Combining Purpose with Quality Relationships: Drive Employee Engagement
Reading time: 6 mins
Purpose and quality of interpersonal engagement are two factors that can significantly impact employee engagement, and unsurprisingly, when employee engagement is strong, collaboration and high performance are natural outcomes.
According to Rob Cross Amy Edmondson Wendy Murphy from MIT Sloan, there are three essential steps to create productive collaboration. The first one is building safety and trust, which entails creating a space where employees can share their honest thoughts and feedback without feeling judged. Trust is essential because it provides psychological safety to participate in discussions and share their ideas. You build trust by showing interest to get to know the other. There are three kinds of trust-based factors needed for effective interpersonal collaboration:
• Benevolence-based is the belief in the goodwill of employees
• Integrity based; belief that employees are honest and consistent with their ideas and actions.
• Competence-based; believing in the expertise of your employees
To build the first two types of trust, leaders need to 'talk the walk' (in addition to 'walking the talk') – continuously communicate with their employees what they want to achieve and the exciting journey they are embarking on. One-on-one time is an excellent opportunity to increase trust. Competence-based trust can increase when leaders are prepared to accept that they don't always have the answers and feel comfortable to involve employees for information and advice. Doing that, you promote feelings of appreciation among employees regarding their competency.
With these three critical pieces in place, employees would be in the right mindset to embrace the second factor - promoting a sense of collective purpose. Promoting purpose entails a sense of having a mission that is greater than them, making an impact on a large group of people makes a significant difference. Leaders could, for example, do the following to promote purpose:
• Emphasise the meaning of employees' work activities to the firm and outside.
• Help employees to see the value of their activities in the bigger picture and make them feel part of something meaningful.
Promoting purpose is a complicated thing to do, and certainly does not happen overnight. It is a process that starts after establishing trust.
Simon Sinek shares his thoughts about leaders who aspire their employees and are more successful than other leaders. Aspire employees by asking the 'why' question; what is your purpose, look at the bigger picture, and what is the journey's value? Employees work harder and are more innovative when they work on something they believe in rather than for the paycheck.
Lastly, energising people; motivating people and bringing out the best of them. Generating energy is crucial to high-quality connections and collaborations. Take time to talk to colleagues and recognise when they are having a difficult time.
Energisers bring value to the organisation by contributing to exceptional performance. They make people feel valued and part of something bigger than themselves. MIT Sloan Management Review research found that successful energisers considered people as individuals, provided care, attention, and made effective use of humour.
[Article migrated from dcHR.tech]