In my ongoing series about sleepwalking at work, I’d be remiss if I didn’t discuss what organizational leaders can do to help employees become active, engaged, and able to initiate and organize their work. So far, we’ve explored ways we reward sleepwalking at work and the link between leadership and employee behavior. Now, let’s focus on how we can fix the issues that lead to sleepwalking.
Nature creates conditions that are conducive to its purpose: to support the life of future generations. If we want engaged, thinking employees, we need to borrow from Nature’s design and ask:
“What are the conditions that are conducive to having employees who initiate and think about their jobs to serve the organization’s purpose?”
In many years as a manager and leader, I’ve found that employees who can think for themselves help the organization while minimizing the drain on a manager’s energy and time. If you want to remain sane and resilient, you need competent staff reporting to you. Competence can be defined as having technical knowledge, education, and experience, but that alone is not sufficient. You want employees who are self-organizing and who think independently as well.
Three ways to support active engagement
We can create conditions that encourage thinking, active, and engaged employees in three ways.
1. Elevate your expectations.
As leaders, our beliefs shape our expectations of our staff. If we believe they can’t think for themselves, then we will slide into the habit of directing all of their actions and work. If we believe our staff are capable and responsible adults, then we can raise our expectations of their behavior and how they present themselves at work.
Expectations are important because if an employee doesn’t meet them, then you must give feedback. Feedback in Nature is how species evolve and learn. I believe the same is true for people in our organizations. When we lower our expectations, we stop providing feedback that helps people improve at what they do. If a person is sleepwalking at work, and we don’t tell them that the behavior is unacceptable, then they will continue to “go through the motions.”
2. Design self-organization into performance reviews.
If we want our employees to be self-organizing, then this must be measured and formalized in performance reviews. Here are some key aspects to consider:
- Can everyone on your staff initiate and organize their own work and learning?
- Will they seek to align their work to support the mission and purpose of the larger organization?
- Do employees actively and accurately assess themselves and their capacities?
- Are people emotionally intelligent enough to manage their feelings? Or do they spread drama or trauma to their colleagues and teams?
We need to measure what we want to support to provide effective feedback. A performance review that aligns with active, thinking employees is a simple yet powerful way to do that.
3. Align your leadership with the behavior you want to see in your team.
Leaders need to align their leadership with messages that encourage engagement.
Leaders must be self-aware, too. Leaders who want engaged, initiating, and thinking employees need to believe that they themselves value and embody these qualities. If the employee gives feedback the leader doesn’t want to hear—and that feedback gets shut down as a result—the leader sends a message that they prefer sleepwalkers.
These three tactics are simple. They only require careful design, support structures, and processes that nurture self-organization at work.
What are some ways you may use these approaches in your organization?
Good insights