Employee Engagement by Patrick Lencioni

[0:00]Today we're talking about employee engagement, and I have a book called The Truth About Employee Engagement. But it was originally titled The Three Signs of a Miserable Job. Uh, we we had to change the title because nobody could take the book to work cause their manager would say, hey, what's going on here? The point of the matter is this, there are three very simple things. They're free that every manager, any manager, and every organization should be giving their employees, so that they feel more engaged and fulfilled at work. Their productivity goes up, which is good for the employee, good for the organization, good for customers. So many organizations don't do this, and I think it's because they just kind of forget, it almost seems too obvious. So let's talk about the three signs of a miserable job so that we can overcome them and avoid them. Okay, the first one, which is so important in any employee's life is anonymity. That's something we want to avoid. When an employee goes to work and feels anonymous, they're not going to love their work. They want to be known, it's a God-given desire we have to be known, to be seen, to be understood. And that means we want our manager to know who we are, what we're doing in our lives, personally and professionally, what our struggles are. When a manager knows you, and I think all of us can look back at our careers and think about a manager who took an interest in you, or if something was going on and they said, hey, how's your, how's your mom or dad doing? They were in the hospital. How are your kids doing? Or how's that project you were working on at home doing? It changes our sense of who we are and what we want to contribute at work. And so many leaders forget to do this, they know it's important, but then they think, I don't want to probe, or probably it doesn't matter to them. It does matter to them at every level. And I don't care if you're the executive vice president of a large corporation, or a line employee who's just out of high school or college, we all want to be known. And when leaders don't take the time to know the people that work for them, they're taking money out of their pockets and throwing it into the fire, because it's so valuable, but if we don't use it, we lose it. So anonymity is a is a job killer. So let's all make sure our employees don't feel anonymous. The second one that every employee wants to know is they want to avoid what we call irrelevance. Okay? Every employee wants to know that what they do matters to someone in some way. And when an employee feels irrelevant, when they feel like if I didn't do this job or if I didn't show up to work, nobody would care. Nobody's life would be any better if I didn't show up, or nobody's life would be any worse if I didn't show up, whether I do this or not, it doesn't matter. You know, this is how we discovered this model. Uh Karen and I and one of my colleagues and friends, we were actually traveling one day and we were in an airport. And we were at the uh at a fast food restaurant getting some food and the people there seemed miserable. Now, I've always been passionate about this because my dad used to come home when I was a kid frustrated at work. He was really good at what he did, but every day he would come home a little frustrated by what he called management. And I thought that's a tragedy, I loved my dad, God rest his soul, and I didn't want to ever have a job where I felt miserable. And I didn't understand it at the time, but there we were at the airport and we saw these miserable people working at a fast food stand. And I said to Karen, what a tragedy that they feel so unhappy about being at work. And then this young guy comes to work and he shows up, we were watching them and he seemed so excited. And yet the people at the at the fast food place were not excited to see him. I mean, he was like, how's it going everybody and he would greet the customers really well, and then the other people would be like, put the food over there, it doesn't matter and I thought they're going to destroy this kid's enthusiasm in days. And Karen and I said, what would it take for him to like his job? It's a fast food job in an airport and we said, you know something? I bet he doesn't think and these other people don't think that what they do matters. And if a manager could just say, your job is relevant, because these people in this airport, they're stressed out. They're unhappy, they're away from home, security is difficult. Your job is to introduce a ray of sunshine, a little bit of light to someone in an otherwise stressful world. That alone would give him purpose. His job would be to go there every day and try to make people happier in a place where they're generally sad. That's what relevance does. And when employees feel that their work is irrelevant, they're not going to love their work. So they have to be known, they have to feel like their job is relevant. The last thing is, all employees need to know that they're not victims of what I call immeasurement. Immeasurement is not actually a word. We kind of invented it. Immeasurement is this, there's no way for me to know if I'm doing a good job or not. And when I say measurement, I don't mean metrics. Sometimes there's a metric, but everybody should be able to say at the end of the day or at the end of the week or at the end of the month in the job they're doing, I had a good period. I know that I did a good job, I have evidence of that. Sometimes it's behavioral, sometimes it's asking your customers, sometimes it's a manager noticing specific things. But every employee wants to know, am I doing a good job? And if there's no objective way to measure that, not a metric, but some observable way to measure that, a person has to be dependent upon the opinion, or worse yet, the mood of their manager. Everyone needs to know, I know I did a good job and I have the evidence right here and I can feel good about that and tell others, hey look, I'm I'm succeeding at this. These are the three things that we need to provide our employees. We have to avoid them feeling anonymous, irrelevant, and having no sense of measurement. And all this takes is to sit down with employees and talk to them. Find out about what's going on in their lives and if you've not done that until this point, it's okay. Say to them, I I'm embarrassed that I haven't known more about you. I'd like to know more what's going on and then talk to them about that. Ask them, how do you think you make other people's lives better? And then remind them when you can when you see them doing that, catch them adding to somebody else's world or their life. And finally, work with them to come up with some way that they can better understand if they're succeeding or not. If you do these things and pay somebody enough because money is a satisfier, not a driver, you can throw all the money in the world at somebody and if they don't have these things, they're not going to be happy. If you do these three things, people are going to love coming to work, they're going to do a better job.