argument that you're in charge ofyour own engagement, ask yourself: have you ever had true passion for somethingin life?

Most likely you can answer yes. So where did that passion come from? You get thepoint. Nobody can give you passion. Nobody can instill in you deep and rich andvibrant engagement. You have to do it. You should do it.

Engagement drives performance, both personally and organizationally. Torrents ofdata and reams of analysis have proven a direct relationship between the two.Engagement is the passion you have for what you're doing and the affection youhave for the organization and its people. It's the comprehensive expression ofyour motivation and desire to contribute. Of course engagement levels vary.That's the problem. Some people are on fire. Others are frozen solid. Highlyengaged people demonstrate focus, energy, and commitment. Disengaged peoplelanguish in complacency, indifference, and halfhearted effort. They think, feel,and act differently from truly engaged human beings. But that's not all. Engagedhuman beings deliver different results—to themselves and to theirorganizations.

Individuals who dive in and participate fully earn greater rewards andexperience deeper personal and professional fulfillment. Show us a disengagedperson, and we will show you lackluster performance, limited personal growth,and diminished rewards. Show us an engaged person, and it's just theopposite—high performance, accelerated personal growth, and inevitablesuccess.

"Comparisons between people whose motivation is authentic (literally,self-authored or endorsed) and those who are merely externally controlled for anaction typically reveal that the former, relative to the latter, have moreinterest, excitement, and confidence, which in turn is manifest both as enhancedperformance, persistence, and creativity and as heightened vitality,self-esteem, and general well-being. This is so even when the people have thesame level of perceived competency or self-efficacy for the activity."

Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deci, psychologists

There are two requirements for high engagement. First, you have to wantto be engaged. There has to be a deep-seated desire in your heart and mind toparticipate, to be involved, and to make a difference. If the desire isn'tthere, no person or book can plant it within you. That desire is an intenselypersonal decision. If you have it, you're halfway there.

Second, you have to know how to achieve high engagement and sustain it.A lot of people want to be more engaged; they just don't know how to do it. Theydon't understand the principles and practices behind high engagement. This bookcan help you with the second requirement. In fact, that's what this book is allabout. Our goal is to teach you how to own your own engagement from the insideout.

The Patron Saint of the Disengaged

The comic strip Dilbert is published in 2,000 newspapers, in 65countries, and in 25 languages. The question is why. Why is it so popular? Whydoes it resonate with people around the globe? Why does it cut through cultural,social, political, and religious boundaries?

Scott Adams, the writer, has an amazing way of poking fun at organizationallife. For many, Dilbert is the patron saint of disengaged employees. He's ajaded, sarcastic, cynical employee. Where does that cynicism come from? It comesfrom the fact that organizational life is often less than we expect and lessthan it should be. A lot of people find comfort in Dilbert because he givesvoice to their frustrations and allows them to laugh and commiserate with asympathizing, albeit imaginary colleague. We can laugh, but then what?

Research shows that organizations with highly engaged employees outperformrivals in operating income by 19 percent, net income by 14 percent, and earningsper share by 28 percent. And highly engaged employees outperform the moderatelyengaged by 23 percent and the disengaged by 28 percent. Why does this matter?Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, said, "There are only threemeasurements that tell you nearly everything you need to know about yourorganization's overall performance: employee engagement, customer satisfaction,and cash flow."

Highly engaged employees get results with energy, passion, and purpose. Theyengage with customers better, innovate faster, and execute more reliably.Indeed, the highly engaged represent the ultimate competitive weapon. They holdthe key to the customer experience. While engagement may have been at one time asoft concept, today it's considered a hard business metric that changes thebottom line.

Why Should You Care?

If you've looked around lately, you'll notice that things aren't the same. Thetwenty-first century presents us with combinations of speed and complexity thatwe've never seen before. We call it the new normal because the old normal isgone forever. The old way of doing things is not coming back. For most of us, ithas been painful. The consequences of the new normal are reaching down andhaving an impact not only on organizations, but on individual employees. It'stesting our ability to stay engaged.

"Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know whatharbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind."

Seneca the Younger, Roman statesman

The fortunes of organizations rise and fall more quickly in the new normal. Theaverage span of competitive advantage is shorter. You don't know what's comingnext. Most organizations are doing their best to be competitive and take care oftheir employees, but they can't make promises. Who can promise job security?It's simply not something that's within the control of most organizations. Yetit's the highly engaged that have the best claim on job security. Notsurprisingly, they are the ones who find the opportunities to grow, develop, andadvance.

Outside In or Inside Out?

In spite of all that organizations have done to increase engagement over thelast 10 years, and despite all they continue to do, engagement numbers haven'tchanged significantly around the world. There's a disengagement epidemic acrossthe globe. The data consistently shows that only one in four employees is highlyengaged. That's frightening. What about everyone else? They fall into threecategories: (1) moderately engaged (just above neutral, meaning neither engagednor disengaged), (2) disengaged, or (3) highly disengaged. The needle is stuck!

What's getting in the way? Part of the answer lies in understanding what drivesengagement in the first place. Two primary types of factors drive engagement:extrinsic factors and intrinsic factors. An extrinsic factor is something thatcomes from the outside—meaning outside of you. It's something in theenvironment, something in the conditions or circumstances that surround you thatinfluences you to become more engaged. For example, you may have a great boss, anice office, or a new computer; the organization may be performing well; orperhaps you've been given a lot of training to do your job and a generous budgetto accomplish your priorities. These are all extrinsic factors—things thatcome from outside. Extrinsic factors are important, and they do have an impacton engagement levels. They create engagement from the outside in.

"The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter hislife by altering his attitude of mind."

William James

Intrinsic factors, on the other hand, come from the inside. They are inherentand are not dependent on outside conditions or circumstances. They are based onwhat you do. They're based on human action rather than environmental conditions.We've all experienced the power of an intrinsic factor. Just think about thetimes at work when you felt high motivation or a sense of deep satisfaction.Perhaps you learned something new. Maybe you really delivered on a project.Maybe you overcame a challenge. Maybe you helped someone who needed your help.Maybe you really love the kind of work you're doing. When you notice that yourattention and motivation are increasing as you are doing something, that's anindication that something is going on inside, that intrinsic factors are at workand your engagement level is rising. When you act based on intrinsic factors,you don't do it for material or social rewards, you do it for invisibleemotional, intellectual, and moral rewards. When you're engaged, it shows. Itshows in your concentration, your effort, and your emotion. You can't hide it.Intrinsic factors create engagement from the inside out.

• Extrinsic factors drive engagement from the "outside in."

• Intrinsic factors drive engagement from the "inside out."

Both extrinsic and intrinsic factors drive engagement (see Figure 1.1).It's not exclusively one or the other. Here's the point. In most cases, theorganization controls most of the extrinsic factors, meaning the conditions inwhich you work. When it comes to intrinsic factors, it's theindividual—it's you—who controls what goes on inside of you.Ultimately, you're the one who decides to be interested in something, to putyour effort into something. You're the boss of your effort, your motivation, andyour actions. You're in charge of this part of your engagement.

"If you're going to be in the room ... be in the room!"

Nigel Risner, British writer and speaker

So what do you do as an individual? What do you worry about? Answer: focus onintrinsic factors that drive engagement and let the organization worry aboutconditions. And guess what? That's exactly what highly engaged employees do.

How Are Highly Engaged Employees Different?

How do you learn engagement from someone who's disengaged? You don't. That'slike trying to learn French from a Spanish teacher. People simply can't teachyou what they don't know. So we decided that the key to understanding highengagement was to study the highly engaged. We studied 150 highly engagedemployees in 13 different industries and 50 different organizations, fromaerospace and healthcare to technology and media. Do they behave in consistentways? The answer is a resounding yes! Here is what we found:

1. Highly engaged employees take primary responsibility for their ownengagement. When surveyed, 99 percent of highly engaged employees reportthat they take personal and primary responsibility for their own engagement.It's a stunning and largely ignored fact. The highly engaged expect theorganization to play a support role. The highly disengaged expect theorganization to play a primary role. While most highly engaged employeesembrace an employee-centered model of engagement (meaning "I own it; it's up tome; I'm responsible for my own engagement"), most disengaged employeesfollow an employer-centered model (meaning "It's my manager's or theorganization's job to keep me engaged"). In sharp contrast, the highlyengaged don't wait around for the organization to engage them. They takedeliberate steps to engage themselves.

2. Highly engaged employees feel the least entitled. Highly engagedemployees understand they must dynamically manage their employability on anongoing basis. They are far less predisposed to worry about what theorganization owes them. They believe that high performance speaks for itself andthat it will be recognized in any setting.

It's rather stunning, but most of the highly engaged individuals we studiedthink the concept of a "secure job" is a silly concept. They look at others whobelieve in such a notion as foolhardy. It's not necessarily that we are going tobecome a world of temp workers, but a simple acknowledgment that no one and noorganization has the power to grant true job security.

(Continues...)

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Employee Engagement Mindset by TIM R. CLARK. Copyright © 2012 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: McGraw Hill
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2012
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0071788298
• ISBN 13: 9780071788298
• Einband: Tapa dura
• Anzahl der Seiten: 272
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar