Page 62 - How Great Leaders Build Abundant Organizations That Win

THE MAKING OF ABUNDANCE

PRINCIPLE 4
Abundant organizations create positive work environments that
affirm and connect people throughout the organization.

5. What Challenges Interest Me? (Personalized Contributions)

It is hard to imagine abundance in the absence of challenge.
The most engaged employees are generally those whose work
gives them the opportunity to stretch while doing work they
love and solving problems they care about. The bank execu-
tives gave employees a new challenge when they shifted the
focus from turnaround to transformation through efficiency,
trust, and citizenship. These three pillars of the bank’s iden-
tity challenged employees to solve problems they cared about.
As leaders involve both teams and individuals in enjoy-
able challenges, they engage employees’ hearts and their
minds, as Chapter 7 discusses. Different people find different
kinds of work easy, energizing, and enjoyable and different
problems meaningful. Leaders need to adapt broad general
challenges to individual requirements and predispositions.
The study of talent has evolved from a focus on employee
competence (ability to do the work) to employee commit-
ment (willingness to do the work). Employees who are
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competent but not committed will not perform to their full
potential. Commitment comes from building an employee
value proposition that engages employees to use their discre-
tionary energy to pursue organization goals. Commitment
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or engagement grows when we work in a company with a
vision, have opportunities to learn and grow, do work that
has an impact, receive fair pay for work done, work with peo-
ple we like working with, and enjoy flexibility in the terms
and conditions of work.

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