Page 20 - How America's Best Places to Work Inspire Extra Effort in Extraordinary Times

Employee Engagement C7

ployee engagement, those enduring and endearing elements that may
include a few cool perks but encompass so much more.

: DISENGAGING MANAGEMENT BEHAVIOR STILL
RAMPANT . . . WHY?

If there is one thing company leaders know for sure, it’s that they
want motivated, enthusiastic, productive workers. Yet, by their ac-
tions, many demonstrate daily that they do not know how to bring out
the best in people. These actions include:

: Cranking up the negative consequences instead of recogniz-
ing positive results
: Setting goals so unattainably high that workers burn them-
selves out, reducing the effectiveness of customer interactions
: Conducting employee surveys, then failing to take action
: Giving performance feedback just once a year, or even less
often
: Making promises and not keeping them
: Ignoring and failing to solicit their employees’ ideas

The list can go on and on. The Dilbert comic strip has thrived
for years by humorously, and often cynically, documenting the many
failures and foibles of so-called leaders. The curious thing to us is that
leaders and managers behave in so many ways that produce the ex-
act opposite of the response they desire. It is an important and vexing
question: why do leaders act counter to their own best self-interests and
the best interests of the organizations they are charged with leading?
Here are some examples of self-defeating management behavior
from our own experience:

: A manager attempted to justify a salary inequity by telling an
underpaid employee, “You’re lucky you have room to grow.”