NeuroCapability Presents THE UGLY TRUTH ABOUT LEADERSHIP AND ENGAGEMENT

Transcription

1 NeuroCapability Presents THE UGLY TRUTH ABOUT LEADERSHIP AND ENGAGEMENT

2 INTRODUCTION Poor engagement results are bad news for CEO s and executives and for employees too. As this is often where the blame game begins. But, if you want to turn engagement around, business needs to start focussing on what really drives engagement. According to Dan Collins, management consultant and former Olympic medallist, Australian organisations don t foster a culture of accountability or even ask are we accountable for setting up an environment where people can be winners? (HR Daily). Given the significant influence leaders have on engagement, it s critical that leaders are provided the necessary support to improve their leadership capability. Key Subjects In this e-book, you will discover how you can support the development of high performing teams and how you can use this knowledge to support development in your leaders. You will discover: How to improve your engagement results The five keys to high performing teams Why engagement needs to start with leadership In our work with clients, we see over and over again how supporting leaders to understand how the brain works, positively transforms how they work with, engage and influence others. We hope you enjoy this e-book. Linda Ray

3 "THE LEADERS WHO WORK MOST EFFECTIVELY...DON'T THINK 'I'. THEY THINK 'WE', THEY THINK 'TEAM'...THIS IS WHAT CREATES TRUST, WHAT ENABLES YOU TO GET THE TASK DONE." PETER F. DRUCKER

4 Your staff engagement results are in and despite all the hard work you have put in, your results haven t improved or have even got worse! Does this sound familiar? Poor engagement results are bad news for CEO s and executives who find their performance is frequently measured by their staff engagement indicators. But they are bad news for employees too, as this is where the blame game often begins. If organisations are really serious about tackling engagement and developing high performing teams then they need to start focusing on what drives engagement.

5 "Change of attitude starts with a change of perspective." Anonymous High engagement is influenced by leaders and their capacity to develop a positive psychological safety climate in their teams. The research highlights that psychological safety not only influences engagement but is the KEY to high performing teams. Google s Research in Project Aristotle found high performing teams shared a number of key elements, but the most important was high levels of psychological safety.

6 Google's research found that leaders of high performing teams took responsibility for the development of a positive psychological safety climate. It also identified the following four components influenced high performance in teams. Low levels of engagement, low retention rates and employee burnout are all signs that the psychological safety climate in an organisation or team is poor. But all too often leaders aren t accountable for these results.

7 According to Dan Collins, management consultant and former Olympic medallist, Australian organisations don t foster a culture of accountability or even ask... are we accountable for setting up an environment where people can be winners? It s next to impossible to engage large numbers of employees when most people see ineffective leadership, according to AON in their 2017 article The Engagement Outliers How to Accelerate Extraordinary Improvement in Employee Engagement. Too often, employees are blamed for poor engagement results, but it's not useful to simply lay blame at leaders either. They simply don t know what they don t know!

8 Just because leaders 'think' they are doing a great job, doesn't necessarily mean that staff agrees. So often, organisation's aren't asking the right questions or monitoring these trends and therefore gaps in knowledge aren t being detected, let alone supported. Recent research by Ultimate Software points to a blind spot in leaders about their leadership capability. Their 2017 study, found...managers commonly over-estimate their leadership capability due to over-confidence and lack of training. The following infographic outlines some of their findings.

9 Motivation 71% of managers reported that they knew how to motivate their team, but only 44% of employees believed their manager knew how to motivate them. Transparency 80% of managers think they are transparent with their direct reports. Only 55% of employees agree. Approachability Approachability was identified by 75% of employees as the most important quality in an effective manager today but only 50% indicated they have an approachable manager.

10 When leaders are promoted on technical expertise and not provided the required skills training in contemporary behaviour-based leadership to support them to understand their own emotions, drivers and motivators, let alone how to influence and motivate the people in their teams, then what ends up happening is that they implement what 'THEY' would need from their Leader! But not all brains think the same way. So what one leader may do or say to motivate a team or individual can actually result in a threat activation leading to disengagement in others. Given the significant influence leaders have on psychological safety and engagement, it s critical that leaders are provided the necessary support to improve their leadership capability. With increasing evidence of an endemic lack of self-awareness in leadership and its associated costs to organisational productivity and profits, perhaps organisations looking to improve their engagement scores should begin providing the necessary training for their leadership teams to understand and engage effectively with their people.