What’s to fear from creating meaningful engagement?
Andrew Armes, founder of Sixth Patriarch on what it means, as a leader, to be true to yourself as an integral step to driving a values-led organisation
Andrew Armes, founder of Sixth Patriarch on what it means, as a leader, to be true to yourself as an integral step to driving a values-led organisation As a regular reader of Employee Engagement Today you will know that in order to achieve the highest levels of meaningful employee engagement you will require all or, at the very worst, a combination of the following:
- A belief that commercial success will come from the meaningful engagement of all employees.
- A meaningful core purpose of the business, preferably created from the core beliefs of your entire employee population – and not to be confused with the shareholder-driven vision and mission statement.
- A values-driven organisation informed from those within the organisation, rather than simply a top-down approach, in complete harmony with your core purpose.
- Authenticity in everything you do, including having integrity to the core purpose and the values you create.
- A complete overhaul of your entire business logistics from the management of your employment brand, to the recruitment process, to the development of your employees, to the appraisal and talent process, right through to the exit process. And supporting your employees in understanding what are their own core beliefs.
That is a whole lot of hard work and effort by anyone’s standards, but it is essentially a definitive roadmap to getting your employees meaningfully engaged, and reaping the commercial success that follows.
However, this hard work and effort is not the fear that the title to this piece is alluding. I am referring to the fears that arise when faced with the fact that if you adopt an authentic approach, then employees – some of which you currently think you need to keep – are going to leave your company.
In order to understand what our core beliefs are, we need to do a degree of soul searching and if we are to be really authentic to the new knowledge or self-awareness about ourselves, then this will present many employees with a dilemma. If the core purpose of the organisation does not, in fact, reflect their own beliefs, they might actually find the self-assurance to jump ship and seek somewhere they can be authentic to these beliefs. The irony is, if they don’t leave, then you’ll never get the authenticity you need in your organisation to become truly values-led.
It becomes critical to develop the ability to support your current employees in becoming aware of their core beliefs and, importantly, where to go from there. This is the real challenge – most people are afraid of what being true to their core beliefs will mean for them and society doesn’t support them to do this. In fact, quite the opposite.
So, when you provide employees with the opportunity to look in the mirror and become more self-aware some won’t take the opportunity, some might not like what they see and, whether they do or don’t, some will not have the faintest idea how to deal with the implications. Meaningful employee engagement, done effectively, will generate a downward dip in performance (as with any change curve) and so you have to have even firmer convictions in your beliefs to attempt it.
The upside, though, is well worth it. All businesses in time will realise that unless they have meaningful intent, then their business models have a limited life expectancy.
I am arguably the biggest advocate of values-led organisations, and finding a core purpose with meaning for organisations. I believe they can lead to positive social change. However, if we, as practitioners or facilitators or simply leaders in an organisation, want to see more meaning in what we do then we are going to have to ‘be’ that change in the first place, and that means being true to our core beliefs. How can we expect others to be authentic if we aren’t the embodiment of our own beliefs?