Unit 3 - Three challenges: Leader energy; Role performance;

Challenge 1: leadership energy

We find that despite the exhortations, in practice many managers are often resistant to employee engagement programs. This can be for two underlying reasons – first, some inherent uncertainty about the implications for the leader role and second, due to the perceived additional work required by the leader. It can be argued from afar that engagement would in fact lighten the leader’s role, but the perception is real and is a barrier to be overcome. We have found that those leaders who feel overburdened tend to judge that an ‘engagement’ programme will be an added cost to them personally. Our research also suggests that unless these interpretations are faced at the outset, it is difficult to embed and sustain a major engagement initiative in any organization.

Leaders are reporting their energy levels are at a rate that is lower than where they are most productive. These leaders say they have no time to get the most critical elements of their core work jobs done, and this is the key factor they report as negatively affecting their personal energy levels at work. Given that engagement implies activity ‘above and beyond’ (a common expression used for engagement), the problem is that these leaders are working at suboptimal energy levels and cannot even engage themselves properly because they are too busy just trying to cope with their personal workloads; still less do they feel that they have time or inclination to engage others.

If leader energy is falling and/or suboptimal, the overall outcome is negative for bottom-line productivity and firm performance because leader energy predicts employee energy, and high energy cultures predict organizational outcomes (stock price growth, survival).

The measurement process uses a 0 to 10 scale, where 0 = no energy, 8 = high energy, and 10 = too much energy.2 Thus, energy is an optimization versus a maximization scale. A point can be reached where people are exerting so much energy they cannot find time to replenish themselves fast enough. An employee can have too much stimulus at work, and this can result in burnout. However, the definition of ‘too much’ differs from person to person, and it is important when measuring energy to ask more than one question. The measurement process used in the above-mentioned studies produces a variety of scores: energy overall, most productive energy level, and the gap between where one is most productive and where one is today.

 Challenge 2: role-based performance to define engagement

Five different categories of work behaviour can be defined via the roles that employers set up at work and reward within organizations. Short descriptions of each and an overall model follow:

1.            Core job holder role (what is in the job description);

2.            Entrepreneur or innovator role (improving process, coming up with new ideas, participating in others’ innovations);

3.            Team member role (participating in teams, working with others in different jobs);

4.            Career role (learning, engaging in activities to improve your skills and knowledge);

5.            Organizational member role (citizenship role or doing things that are good for the company).

(Welbourne et al. 1998)

When the role-based approach to work is combined with a resource-based view of the firm, a link between role-based behaviour and firm performance can be derived. The resource-based view of the firm states that firms ‘win’ when they create long-term competitive advantage from resources that are valuable, rare, inimitable, and for which substitutes do not exist (Barney 1991,1995).

However, it is what people are doing at work specifically (or what roles they are engaged in) that drives results. If the role-based model of performance is applied, long-term competitive advantage does not come with people simply doing their core jobs. If employees are only doing core jobs (for which job descriptions are easily available), the competition can hire people, train them to do those same jobs, and do this in a location where wages and other costs are much lower.

But, if employees engage in behaviours above and beyond the core job ,then true competitive advantage from people materializes. When employees have firm-specific knowledge and use that information to develop new ideas, to improve the organization, to assist new team members, and to continue to escalate their careers, then the synergy that comes from all of these above and beyond behaviours starts to drive long-term competitive advantage, which then affects firm performance.

It makes sense that ‘emotional commitment’, ‘above and beyond’ behaviours, or ‘discretionary’ efforts (all terms found in the work on employee engagement) are desirable. A clear understanding of what these words mean is essential for anyone who expects to improve engagement and improve performance through their employees’ efforts. Also, the link between extra role (entrepreneur, team, career, and organizational member) and core-job role performance needs to be clearly understood because if employees cannot find enough time to do the core job role, then the odds on engaging in any non-core roles are very low.

Thus, the lesson learned from all of this discussion of energy and research is that engagement programmes need to start at the top. Start with leader energy and leader role-based performance. Leaders themselves need to have time to go ‘above and beyond’ so that they exemplify what employee engagement can be by being engaged leaders. Only when leaders have the time they need will they be able to help the managers and employees who report to them reach their own optimal energy levels, balance their work in core and non-core job roles and engage in the behaviours that will drive the organization’s strategy.