Do you Build Employee Engagement Immune Systems or Damage them?

Our immune system protects us from harmful outside invaders around the clock. Our immune system is able to quickly recognize and either repel or attack these invaders that mean us harm. Without this immune system our body would quickly breakdown. When an invader does find a way in, it takes tremendous energy to resist or keep it from harming us. We have all had a fever. A fever is a symptom of an invader who has entered our system and it’s our body’s way of fending off the harm this invader can cause. The fever puts us out of commission. It zaps our energy.

Leaders who damage trust zap our energy. They are like invaders to your “employee engagement immune system.” As a leader do you pass the “hello-goodbye” test? Are people happy to see you coming or happy to see you leave? If they are happy to see you coming you pass the “hello-goodbye” test. If they are happy to see you leave, you fail.

The Four Trust Invaders that Damage “Employee Engagement Immune Systems”

Leaders who zap energy do one or more of four things to damage trust. They fail to show concern for you personally or they are disrespectful. Secondly, they fail to keep their agreements and so they damage their own integrity and they often do it unconsciously. Thirdly, they are incompetent in their core responsibilities and are often unaware. Finally, they send mixed messages about priorities or they frequently have different priorities in objectives, or even worse, values. Here are some behaviors to adopt to be sure you are not attacking the “employee engagement immune system.”

Show Concern

One way to pass the “hello-goodbye’ test is to be sure to demonstrate concern for employees with every interaction. Do this by practicing very basic skills such as eye contact, listening without interrupting, repeating back what you hear without prejudice, asking questions for clarity without criticizing. Above all else, avoid disrespectful behaviors.

Another important factor is being aware of communication style and adapting to the others’ styles. Some want to chat and laugh, some want to talk only about results, some want to just be heard and some want specific details. Be aware of style and adapt your language. Using a different style is much like speaking a different language without a translator. It zaps energy and damages trust.

Keep Agreements

Next to dis-respect, this is one of the worst invaders of employee engagement immune systems. Leaders who break their agreements and are unaware make people turn and run. Insisting people come to work on time and then being late for meetings without an apology is an example. Asking people to put in more time on a project but then sneaking out of work early is another.

Unless employees have the ability to tell the “king they have no clothes” this invader can cause serious damage and zap energy and engagement from employees.

Being Competent in Core Responsibilities

Leaders expect employees to be competent. If they fall down on their responsibilities then any performance feedback delivered to employees will fall on deaf ears. Credibility is lost. For example, leaders must facilitate problem solving and not avoid or delegate this important responsibility. If they abdicate this responsibility they damage credibility and trust. Employees will stop coming to them for help and instead end up avoiding interactions because any effort is seen as a waste of time. This zaps employee engagement.

Have the Same Priorities

First clarify the priorities of the organization or the department. Clear articulation of priority can prevent misunderstandings. Any misunderstandings or inconsistency will zap engagement energy.

If improving customer service is a priority for the organization, any direction from leadership that appears inconsistent will damage trust. For example, if leadership insists on reducing time spent with clients in order to save money (either on the phone or in person) they send an inconsistent message to the customer service improvement priority.

Do you pass the “hello-goodbye” test? Do employees show concern or delight when you approach? If you are not sure start observing now. You can be either a supporter of engagement or a drain on energy. Which are you?

Employee Engagement is Fragile: 3 Things You Can Do to Protect It

In the past 12 months we have seen dramatic examples about how leadership and engagement of people are fragile living things. As I write this article Egypt is celebrating the end of the Mubarak authoritative dictatorship after only a few weeks. The mostly peaceful protests were conducted consistently over a three week period by a leaderless group of protestors that represented a relatively small percentage of the total population (approximately 5%).

Just a month or so earlier we saw the authoritarian and corrupt government of Tunisia fall to demonstrations, a bit more explosive, as well. Again, a group of protesters were leaderless yet persistent in their call for ouster of the current regime.

Our own November elections demonstrated a clear message to Barack Obama such that he called the results a “shellacking.” The results were led mostly by a leaderless movement called the Tea Party.

Again and again we see the power of engaged people who can either support a leader or protest against a leader. The people eventually have the power especially when they reach the tipping point and act as a team. It seems the more a leader attempts to control people the more he/she erodes his/her own. Leadership is indeed fragile and engagement, of either employees or citizens, is a critical element for that leadership. Employee engagement in organizations (or communities) is a measure of the quality of leadership.

Employees can be disengaged and damage a business by just barely doing the minimum work expected. Countries can be damaged by citizens revolting against a leader when a tipping point is reached. Employees can either quit then leave or they can quit and stay by working and stay. Citizens have more difficulty leaving a country and so they stay until a tipping point of frustration is reached. Then they protest.

There are three things a leader can do to ensure they manage employee engagement and ensure leadership quality.

Make trust and engagement an ongoing strategic initiative

I often ask the leaders in new clients about their written strategic initiatives. Not once have they ever articulated an initiative for employee engagement. The initiatives always seem to revolve around increasing revenue, profit, customer service, quality etc. All of these are fine but none of them can be optimally achieved without a high level of employee engagement. In fact, ask yourself, which comes first, high revenue growth or employee engagement? Does soaring profits come before employee engagement? What about customer loyalty? I doubt it. Make employee engagement a strategy and make it known.

Measure engagement frequently and include emotionally intelligent observations

Leaders who are disengaged form people create disengagement. Those who are either not at all interested or who are unable to sense trouble will eventually find themselves in trouble.

Make an effort to connect with people frequently and sincerely even if you have to do it virtually. Make an effort. Let them know you are thinking about them. Let them know you understand them.

If you have a large organization (or even a large country) obviously you can’t connect personally with everyone on a frequent basis. What you can do is find those who are the natural leaders and well-connected and make an effort to speak to them. Identify connectors in your organization. Connectors are those people who are well connected with their networks and who are credible with those networks. Communicate with them frequently.

Continuously improve trust with people

There are four key elements of trust. Leaders can, and must, make an effort to continuously improve these if they are to protect the quality of their leadership. Employees (or citizens) need to know the leader has integrity. Demonstrating integrity takes consistent effort. This means make agreements and keep them. Work hard. Admit when you make a mistake. Apologize for any missteps or mistakes. Don’t blame others for mistakes. Take responsibility for solving problems and give away credit once they are solved. People respect and remain loyal to leaders who have integrity.

Look for ways to show concern for people around you. If others hear how you have personally showed concern for some they will assume you also care about them personally as well.

Get things done. Work hard to accomplish goals. Lay out steps to accomplish tasks and projects, make those projects public and then work hard to accomplish them. Show people you are accomplished and competent.

Finally, Set objectives that people can relate to. Set objectives, communicate them, and persuade others about their importance. Let them know the benefits they can achieve when the objectives are reached. Let them know how their hard work toward the objectives will benefit not just themselves but also others. Make the objectives big, bold, and aligned with the best interests of everyone involved. Let people know that your work with benefit everyone and their accomplishment will be a win-win for all.

Leaders must protect and nurture the quality of their leadership. Engagement and leadership are fragile living things. They must be nurtured and protected consistently. People can either support or remove leaders from office.

Employee Engagement – What NOT to Do

Engaging employees is a complex process and it never ends. Going back to basics is always good advice when things are not working well. When engagement is not going well it is useful to think about the following basic elements: clarifying the vision, the mission, the strategy and the values. Any lack of clarity or any mistakes by management in these areas will show up as a lack of engagement “down the road” in employee attitude, behaviors, and/or performance.

My daughter attends a State University. I encouraged her to apply to be a Community Counselor or Resident Assistant. This position is the student leadership contact within each dormitory. I felt it would give her great leadership experience plus it would help us with tuition (Counselors receive free room and board). My daughter reluctantly agreed to apply.

This semester she found out more information. In order to get an interview she needed to accept a job working the front desk in a dormitory. On the surface that sounded fine except the dormitory was across campus (not her dorm) and it was third shift. Yikes. Although it was only 12 hours per week she was being asked to “survive by fire” to earn her right to get an interview and to eventually be accepted as a Counselor. She needed to walk (or drive) across campus in the middle of the night.

She received a call for her interview after a few weeks of work. I asked her if she was excited. She said no. She told me the work at the desk was bad enough but the worst part was the way she was treated when new problems arose and she needed to ask questions of management. They either ignored her requests for information or they were unavailable when she needed them. She decided to drop out of the program. She said she could handle the rough work but she couldn’t handle the lack of responsibility by management. It wasn’t just one manager; it was all of them who behaved this way.

I am doing my best to remain objective in this situation but I know I can’t because she is my daughter. Therefore it’s easy in this case to be upset with the quality of leadership and management of the Counselor process. That is certainly an issue but my guess is the dysfunction goes much deeper. I am guessing it goes all the way to the strategy of the State University Counselor program. I believe they have consciously decided to set up a “Survivor Show” type of process to weed out those students who want to, and think they can, operate in chaos. It might be an “unconscious” choice of strategy but, to the employee, the result and affects are the same, i.e. poor attitude, turnover, or poor performance.

A University dormitory is a chaotic place to be. I remember my college dorm experiences and they certainly were chaotic at times. Between the drinking, loud music, and worse, the Counselor has to be prepared for anything. It is highly likely the University has chosen to create a chaotic environment in the Counselor training process to simulate the chaos that will occur during the job. Ignoring questions or not knowing answers to questions is not a very good training process. It is more like a trial by fire and my daughter decided she didn’t need that abuse.

Are you seeing turnover, poor attitude and poor behavior by your employees? Perhaps your hiring and training process strategy needs to be clarified and improved. A poor, or non-existent, strategy is certainly one way to dis-engage employees. The effects are subtle. They show up down-stream with wasteful and costly behaviors. It’s too easy to blame the managers and the employees for their poor behavior but that won’t help you address your root causes. That won’t help you change your strategy. Blaming is “What NOT to do”. Going back to basics first when you encounter these symptoms is “What to DO.”

Is Bad Behavior In The System or in the Person?

We have two dogs and a cat in our family. The dogs are always hungry and if we leave anything on the floor or drop anything by accident they will devour it. They are normal.


When we first got them we already had our cat and we were used to leaving the cat food on the floor. Once the dogs arrived that proved a big mistake. Any leftover cat food was devoured when we weren’t watching.

When I fed the cat I had to watch carefully and scold the dogs if they attempted to eat her food once the cat was finished. It was a waste of my time and I was often annoyed because the dogs just didn’t seem to learn the command, “NO CAT FOOD FOR YOU!”

It finally dawned on me that I could feed the cat on top of the washer in the laundry room. She could easily jump up and I could leave it out in case she wanted to finish later. It was out of reach of the dogs. I realized the cat food on the floor created an environment that encouraged poor behavior. It’s the very nature of a dog to eat food available. By changing the system of feeding the cat the bad behavior stopped. I could trust the dogs again. I stopped yelling at them. My relationship with them improved. They trusted me more. They didn’t shirk away whenever I came into the room.

As leaders we can often set people up for failure and unknowingly create opportunities for bad behavior. Our decisions and policies can create an environment that increases the probability of poor behavior and then act surprised and even punish the employee when they behave poorly. Performance appraisals and Pay for Performance are two examples of policies and practices that often unwittingly create an environment of dysfunction.

Performance Appraisals

Performance appraisals damage employee engagement. They can often create fear and anxiety in both managers and employees and therefore naturally encourage bad behaviors. Employees feel anxiety because of the probability of being criticized. The typical appraisal requires the manager assign a rating or grade to the employee. The thought that the grade may be lower than expected, or less than deserved, creates anxiety. Managers also feel the anxiety When they need to grade the employee either an “average performer”, or a “below average performer” they often avoid that to prevent conflict. They shirk their responsibility by either delaying the meeting or avoiding it al together.

An environment of anxiety can encourage this bad behavior. Managers stop doing their jobs and employees hide mistakes or manipulate the achievement of goals to assure a higher rating.

Pay for Performance

Pay-for-performance is coercion and coercion damages employee engagement. Pay-for-performance attempts control behavior and sends subtle message, “We don’t trust you to do the right thing and we don’t think you will work hard unless you have a reward.”

Studies by Deci and Ryan have shown how typical pay-for-performance schemes can backfire. The purpose of offering a reward for certain behaviors or outcomes is to create motivation. According to numerous studies over the past 50 years the opposite occurs. Those coerced with incentives end up less interested in the activity once the reward is removed. They stop performing when no one is looking and when no reward is offered.

Rewards can also encourage cheating. Employees who know their pay is determined by goal achievement can be tempted to manipulate the results. A recent study by the New York Regents exam board is a good example. Teachers who are evaluated based on the number of students who pass the Regents exams manipulated the scores to allow those students missing the passing grade by a point or two to pass anyway. The statistics showed an enormous bulge of scores right on the passing line which could not be explained by normal statistical variation.

Just as I continued to yell at the dogs for their poor behaviors, leaders cling to policies that create dysfunction and they blame the employees for the poor behaviors. Isn’t it time we “put the food up on the washer” and stop these dysfunctions? Wouldn’t it save us time as leaders? Wouldn’t it improve our relationships and the performance of the organization? Wouldn’t new processes that avoid these dysfunctions improve employee engagement?

What Type of Leader/Manager Are You? – Train-Wreck or Systems?

I recently read a story about large multi-location national organization and an improvement project facilitated by a well know consulting firm. A recent safety accident had taken the life of a production worker. This triggered the intensive and comprehensive initiative.

The consultant did due diligence and found that the standards of work were not being followed. In addition there was no pay-for-performance reward system in place nor was the performance appraisal process being followed consistently. They immediately recommended that managers be trained to develop specific safety goals and hold their people accountable to those goals by conducting frequent review of their work. They reduced the number of people each manager had reporting to them in order to make them easier to manage.

The supervisors under each manager were also trained to hold their people accountable to the specific goals. To reinforce this structure and motivate the workers, the consulting firm designed a “pay-for-performance” policy that rewarded workers (including managers) only if they achieved their assigned goals, and took additional action with those who didn’t. Furthermore, the performance appraisal process was simplified and mandated. The meetings were to be held every 6 months instead of every 12months. This policy was added to the performance goals for each manager and supervisor.

What struck me was the date on this report was October 1841. Months earlier two Western Railroad passenger trains had collided between Worchester, Massachusetts and Albany, New York, killing a conductor and a passenger and injuring seventeen passengers. This story was recanted in Peter Scholtes’ book, The Leader’s Handbook. The consultant was the Prussian Army. This means our management model has not changed for at least 170 years.

Train-Wreck Managers

Train-wreck managers look for someone to blame. They assume the root causes of problems are to be found in the actions and decisions made by people. This manager assumes improvement in the individual behaviors alone will reduce the errors. Train-wreck management is a very narrow and unsophisticated view of the world. These managers ignore two very important ideas. First, they ignore the idea that there are performance factors (possibly unseen or unknowable) outside an individual’s control. Secondly, they ignore the concept of variation. They view the world in black and white terms. Either a mistake is made by the individual or it isn’t. Unfortunately, the world tends to be “gray” (because of variation) not “black and white.” There is variation in everything. Let’s take a baseball example. Everyone knows baseball.

Why is second base the position that has the most errors in baseball? Do baseball coaches always put the worst player in the second base position? If we just improve the skills of the second baseman will the performance of the team improve? Would the team win more games? I doubt it. That field position is in the middle of the most action. Naturally, the more the ball is handled during a play the higher the probability for mistakes and variation.

Train-wreck managers look for those who caused the errors and bring the mistakes to their attention with “feedback?” Train-wreck baseball coaches would spend the most time with second basemen. Train-wreck managers also wreck employee engagement.

Systems Managers

Systems managers appreciate the concept of systems. They recognize and appreciate the interrelationships between the parts in a system. System managers acknowledge that performance of an individual will be influenced by the interaction between the system and the individual. A system is a series of interdependent processes working to achieve an aim. A baseball team is a system. Each individual is interdependent upon the other. The pitcher who tires toward the end of a game might throw with less power. The hitter then hits the ball more accurately and past the 2nd baseman who dives for the ball, touches it and makes an error.

Systems managers look for opportunities to synergize and brainstorm the real root causes of problems. Perhaps sending a relief pitcher in sooner would solve this problem. This acknowledges that the interaction between the pitcher, hitter, and second baseman all combine into a complex process. Systems are complex and require special thinking and special tools for study. Systems managers improve employee engagement. Train-wreck thinking requires a great deal of work but very little thinking at all.

Evaluating individuals alone and attempting to control individual behaviors is an incomplete and ineffective strategy for performance improvement. Train-wreck managers cause more damage than the train-wreck they attempt to fix. Their approach creates more variation and less effective solutions. What type of manager are you?

“On October 5, 1841, two Western Railroad passenger trains collided somewhere between Worchester, Massachusetts and Albany, New York, killing a conductor and a passenger and injuring seventeen passengers. That disaster marked the beginning of a new management era."[

Note the thinking here: problems are caused by people who don't do their job well, so finding someone to blame is the first step to correcting problems. Scholtes notes: "The era of management that began in the mid-1800s can be characterized as "management by results"....Since managers could no longer do the work themselves or direct others in the doing of the work, managers exercised their authority by holding people accountable for results....In the 1950s, management by results reached its epitome in MBO (Management By Objectives) and performance appraisal, the Harvardization of train-wreck management."[

Employee Engagement is Not About Nice, It’s About Performance

In a recent presentation to a potential client who is interested in my new performance appraisal process, a senior manager expressed his concerns, “Programs like yours that eliminate the grading of employees and replace it with a search for root causes of poor performance (in the process) give employees excuses not to perform. They are too ‘airy-fairy’ or ‘touchy feely’ for me. We need something that will increase performance.”

This statement proves there is often a clear dis-connect in the minds of many executives about employee engagement and performance. There is a strongly held belief that employees really can’t be trusted to perform (or to be engaged) without some kind of extrinsic incentives and or threats of punishments. In the past fifty years research has shown to support the belief that employees can be trusted. Furthermore, when they are, performance increases significantly. Furthermore, removal of the typical threats and bribes (in the form of pay-for-performance and performance appraisals) also increases engagement and performance. Many leaders still ignore this research remaining in denial.

Let me put the research aside for now and just focus on three principles and ask you to think about these and their impact.

This is the Knowledge Economy:

First, we are moving into a knowledge economy which rewards organizations that can learn the fastest.

Respect Creates Innovation:

Second, having an environment of complete respect for employees creates innovation. Respect is not about being “touchy feely.”

Systems Thinking Accelerates Learning:

Third, creating a culture of systems thinking is about accelerating learning. It’s not about providing excuses for poor behavior or poor performance. It’s sophisticated and not at all touchy feely.

The Knowledge Economy

Our new knowledge economy is in full acceleration yet our policies are stuck in the “middle ages.” Talk to anyone with a 2 or 3 year old and ask what it is like to be around the toddler for any length of time. It’s exhausting. Why? Because 2 year olds can’t stop moving and exploring. One doesn’t need to incentivize a 2 year old to explore the world. Instead, you have to watch out he doesn’t hurt himself exploring how it works and how he/she can dismantle it while he/she plays. Yet speak to that same toddler twelve years later when a freshman in high school. When their teacher presents a ne concept in class their first question is, “Will that be on the midterm?” We are creating environments that destroy the natural tendency for knowledge accumulation while at the same time we need that natural curiosity more than ever before to remain globally competitive as a society.

According to research by the major HR consulting firms, the number one reason given by employees in exit interviews for leaving a company is the poor relationship with the supervisor. This tells me there is a lack of respect which is most often demonstrated by a lack of listening. Estimates of turnover costs range from 1-1/2 to 2 times annual salary. This cost is impossible to calculate because there are so many factors that contribute to this cost including recruitment, training, and knowledge. Knowledge walks out the door when people leave. There is no line item on the P&L statement for “Loss of Knowledge.”

Respect = Innovation

In every major religion there is a statement similar to the “Golden Rule” i.e. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Just teaching and supporting this statement at the manager level can save many thousands or more. Respect is about performance not about being “airy-fairy and touchy feely.”

Systems Thinking

Finally, systems-thinking is about prevention of problems and root cause analysis to prevent waste. It’s not about providing excuses. Providing employees with opportunities to collect their own performance data, analyze it, and make small experimental changes using a learning model of Plan-Do-Study-Act is admitting the system within which employees work is complex and requires problem solving skills to avoid waste. Trying to hold people accountable for specific mistakes only encourages the hiding of the truth and a perpetual continuation of the problems.

Acknowledging the complexity of the workplace is not providing excuses for employees who make mistakes. Instead it enrolls those employees to be managers of their own destiny and explore, like they did when they were 2 years old, how to solve their own problems.

It’s time we started trusting employees. It’s time now to start treating them with the utmost respect and allowing them autonomy to explore solutions to their complex performance issues. Threats and bribes have not worked and they never will over the long-term. If we continue to use them we will fall further behind in the race to accumulate knowledge and to therefore perform in the global competitive marketplace.

Stop The Madness – Stop The Typical Performance Appraisal – It’s Obsolete

Ah … the annual employee performance appraisal. It’s a popular tool of many business owners (85-90% of all organizations use them) although it’s also one of the most frustrating and ineffective tools. As a matter of fact (in its current form), I am working hard to make sure it becomes obsolete.


Why the current Performance Appraisal doesn’t work:


Other than a firing, the performance appraisal meeting is the most disliked task of managers today. They do more to damage employee engagement than any other policy or procedure. Why is the current performance appraisal tool so frustrating and ineffective?

Here are just four reasons to think about.

They are biased and most often arbitrary

They are based primarily on the opinion of the manager or supervisor and this means the manager must be omnipotent and we all know they are not. This can damage the relationships and interactions between the supervisor and the employee and improving the quality of interactions between employees is more important to improve performance than using performance appraisals to improve the quality of the employees.

Appraisals focus on the person not the system

They blame the person and ignore the influence by the process (or system or environment) on that person. While the traditional appraisal tries to improve the quality of the individual parts (employees), the systems approach tries to improve the quality of interaction between all parts therefore making the team better as a whole. This damages employee engagement.

They damage innovation

The very commodity every organization needs to remain competitive is damaged by the typical appraisal. Employees are blamed for problems because they are rated based on events or their behavior in the system. The more dysfunctional the system the more employees behave dysfunctional. This blame creates anxiety. Anxiety stops creative problem solving and innovation. The work by Daniel Goleman on Emotional Intelligence has helped us to understand that an environment of anxiety is a barrier to innovation. The chemical necessary for problem solving are not available to the anxious. This damages employee engagement. Didn’t you Mom always tell you, “Don’t make decisions when you are upset?”

They create unintended negative consequences

Employees looking for a good rating in their performance appraisal may hide mistakes to prevent a lower rating. They might also withhold information from coworkers to compete for bonus money. This damages employee engagement.

Our economy is now is more “brain based” rather than “labor based”. While few managers would dispute that we are living in “the Information Age,” many companies are still employing management tools developed during the evolution of the Industrial Revolution; the era when machine driven economies were the rule.

The very complexity of the new competitive world requires continuous information exchange among its units; the expansion of competition into a global economy has created the need to understand and adapt more quickly to trends and techniques which may take place half a world away.

Successful managers have adopted many different kinds of technology to stay on top of the enormous volume of information they must assimilate, and increasingly seek more efficient ways to access timely, complete and accurate data. Without the latest technology, your competitive advantage will suffer, and this applies to the management of people as it does to every other aspect of business.

Creating a highly effective organization that can adapt and compete requires that we capture and utilize the motivation and engagement of all employees. To do this, we must be on the cutting edge of “management and leadership of people” technology – and to be at least as conversant with those tools as we are with our customer databases. We must capture every mind and heart just to stay competitive. We must “up-grade” our leadership tools just we would up-grade our software for a new computer. The old software does not work well (or even at all) on a new computer. The same is true with our “leadership software”.

Our typical performance appraisal software is obsolete. Replace it. If you want to know how you can access more information HERE or HERE. Otherwise, just stop the madness and you will be better off.