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Dear Reader,
Maybe you can't hear it anymore, but I want to briefly share with you a recent finding related to the economic downturn from an extensive international research on engagement conducted by the Corporate Leadership Council (CLC) end of 2008.
Two key developments became apparent during the crisis:
- Engagement levels among senior executives massively dropped during the 2nd half of 2008
- Poor performing employees are less likely to leave on their own
This is obviously no good news. I hope that the article series on engagement (see below) will help you mitigate these developments in your organization or team. Of course, we are always happy to discuss if we could assist further in case you feel challenged by such developments.
Let's keep progressing!
Charlie Lang
Executive Coach and Founder of Progress-U Ltd.
Author of The Groupness Factor
P.S.: GET INVOLVED WITH CHARLIE'S UPCOMING BOOK
I started writing my second book on Corporate Coaching Culture and am looking for people who'd like to give feedback to my writing. To get involved in this exciting venture, write to book-evaluators@progressu.com . You'll receive then access to the private BLOG I set up for that purpose. Thanks!
Series: The (not so) Secret Keys to High Engagement
Part IV of V: The Third Key - Emotional Commitment to the Manager
To read Part I of this series, visit http://www.progressu.com/ezine-leadership-2008-4.php
To read Part II of this series, visithttp://www.progressu.com/ezine-leadership-2008-5.php
To read Part III of this series, visit http://www.progressu.com/ezine-leadership-2009-1.php
By Charlie Lang, Executive Coach & Trainer
Corporate Culture & Senior Leadership Expert @ Progress-U Limited
 Download this article
 Now that we have covered the first three emotional commitment types (to job, to the organization, and to the team), it remains to identify how we can maximize emotional commitment to the manager.
Perhaps you’ve heard of the saying: “People tend to join a company and leave the boss.” You might remember that earlier, we defined engagement with the three ‘S’, say, stay, and strive. Loyalty to the manager is an indicator of high engagement, too. Needless to say that low levels of loyalty represent a considerable cost factor.
So how can managers get their direct reports to be emotionally committed to them?
Over the past 20 to 30 years, the expectations of employees – on both staff and management level – changed considerably. In the past, it might have been sufficient if the manager was more or less fair, gave clear directions, and adequate rewards for good performance.
Today, most employees expect more than that. They want (in no particular order) their managers to
- truly care about them;
- help them develop themselves;
- give them challenging tasks;
- provide them with the freedom to be creative;
- offer flexible time schemes;
- be optimistic and abundance-oriented rather than scarcity-oriented; and
- be an inspiring role model.
Too much to ask for?
Obviously, there might be some limitations to fully match these criteria. For example, the organization might not be ready yet to embrace flexible working time schemes, etc.
At the same time, I know from experience that if managers learn and apply the coaching mindset and coaching competencies, they can get pretty close to fulfilling these expectations.
The coaching mindset particularly focuses on ‘ownership’ which promotes the idea that employees in many cases might be able to take greater ownership over what to do and/or how to do it. Employees develop significantly faster if they are in charge and also, once they’re used to taking ownership, and take usually more pride in their work which has also a positive impact on the emotional commitment to the job.
Another coaching framework is to be forward-oriented, which means that coaching managers are looking for the opportunities in any problem or challenge, thereby creating a positive and optimistic outlook for their team members.
For example, does a manager see the current economic crisis only as a problem that needs to be mitigated or does she inspire her team members to look for opportunities that may present themselves in this challenging environment?
One of the important coaching skills is the ability to build truly trusted relationships with direct reports. An important key for that is that managers truly care for their team members and are not afraid if that means that they ‘lose’ top performers due to internal promotions. In fact, they do their best to develop them in the best and fastest possible way so that they ‘lose’ them as soon as possible. They are aware of the benefits of this mindset such as
- having a highly engaged team;
- having loyal allies in the organization after internal promotion;
- attracting high potentials from other teams;
- keeping top performers within the organization; and
- being seen as a ‘talent factory’ for the organization.
In my experience, these benefits by far outweigh the challenge of replacing top performers.
The coaching approach also promotes more creativity and flexibility which ultimately benefit both the direct reports and the organization.
Conclusion on Emotional Commitment to the Manager
In today’s knowledge worker age, it’s not sufficient for managers anymore to be the most brilliant subject matter expert. While it’s certainly still valuable for a managers to know their business, it’s much more important for them to be a coaching leader thus inspiring direct reports to develop themselves to become the best they can be.
Also, if managers adopt coaching as their main leadership style, they build stronger relationships with their direct reports, who in turn become more and more emotionally committed to their superior.
Part V of this series summarizes the topic of high engagement and the different commitment types and will show you the benefits of maximizing them.
If you have any comments in the meantime, please write to charlie.lang@progressu.com. We will post any comments to this series in the next part we publish.
For more information related to Progress-U Leadership Training and Coaching, please click here.
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