Can Being Challenged Be a Source of Engagement?
When it comes to conditions that promote engagement how much does facing a challenge play a part? If it does is it the challenge being faced or the individual being challenged that makes the difference.?
If the statistics from the Gallup organization are to be believed (and why wouldn't they be?) only 27% of our national workforce reports being fully engaged with the work they are doing everyday. I am less concerned with what this statistic means as far as productivity being lost than I am with the implications it has for the presence of passion, creativity and initiative, full engagement with the work at hand and a concern for the success of the whole enterprise. In other words that people have work to do that they feel is really worthy of the time of their lives.
The statistic cited certainly does not mean that the rest of the folks, those either less than engaged or even worse unengaged, don't have enough to do. Actually the reality seems to be quite the opposite as companies continue to rigorously maintain headcount at near absolute minimums and for exempt workers the work weeks continue to leak well beyond 40 hours and include portions of weekends as an assumption by many employers. The question it seems to beg is whether simply having a lot to do is a challenge that engages?
In my own work for the past 20 years I'd have to say that rarely have I encountered a management team that understands what it takes to keep the majority or their workforce at or near full engagement. They certainly know the results that need to be produced and they of course know how to offer significant rewards and consequences to keep the results flowing. However, the idea of focusing on engagement as a source of results still remains unexplored territory and I think mainly because managers are trained to focus on actions or behaviors not conditions. This is an unfortunate carry over from our industrial period and much of the work that was done on time/motion studies.
In 2008 Geoff Colvin, Senior Editor at Fortune magazine published 'Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World Class Performers from Everybody Else, a book that is still selling briskly. Colvin's fundamental premise is that while top performers are talented they also work very deliberately and intently on being the very best in their chosen field. Honestly, and he has data to back it up, these world-class types simply out practice the rest of their competition both in hours and focus. What Colvin's writing suggests is that there are truly few among us willing to go through the rigors of what it takes to become outstanding performers. This I think would echo a basic belief held by the majority of managers in our country, hence the rationale for many of the draconian management practices many of us have encountered.
I am of course interested in the performance of outstanding individuals, however, I am passionate about exceptional organizations. So what does a study of top individual performers and the challenges they set out for themselves have to do with organizational performance? Colvin does get into this question a bit, but not enough to satisfy me. For my own part I believe that whether consciously or not people are motivated to find something that challenges them to be the very best they can be and also to be part of something greater than themselves.
As I continue my own study of engagement, I want to suggest that having top talent choose you as a manager or your place of work as their own does have something to do with knowing that yours is an environment that challenges people to be their very best, not just work hard on what the organization needs to have done. It also has to do with having people see that there is in your place of employment an opportunity to be part of something worthwhile that is larger than themselves. This does not just happen or at least as a manager or employer you cannot to afford to believe that it will. There is as much deliberate practice in producing a highly engaged workforce as there is in producing outstanding individual performance.
(If you have any interest in the topic of performance I'd definitely recommend reading the book, it is both enjoyable and informative but you may want to start by checking out his article in Fortune which summarizes his argument).
