Engagement and the Credible Company ~ Roger D-Aprix

Roger D’Aprix wrote The Credible Company: Communicating with Today’s Skeptical Workforce.

I think D’Aprix did an excellent job with this book. He stated, “one of the most cherished of leadership outcomes is a more engaged workforce” (p. 53).

D’Aprix summarized the work of Earl Gommersall from Texas Instruments in studies on participative management. There were 3 keys to full participative management: job mastery, predictability, and recognition for contributions. This study was conducted in manufacturing at Texas Instrument and D-Aprix summarized the need for recognized contributions this way:

If employees reached the point at which they felt that they were indeed loved — that is, they were recognized as highly valued members of the organization — the researchers found these same employees had a  reciprocal need to love back. At this point they were at last willing to go the extra mile and actually participate wholeheartedly in their work. (p 44-45).

Perhaps Jerry Maguire needed to yell out show me the love rather than show me the money.

In this fine book D-aprix also looked at job responsibilities, performance feedback, individual needs, team objectives and results, visions, mission and strategy, and engagement.

He phrases these variables as 6 key questions:

1. What’s my job?
2. How am I doing?
3. Does anyone care?
4. How are we doing?
5. What are our vision, mission, and values?
6. How can I help?

Perhaps the bigger question is: Can all your employees give positive and constructive answers to these 6 questions?

I encourage you to read the book to learn how to inform skeptical employees during this time of turbulent change. I trust you can create a workplace culture where people will flourish in the pursuit of worthwhile goals.