Kevin Kruse and Rudy Karsan tell us that to find ourselves involved in an “engaged” workplace, we start at the individual level. The “WE” approach to engagement takes a dual responsibility approach. The employer is responsible for actively creating an environment that fosters engagement, and the employee actively makes career decisions that enable full engagement. Let's figure out what to do in order to make this approach work.
Find What You Love To Do
We start off on the employee side of the responsibility equation. We need to find some love—love for your job, and love for the team that you work with.
The authors say that today, it’s your responsibility to find a job that you love. If you can’t wake up in the morning excited by the work that you will be doing on a daily basis, what’s the point? Faking it won’t suffice. You only have so much energy to put on an act before you burn out. you want to make sure that what you love also comes along with a tie in to your purpose in life, and also a pay cheque that allows you the standard of living that you want. This shouldn't leave you with thousands of options, it should narrow the path to some obvious choices.
Harmonize Your Team
Now, what are the employers responsible for? Essentially, they are responsible for harmonizing their team, which is the combination of engagement and alignment.
First is engagement. Although there are many different definitions of employee engagement, one of the easiest to understand is the cliché of “going above and beyond”. The key to an engaged team is found around creating a team made out of these 4 elements: Pride, Satisfaction, Advocacy, and Retention. If you can find a team where each member fulfills these elements, you’ve got yourself an engaged team.
Now you need alignment. Engaged employees without adequate direction may produce a lot of activity, but not necessarily the results that the company is looking for. You can’t simply create an aligned team by asking people “what do you think our mission is, and what are you doing today to get us there?” but understanding the second part of that question is the key for creating an aligned team. Once you align your team you’ll be able to easily eliminate unnecessary time and resources on things that don’t align with the goals of the organization. Additionally, you’ll increase performance, as people with clear objectives get more done.
These are the things you’ll need in order to create an organization or team that is fully engaged in its work. Do these things, work on both the individual and managerial, and reap the financial and emotional rewards that you deserve.