#50 - Engagement
Hello,
This week, I got curious about the idea of "staff engagement". Personally, I am not a big fan of this expression. Why? At least to me, staff sounds too impersonal and embeds the connotation that people are the means to an end, while engagement tends to equal buy-in: "We at the top have developed a great strategy, and now need all of the staff to be fully committed to our agenda." It all sounds like a one-way street where people owe the leaders their engagement, while leaders owe nothing much in return.
My deep conviction is that if we want people to be engaged with us and our ideas we need ourselves to be deeply engaged with our people: meet them as they are and respect them. It's a two-way street. In this newsletter, I have explored the ideas that bring different perspectives to the topic of engagement:
We will start with a provocative idea that engagement is not the problem. Dominic Houlder and his co-authors find inspiration in philosophy and suggest that people are naturally engaged - with people and causes, not with targets. Instead of trying to engage others, the role of leadership is to facilitate encounters and meet people as they are.
This approach requires to redefine leadership. I like how Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall see a leader as someone who has followers and encourage to ask ourselves: Why do we follow?
And while we may think that in strongly hierarchical cultures, common in Asia, we may not need to care about engagement, Erin Meyer reminds us about the Confucian view that leaders' responsibility to care for followers is just as important as followers' responsibility to defer and commit. We find the echoing view in one of the Chinese classics - Sun Tzu’s "The Art of War".
Engagement Is Not the Problem
Dominic Houlder and his co-authors of "What Philosophy Can Teach You About Being a Better Leader" provocatively argue that engagement is not the problem and that more management control is not the solution. To be engaged is to be human. They explore the ideas of Martin Buber, an Austrian-born, Israeli-Jewish philosopher best known for his writings on human interactions, and suggest that we should replace the pursuit of engagement with the process of encounter - moments of reciprocity, of being seen and being heard.
"When it comes to engagement, you don't get what you measure, you reap what you sow. People engage with people and causes - not targets. By focusing on targets, we disengage people. Leadership is not directing people to certain outcomes, controlling how they do things, or persuading them to conform to new ways of doing things. Leadership is about connecting people through their common causes to work together and learn from each other. The preoccupation with engagement in organizations is misguided; engagement is not the problem. People are naturally, instinctively predisposed to be engaged, committed, and proud. We engage with others and with our causes all the time - it is the human condition. Instead of trying to engage others, the role of leadership is to facilitate encounters. To encounter someone is to meet them as they are.
(...) The ingredients that lead to encounters and need to be actively facilitated by leadership:
- Being present. The time people spend together is intense and focused on each other. They are not distracted or interrupted by other demands.
- Person, not role. Participants show up as themselves, not as their role. Hopes, fears, strengths, vulnerabilities are all to be shared, related to and supported.
- Incomplete. No one is the finished article. Leaders come prepared to let their guard down, to be curious about their shortcomings and their impact on others.
- Relation, not agreement. Learning is more important than agreement. We are all fallible."
Why Do We Follow?
To be engaged with people, we need to revise our typical definition of leadership which often involves the idea of command and control and/or suggest the existence of some predefined abstract competencies. Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall in "Nine Lies About Work: a Freethinking Leader's Guide to the Real World" argue that the idea that leadership is a thing is a lie and that the only determinant of whether anyone is leading is whether anyone else is following. Instead of pursuing to acquire some predefined abstract set of leadership qualities, the challenge of a leader is to find and refine one's own way of creating enthusiasm and confidence in followers.
"The idea that leadership is a thing is a lie. When you take any of the definitions of that thing, and then try to locate it in the real world, you encounter exception upon exception upon exception.
(...) The true lesson in leading from the real world: a leader is someone who has followers, plain and simple. The only determinants of whether anyone is leading is whether anyone else is following.
So the question we should be really asking ourselves is this one: Why do we follow?
(...) Broadly speaking, we want to feel part of something bigger than ourselves - the "Best of We" - while, at the same time, feeling that our leader knows and values us for who we are as a unique individual - the "Best of Me". More specifically, we follow leaders who connect us to a mission we believe in, who clarify what's expected of us, who surround us with people who define excellence the same way we do, who value us for our strengths, who show us that our teammates will always be there for us, who diligently reply our winning plays, who challenge us to keep getting better, and who give us confidence in the future.
This is not a list of qualities in a leader, but rather a set of feelings in a follower. As such, while we should not expect every good leader to share the same qualities or competencies, we can hold all good leaders accountable for creating these same feelings of followership in their teams.
Leadership isn't a thing, because it cannot be measured reliably. Followership is a thing, because it can.
Your ability to create the outcomes you want in your followers is tied directly to how seriously and intelligently you cultivate your own idiosyncrasy, and to what end. The deeper and more extreme your idiosyncrasy becomes, the more passionately your followers follow."
Do We Need to Cultivate Engagement In a Hierarchical Culture?
You may think that in strongly hierarchical cultures, common in Asia, the need to view engagement as a two-way street is superfluous. Erin Meyer, in her book "The Culture Map" brilliantly explains that leading people in hierarchical cultures is not limited to the followers' responsibility to obey.
"Like any good American, I was raised to be quite uncomfortable with the idea of a fixed social hierarchy. When I thought of hierarchy, I thought of the lowest person's responsibility to obey, which I felt suggested an inhumane situation, like a relationship between slave and owner. I saw it as being in direct contrast to individual freedom.
However, in order to understand the Confucian concept of hierarchy, it is important to think not just about the lower-level person's responsibility to obey, but also about the heavy responsibility of the higher person to protect and care for those under him. The leader's responsibility for caring and teaching is just as strong as the follower's responsibility to defer and follow directions. Those from Confucian societies have believed for centuries that this type of dual responsibility is a backbone of a virtuous society.
Recognizing and respecting the system of reciprocal obligations is important for the manager from an egalitarian society who finds himself working with a team from a hierarchical society, particularly one from Asia. Like a good Confucian, you must remember your obligations. Your team may follow your instructions to the letter, but in return, you must show consistent paternalistic kindness. Protect your subordinates, mentor and coach them, behave as a kind father would to his children, and always look out for their interests. Play your role well, and you may find that leading a team in a hierarchical culture brings many rewards."
Source: "The Culture Map", by Erin Meyer
I have noticed the similar thoughts on love that begets love and leadership that begets followership in the commentary to the opening chapter of "The Art of War":
"1.5 道者, 令民與上同意也。 1.6. 故可與之死, 可與之生, 而民不畏危。
"5,6. The Moral Law (Dao) causes the people to be in complete accord with their ruler, so that they will follow him regardless of their lives, undismayed by any danger."
Commentary: "When a ruler acts in a moral way, showing fairness in all dealings and caring for the subjects, then the subjects will reciprocate, caring in return even to the point of death. Love begets love. The moral law is also related to harmony and ensuring alignment in all things.
In business, a perform-or-perish, hire-and-fire attitude may seem good for business but does not lead to loyal employees. If you clearly care about your people they will care about you and care about the business. Leadership begets followership."
Sources: Sun Tzu's The Art of War: Bilingual Edition, Complete Chinese and English Text; The Annotated Art of War
Music of Strong Engagement :)
As usual, we end up with a few great, engaging songs: