If you are a leader here is an important multiple choice question. Your answer may indicate the role you play in your employees’ level of disengagement.
As a manager, my interactions with employees surrounding their performance is the following:
a. who has time to talk with employees about this kind of stuff?
b. we talk about how to improve their weaknesses.
c. we talk about their strengths.
If you answered “c” the chance of your employees being actively disengaged is 1%.
In an interview about the book StrengthsFinder 2.0 for the Gallup Management Journal, Tom Rath discussed the strong link between a leader’s focus and employee engagement. Here were the 3 powerful conclusions from Gallup’s research on conversation, engagement, and strengths:
- If your manager primarily ignores you your chances of being actively disengaged are 40%
- If your manager focuses on your weaknesses your chances of being actively disengaged are 22%
- If you manager focuses on your strengths your chances of being actively disengaged are only 1%
Perk Up:
- You have only one task this week. Ensure that you talk with as many people, as much as possible, about thier strengths and performance. Use strengths to muscle out disengagement!
Picture Credit: Fore! By http://flickr.com/photos/ecstaticist/
Technorati Tags : employee engagement, employee disengagement, percolator, David Zinger
Thanks for the simplistic and refreshing wake up call for all people who wish to be effective today in business, education and relationships! The command-control structure of management/learning is over. Corporations and educators must move toward an engagement model with people if they wish to succeed in any type of sustainable manner. If not, the “head in the sand” approach will catch up with them-sooner than later-and force them to create community at work to compete.
With 77 million boomers exiting the workforce, this generation is taking with them any trace of the paternalistic work model as the new generations learn how to survive and thrive inside a model where it is all about them and their values in a 1-to-1 world. Their values and thinking is completely different than anything we’ve seen due to the influence of technology and information that they have been raised with! An 8 year old child today has as much access to knowledge as adults and this is creating an enormous impact on how they choose to learn and work.
Wake up and smell the coffee to embrace these changes the Knowledge Age has thrust upon us. It is creating an environment where we MUST truly listen to others, focus on their strengths and champion their creativity to be successful in a global economy. Change IS good!!
Mary,
I appreciate your comments and I can smell the coffee, taste the coffee, and get perking too.
I appreciate your line: we MUST truly listen to others, focus on their strengths and champion their creativity to be successful in a global economy.
Thank you for your very thoughtful comments.
David