Multiple Pathways to Employee Engagement: MMP#40
By David Zinger on Jan 14, 2008 in Employee Engagement, Employee Engagement Chronicle, Workplace Engagement
Employee Engagement: The Monday Morning Percolator #40
There is no way to employee engagement,
employee engagement is the way.
The above statement is a rewrite of Zen monk, Thich Nhat Hahn’s, dictum: There is no way to peace, peace is the way.
The opening statement about employee engagement is a central theme of this website. Three times a week you will encounter an eclectic collection of articles on employee engagement. You will read a plethora of perspectives on engagement, from strength based leadership to ZENgagement.
There are many possible forks in the road on the multiple pathways to engagement - I am not trying to confound or confuse you. I want to acknowledge the complexity of employee engagement and honor the many paths to employee engagement.
Last week the Gallup Management Journal published an article with this exact title by Jennifer Robison, Many Paths to Engagement. I have utmost respect for Gallup’s extensive work on employee engagement and I was very pleased to see the parallel nature of our perspectives.
Jennifer began her article with a reference to Buddhist philosophy:
Some Buddhists believe that there are many paths to enlightenment, as many paths as there are seekers. Business philosophy, however, considers that idea problematic. Business leaders don’t want many paths to enlightenment, or in their case, to business results like employee engagement and the benefits it brings. They want one simple, straight, predictable path. When it comes to employee engagement, though, Buddhist thought is probably closer to the truth. There isn’t a perfect path to engagement, a single route that passes from manager to employee to performance to productivity to profit. There are as many effective ways to manage people to attain high performance as there are great managers…
Click here to read the article on how very different management and leadership styles can achieve high levels of employee engagement at Mars, Inc.
Here is part of the conclusion of the article:
So after all that number crunching, behavioral analysis, systematic examination, and simple questioning, Schulte (from Mars Inc.) found the key to great management — great managers. The path to enlightenment, or rather, engagement, ends where it begins.
What does this mean for employee engagement leaders.
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We need to understand the complexity of employee engagement.
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We need to understand our own strengths and styles.
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We need to fully understand the people we lead.
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We must give up the pursuit of a simple one-size-fits-all answer to employee engagement.
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We must get on the path and be prepared to change paths.
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We must know in our hearts: there is no way to employee engagement, employee engagement is the way.
Photo Credit: Cliché by http://flickr.com/photos/mayr/372933549/
David Zinger writes about the plethora of pathways to employee engagement.
Michael Lee Stallard | Jan 15, 2008 | Reply
David,
Excellent post. I enjoyed the Gallup article too. It’s very wise of Mars to have a Global Project Manager for Employee Engagement and wise of Jennifer Schulte, the aforementioned project manager, to organize the Line Manager Learning Community. I wonder how she plans to expand the community? It will be critical for prospective community members to understand that employee engagement best practices meet universal human needs for respect, recognition, belonging, autonomy, personal growth and meaning? By developing an awareness of these universal human needs and the effect certain behaviors have on meeting them or creating need deficits that drive dysfunctional and destructive behavior, potential community members will be motivated to join the community and do the hard work that is necessary to develop the habits of engaging leadership. It will be useful for Jennifer to develop the internal communications and training programs that progress leaders from awareness of her work to consideration, trail and loyalty. She’s certainly off to a great start and way ahead of most organizations!
David Zinger | Jan 15, 2008 | Reply
Michael,
Good points about sustaining the work. As your book title states they are Fired Up and now the sustaining process continues without being burned out.
David