Why is employee engagement at an all-time low? Why is turnover as high as it is? Why are employees constantly looking for better opportunities?
When you think about those questions, combined with what I wrote in my post on Employee Engagement: A Confluence of Passion and Purpose ...
That engagement comes from within the employee, and yet the company has a role in it, as well. When there's some confluence of: (1) emotions, commitment, passion, sense of ownership, etc. on the part of the employee about the brand and (2) what the organization does (mission, purpose, brand promise, etc.) to facilitate and enhance those emotions or that commitment - then we have employee engagement.
... it makes you question where the company is lacking. And, by company, I mean, the leadership of the company.
So let's talk about leadership.
It's been more than five years since I first listened to - and wrote about - Bob Chapman's TEDx talk about Truly Human Leadership . I've included links to that post in several other posts since then. His message is a powerful one and probably resonates with me even more today. It doesn't hurt that I had a great conversation with him a few months after I wrote that post and learned more about what he and Simon Sinek were doing together to stand up a leadership institute . And since then, I've read his book and watched his Amazon Prime documentary short by the same name, Everybody Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family .
Here's his basic, yet powerful, underlying message:
We have a crisis in leadership in this country and in this world. ... In the United States, an estimated 88% of the workforce, 1.3 million people, go home every day feeling that they work for an organization that doesn't listen or care about them. That is seven out of eight people! These are our mothers and fathers, our brothers and sisters, our sons and daughters; they all have a high probability of working for an organization that doesn't care for them as individuals but instead sees them merely as functions or objects, as means to the success of the organization.
He goes on to say:
We're destroying people and killing our culture because we send people home after treating them as objects and functions, instead of caring about them as human beings. We want them more engaged because we want them more productive. We want more productivity out of them because that creates more profits and that creates a better future for the company, but we don't care about them as people.
Related: Culture: How Employees Act When No One Is Looking. How Does Your Company Do?
Ouch! And yet, so true.
And then this...
The good news is we have the power to change this and begin healing tomorrow. We just need to engage our heads and our hearts in an approach to leadership that validates the worth of every individual, an approach in which everybody matters.
Everybody matters. Amen.
Leaders have an awesome responsibility over their employees. Treat people like people. We are all human. Why do leaders fail to see employees as humans? Why do employees lose human status the second they walk into their employers' offices?
There's more - and the quotes above are from Chapter 4 in his book - but you'll just have to read it to find out what's next. (And, no, I don't get an affiliate fee if you click the link, and Bob hasn't paid me to write about his book. It's just that powerful - and that important.)
If you want to better understand the crisis, check out this video .
It's a compelling message; if this message doesn't move you to do something in your organization, I'm not sure what will. We can change the world. We can change how we treat each other, every day. We can change those employee engagement numbers. As leaders, as executives, we choose.
But what can we do? Where does it begin? How do we move from me-centric leadership and a me-centric organization to a we-centric organization? (Sounds a little like Weology , doesn't it?)
It comes down to culture , right? That's one piece of it.
Having the right values and guiding principles in place is a solid foundation and really creates the framework within which leaders can create an organization that puts people first, profits last, aka Truly Human Leadership. Take care of your people, and they will take care of the business.
The other piece of it is that your CEO and her executive team (the entire team, everyone on the same page) must choose to lead differently. It begins with them. The choice is theirs. The day they choose to lead differently is the day employees take notice. And it's the day that they'll want to become part of the change.
How do you lead differently? Consider adhering to Bob's 10 Commandments of Truly Human Leadership:
Imagine if every CEO ran her company based on these Commandments!