Dispassionate engagement

"How I wish you were drunk too

And your sensibility subdued

We would have shared then

What we otherwise keep subdued"

I have always believed that it is extremely important to be engaged to one's work in order to be effective in generating high outcome. And I have always believed that true engagement comes from one's belief that one can make a difference in a certain area that one is passionate about. And I have personally almost always been engaged to my work so far in my career, and I consider myself as a good example of an engaged worker.

Over the last couple of years, I have had the opportunity of delving into the theoretical aspects of employee engagement in line with the increased engagement consciousness in my organization. And I have had the opportunity of experimenting with employee engagement in my own limited span of control. And in the process, I have been through an exciting journey of self-discovery, leveraging the art of giving and taking feedback, a formal 360 degree feedback process, valuable mentorship from seniors, and the powerful ISABS basic lab on human process, that have led to unraveling of blind spots and shrinkage of the unknown space in my Johari window.
 

In contrast to my own self-understanding and self-benchmark of engagement, my tryst with engagement of others, revealed to me contrary value systems. This process has been rewarding in the sense that it has helped me first unlearn few of my old notions, then learn new ones & experiment with them, and in the end, experience the validity of few of my earlier held notions that I had painstakingly unlearned, and fallacy of few new ones that I had painstakingly learned, and in the end I am left with a hybrid of the good notions of my old value system and the good notions of the new value system, in summary, the best of both worlds.

My old value system was characterized by task orientation, high professionalism, perfectionism, abstractness of communication, and a sense of achievement in making a difference to the system. The new value system is characterized by emotional relationships, tolerance of imperfection, discreetness and directness of communication, and a sense of achievement in appeasing people. I observed that neither was fully functional when practiced in isolation. So I decided to blend the two and find the middle path (the madhyam maarg). This madhyam maarg has worked pretty well for me. And in the process of this experimentation, I also ended up learning a few valuable lessons on my own. I would like to put forth these lessons as conclusions of my experiments:

First conclusion: Engagement is proportional to IQ of the employee. Higher the IQ, higher the chance of a person appreciating feedback, acting on feedback, appreciating organizational goals, the link his/her job objectives has with organizational goals, and the importance of outcome oriented efforts. The marginal utility of a manager's efforts towards team engagement diminishes with diminishing employee IQ. It is easier and more efficient to keep a smart employee engaged, than a dumb one.

Second conclusion: Engagement survey is to be taken with a pinch of salt. The absolute value of the engagement ratings are useless particularly in smaller teams where the law of averages does not get a chance to play its due role. Reasons being, the correlation with IQ explained above, and the effect of recent events on the survey score, which is a known disadvantage of any survey for that matter. However, the trend of the survey score over time is a good indicator of the overall direction of the engagement - improving, status quo or diminishing.

Third conclusion: I call this reciprocation effect. Performance appraisal influences engagement scores. People you rate high in appraisal tend to rate you high in engagement surveys. People you rate low in appraisal tend to rate you low in engagement surveys. This phenomenon is linked to the first and second phenomena. Higher IQ usually tend towards higher performance because they are generally more capable, and they use manager's feedback to keep improving their performance. And in the process, there is a reinforcement of mutual relationship and trust between the manager and the employee, thus running into a positive "vicious" circle. The exact reverse phenomenon is equally true. In fact, low performers (usually lower IQ) have a tendency to overestimate their contribution versus the reality, and when the manager shows them the mirror, they are taken aback.

Fourth conclusion: Respect of all, but appeasement of none, is the best policy. As humans, everyone is equal, but when it comes to business results, everyone is not equal. This is a reality. So as humans, a manager must be equally available and approachable to all employees, but as business leaders, they must differentiate strongly, particularly in rewards and recognition. This motivates performers, and positively reinforces their engagement. Of course it will ruffle a few feathers (the underperformers), and make them more and more disengaged particularly if they fail to see the reason despite the manager's best efforts. The challenge here is when the economic conditions are not good, and the manager has to operate within constraints e.g. no hiring even against attrition, the manager cannot take risk of excessive differentiation, as low performers could quit, and in absence of hiring approvals, even whatever little the underdogs are contributing, gets lost. And the compromise done by a manager in such conditions tends towards appeasement, which demotivates performers, thus bringing down overall engagement levels.

Fifth conclusion: Manager is also an employee, and his/her engagement also matters, perhaps it matters even more than that of the team. In the process of engaging his/her team if the manager gets extra consumed and disengaged, nothing can be more unfortunate. The first and foremost duty of a manager is to look after his/her own engagement, Because that is the foundation. If this foundation is weak, the rest of the structure is meaningless. Managers must take care not to overstretch themselves in the name of team engagement. Just do a tad lesser than ideal, that’s sufficient.

I wish to end this with a reflection. I have never had a boss asking me how I felt, or what I aspire for. But I do regularly ask my team what they feel and what they aspire for. Because I believe that it is one of the primary roles of the manager to make his/her employees feel a sense of achievement in their jobs.

Oh the times they are a changing ...