What Is Employee Engagement, Really?

Clarke Southwick
Book Bites
Published in
4 min readJan 16, 2020

The following is adapted from The Engagement Ring by Lee Ann Pond.

It’s hard to quantify, but as Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said in 1964 about obscenity, “I know it when I see it.”

An engaged employee stands out. They are committed to doing their jobs in the best way they can, and giving that extra effort to make sure they help move the organization’s mission forward.

It’s about intentions — the willingness to put in extra effort to help the organization succeed. It’s about the emotional connection the employee has to the mission and the organization. They go above and beyond the requirements of their job. They enthusiastically strive to help the organization reach their goals, and they are happy and fulfilled at work.

Engaged employees are more productive, safer, happier, and less likely to leave their employer.

From this book, Roger will learn specific techniques that he can immediately put into use that will improve his staff’s performance and his ability to manage them. He will understand how the steps he can take will affect their engagement.

He’ll say, “My department was a nightmare and I read this book and got some tips for handling my team.”

These techniques are great for new supervisors who are struggling with transitioning from a technical role to a leadership role. By learning how to engage their employees, they will also learn how to increase productivity and performance.

These techniques also work for all levels of managers, all the way up to the “C” suite. Although “C” suite employees tend to be more engaged by nature of their job, they still have a supervisor that accounts for 70 percent of their engagement score — the CEO.

Establishing a culture of engagement should be a business strategy, rather than a human resources department initiative. It should be a commitment from all leadership levels. But, if this is not the case in your organization, you can still use these techniques to engage your own employees.

These techniques can also be used in noncorporate environments, such as volunteer groups, homeowners’ associations, and civic groups. Whenever people gather and form teams, the issue of team engagement exists.

Fake It until You Make It

How can you be the type of leader who engages your staff?

Leadership development programs often focus on trainings, theoretical information, and hypothetical scenarios. But that doesn’t answer the question “What one thing could I do today to engage my staff?”

Even if you were just put into a supervisory position yesterday and have no idea what to do today, you can be a successful leader if you do one thing: learn everything you can about engaging each of your employees.

Leadership is a skill you can learn and practice.

Many leadership development programs are based on the idea of emotional intelligence (EI). The term was first coined in 1964 and gained popularity in 1995 through a book by the same name. It is based on the idea that the ability to understand empathy and the emotions of ourselves and others can lead to successful interpersonal interactions. In other words, if you can “read” your own emotions and control them, you can be more successful in relationships with others. And in your career.

Other words for emotional intelligence are “self-awareness” or the old-fashioned term: “maturity.” EI means being aware of your emotions and not acting on them, treating others as you would like to be treated, apologizing, keeping your commitments, and accepting and learning from criticism. It also means being self-confident yet humble, empathetic, reliable, respectful, honest, positive, and supportive.

In other words, acting professionally.

So, acting maturely and professionally will help me be a good leader and engage my employees?

Yes, it’s where you start. And, I’ll let you in on a little secret I picked up during my thirty-plus years of business experience.

You can fake it until you make it.

You can learn more about practical leadership skills for engaging your employees in The Engagement Ring on Amazon.

LEE ANN POND is the founder and CEO of Engaging Leadership, a firm dedicated to helping organizations engage their leaders, teams, and employees for peak performance. She is also the creator of the Engagement Ring, a framework for helping leaders understand the core tenets of engagement. With an MBA, executive coaching certification, and fifteen years of C-suite experience, Lee Ann is an expert at merging leadership development with employee engagement. Lee Ann lives near Richmond, Virginia, and enjoys her family, travels, and rescue pup, Mr. Pickles. To learn more about Lee Ann’s work or connect further, visit engaging-leadership.com.

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