In an earlier column, we looked at competence as one of the three ingredients for success at work . In the current column, we will discuss the role of commitment in professional success. Engagement is another term that is used interchangeably with commitment. More recently, this has been the key focus area for most corporations, in the domain of people management.
Studies by global consulting firms have reported alarmingly low levels of employee commitment and engagement over the years. When you look at employee commitment as a lead indicator of retention, this should be a cause for worry.
The prerequisite
In this column, we will focus on managers managing their own commitments. Remember the safety instruction you receive every time you travel by a plane? ‘Put on your own oxygen mask before you assist others’. As leaders and managers, our own commitment to the workplace is a prerequisite before we can think of trying to engage our people.
In many organisations, leadership trainings focused on helping managers engage their employees have had limited impact because leaders themselves needed a dose of engagement before trying it on their teams. But what leads to our engagement or, in their absence, erodes our engagement?
Sieving through hundreds of engagement studies, the following aspects have emerged as major engagement drivers.
~ Pride in our employer.
~ Opportunity to perform well at work.
~ Recognition and positive feedback for our contributions.
~ Support from supervisors.
~ Understanding the big picture — connect between what we do and how it contributes to the company’s mission.
~ Growth prospects.
In detail
In all honesty, none of the items in the list above comes as a surprise. Let us look at some of these in detail for our understanding, so we do not suffer from want of commitment.
Keeping the pride
First, the pride in our employer. There are two aspects to managing this. Today, we all have the option of choosing our employer, more than ever before. But when motivated by money or high-sounding titles, we choose to pay scant attention to choosing our employer carefully. And we end up working for an organisation that does not generate any pride.
Pride is not something companies grow overnight — it takes a long time to build and is hard to sustain. But if we pick a job at a sweat shop, of course we will sweat it! When a company is committed to the larger good of the community, you experience a great sense of pride.
Checking out the community focus, how the product or service impacts the larger society, policies around CSR, matching contribution to community causes, encouragement to voluntary work and the likes, should be evaluated before you decide to take the plunge. However, this is just one aspect. There are many other dimensions as well.
Opportunities
Second, the opportunity to perform well at work. This may sound easy but requires a deep examination. The opportunity to perform has both organisational and personal sides to it. When an organisation has a robust performance management process, a coaching culture and other such positives, you can be fairly sure of performing well.
But more importantly, the personal dimension plays a major role. How you choose to perceive your role — central or peripheral — to the success of the organisation is equally important. Your ability to network to tap into necessary resources, your willingness to seek help and provide help to the people you work with, and your sense of leveraging your talent, among other points, will impact your opportunity to perform well at work.
The big picture
Understanding the big picture is a key ingredient to enhancing commitment. This requires a deeper study of an employer’s vision and mission, and how much it is emphasised by the senior leaders during their communication with people.
It is also up to us to make sense of it all and use it as a source of energy. When I listened to Dr Marshall Goldsmith (a famous executive coach) on employee engagement, he made some very interesting insights.
He pointed out that most of the engagement surveys globally are focused on “what the organisation does to engage people at work”. This is done by a host of what Dr Goldsmith terms “passive questions”. He recommends that organisations use “active questions” that seek out what employees are doing to engage themselves. This is clearly a very distinct and useful insight, because these questions start with, “Did I do my best to…?” For us as managers and leaders, it is beneficial to ask if we are doing a bunch of things to demonstrate our engagement and commitment.
In the final analysis, as leaders and managers, we have a role towards engendering our commitment actively without making our it conditional on things that the organisation does.
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