Indian HR

What Engagement Means for Learning Leaders

by Daniel Margolis | Chief Learning Officer

 

Employee engagement is often thought of as more of a talent management issue than a learning and development one, a variable ultimately facilitating productivity and retention. But according to Gershon Mader, who, with co-authors Josh Leibner and Alan Weiss, wrote the book The Power of Strategic Commitment: Achieving Extraordinary Results Through Total Alignment and Engagement, engagement has a crucial takeaway for organizational learning and development, as it allows learning programs to thrive via a environment where innovation is encouraged and workforce buy-in is more total.

 

To develop this sort of environment, Mader stressed the importance of not just bringing about an open organizational culture but also tearing down hierarchical divisions that may exist in companies.

 

"Making sure that you're creating an environment that does cultivate innovative thinking, where people do feel that no matter where they are in the organization chart - the hierarchy of things - that if they've got some brilliant thoughts and ideas they are able to voice them, be considered, and even influence things through them, that becomes even more critical in a learning organization where the ability to think freely and innovatively is quite often key to success and the quality of programs," Mader said.

 

"There is a lot of frustration as you go further down in an organization," he said. "There is a frustration among the lower ranks that their value is based on their rank and that [for] someone who is on a lower level but has some really brilliant ideas, it's more difficult to be heard, to make a difference, to contribute. And when people are in that kind of environment, after a while, they quite quickly become resigned about all that stuff and they go into [a mode of] going through the motions - doing the minimum that's required - and it definitely has an effect of lower-quality learning programs."

 

Mader also stressed the importance of leading by doing with respect to engagement. "Any learning organization needs to be a demonstration of whatever it's teaching," he said. "And often there's a dissonance there. Organizations are widely criticized [for] not doing some of the stuff that they are preaching down to organizations, and therefore they lose their credibility and ability to make a difference."

 

Mader, Leibner and Weiss have developed the following employee engagement dos and don'ts:

 

Do:

 

a) Actively ask for input from all departments and levels.

b) Promote and incorporate others' ideas.

c) Ask your staff what they would start, stop or continue doing in your position.

d) Routinely balance out your meetings by discussing both strategic and tactical issues.

 

Mader spoke to the learning benefits of this kind of inclusiveness. "The products and the services that learning organizations produce need to make a difference with different customer bases," Mader said. "The more the organization really engages its stakeholders and customers upfront to make sure that what they're designing and doing is really in sync with the needs, priorities and commitments of other departments, the more powerful what they're creating will be."

 

Don't:

 

a) Make strategic development an exclusive club limited to the higher-ups.

b) Stifle strategic thinking by not being open to and acting on others' feedback.

c) Try to maintain control by micromanaging.

d) Solely focus on an encourage tactical thinking in meetings.

 

According to Mader, such missteps mean a great deal of missed opportunities. "A lot of experience, expertise [and] ideas don't get invited to these conversations, even though [the employees] and their superiors know that that's probably a wise thing to do," he said. "It produces resentment [and] frustration [and] goes into people going through the motions, getting more in a mode of compliance."

 

This, Mader cautioned, is the ultimate result of neglecting employee engagement: people mentally "checking out."

 

"Then you've got highly skilled, knowledgeable and passionate people who don't bring their heart to the game; they don't bring the passion," he said. "They'll sit in meetings and pick their battles, not bring up innovative thoughts, definitely not stuff that they would think may not be accepted, would be outside the box or outside of the common way of thinking - outside the way they access or evaluate what their boss or boss' boss likes or doesn't like. So there will be no productive, constructive conflict in the organization, creative conflict. It'll be more like a yes-man kind of mentality, where people follow [and] say the right things, what they know will be accepted. In essence, it weakens the organization."

 

 

[About the Author: Daniel Margolis is a managing editor for Chief Learning Officer magazine.]