The Existential Leadership Challenge of the 21st Century

The Existential Leadership Challenge of the 21st Century

By Pepper de Callier

Part 3 of 3

In this last instalment, our leader panel will sum up their key take-away messages on the topic of employee engagement.  As you will see, these take-aways are not only for leaders, but employees at all levels in an organization.  I will offer my observations and conclusions after the leaders have spoken.

A reminder: our panel is made up of five CEOs who are, in alphabetical order: Tana Le Moigne, Director-Google CZ/SK; Mykola Melnyk, Chairman-Sanofi CZ/SK; Pavel Rehak, CEO-Direct pojistovna; Tomas Salomon, CEO-Ceska sporitelna; and Milan Vasina, CEO-T-Mobile CZ/SK.

 

Tana Le Moigne

“Do you deserve to lead?”

Le Moigne starts off with one of the most important questions she feels leaders must ask themselves.  The follow-up question is, “Why?”  The answer to this question not only brings focus to self-awareness, but also opens doors to understanding one’s true motivation and values.  If your motivation and values are aligned with what is publically presented to customers and employees, this is a good starting point, but there is more to it.  Leadership success today is a serious commitment and unless you’re able to make that commitment, your efforts will not bear fruit.

She offers the following observations and examples of what leaders must master today.  “Management practice has not kept pace with the evolution of the workforce; we need leaders who understand the context of a company’s needs and who are adaptable, people who are not afraid to adapt their approach. Leaders must learn to recognize the roadblocks to engagement, which include slavish adherence to an old way of thinking, fear of change, and lack of feedback.”

Making culture your number one priority is critical, in her view, for leaders today. “Nothing matters more. Period.”  A key element of this is to make it a priority to hire the absolute best people who represent your organization to potential employees, or, as she says, “Hire the best for hiring.  If you have the right people there, it makes a huge difference.”

“Leaders can’t see it all.  Things are happening so quickly and coming from so many directions, they need engaged teams with broad perspectives in order to stay in front of important issues, developments, opportunities, and innovation”

 

Milan Vasina

“Never take for granted that your organization is engaged.  This is something that needs daily attention.”

And, by daily attention, Vasina means that a leader must be ready to act quickly on a number of fronts because, more times than not, going slowly creates too much negative stress in an organization, which can become demoralizing.  While his focus is on people--committing the resources to finding, attracting, and retaining them--he is quick to add, “You, as a leader, must act quickly to remove the toxic elements from a team.  If you don’t, it discourages the ones who want to be engaged.”

The authenticity of a leader’s commitment comes up frequently in our discussion and it’s a point that he clarifies with this, “You can’t fake this.  If you don’t believe in people 100% and the importance of creating a nurturing environment for them you will never make the transition to the kind of leader who inspires top performance from people who are committed and engaged.  Employees can easily sense this in a leader and if it’s not there, they will never give more than threshold performance to whatever it is they are doing.”

A final observation, “Accepting challenge is what got me where I am today—accepting challenges and finding ways to integrate them into my life. It reminds me of the first time I parachuted from an airplane.  Before I did it, I had doubts—big ones—but after I accepted the challenge and did it and I thought, Wow! I can do this! I felt really engaged at that moment.  That’s what stepping out of our comfort zones and overcoming challenges can lead to: a feeling of confidence and engagement in what we are doing.”

Tomas Salomon

“There are still CEOs who believe that product features or price can be competitive advantages.”

Salomon continues his observation by saying that these elements are very easy to copy and are clearly not included in today’s line-up of competitive advantages.  What is?  “There is no question that an enterprise-wide investment in creating, building, and nurturing a culture of employee engagement, in which people feel empowered and autonomous, is vital to sustainable success today.”

He goes back to re-emphasize the dual responsibility that exists in a sustainably engaged organization.  “We, as leaders, must take seriously our responsibility to create an environment where people feel an openness to express themselves and to explore opportunities to add value.  In addition, we must engage them in conversation and listen to them.”  To the employees, he adds, “Your role is to be active, accept responsibility for your personal development—seek ways to learn, to broaden your horizons of potential and value.”

It is through this mutual compact that Salomon sees the future—a future where people actually enjoy what they do, why they do it, and with whom they do it. Listening to him, one can easily envision the absence of traditional corporate hierarchy, agile companies that are adaptive by nature, and a place that would even be fun to work.

Mykola Melnyk

“Engagement is one of the last frontiers in the battle for competitiveness. You can’t commoditize engagement.”

Melnyk feels that engagement is perhaps the only unleveraged asset of companies today. He says that it is what perpetuates a virtuous cycle of success and allows companies to jump to the next s curve of creativity, innovation and disruption.

“Take Apple, for example. Their employees are highly engaged and passionate about what they do, and it’s this passion that allows them to create revolutionary offerings.  This is also what attracts very dedicated customers—it’s absolutely infectious.  It’s passion like this that allows them to do things people never dreamed of, like when Steve Jobs said he’d put a thousand songs in your pocket.”

He goes on to explain that engaged, passionate people are actually energized by problems, because they are solution-oriented by nature and they are resilient when faced with setbacks.  This is the attitude that he speaks of as being a contagion in an organization.  It’s something powerful that is driven from within, which is why it’s so important for leaders to create and nurture an environment that not only gives birth to the contagion, but allows people to “infect” others with their sense of engagement.

Pavel Rehak

“As a CEO, your level of frustration and loneliness will significantly decrease with engaged teams.”

Data-driven by nature, Rehak points to the classic book by Jim Collins, Good to Great, in which he statistically proves the case that it is not companies with strong alpha male CEOs and a well-honed PR presence who achieve the strongest growth in total shareholder returns over the long haul, it’s companies that are led by CEOs focussed on their people and their mission. 

“There’s a big difference when it’s the people—engaged people—who are driving and caring about the company versus a CEO who spends their time trying to convince, or force them to care.”

With regard to whether or not engagement initiatives will be successful, Rehak, suggests that leaders ask themselves these questions, “Are you engaged, or are you just trying to apply mechanistic exercises?  Is this really your path?  Once this decision is made, all else will follow.”

His advice to employees at all levels? “If you are working at a company at which you do not feel engaged and your goal is purely economic survival, being engaged is not an issue for you.  But, if you want to have a rewarding career and happiness, find a company with which you can engage.  Why would you spend one-third of your life doing something that doesn’t make sense?”

 Rehak closes with this advice for leaders as well as their employees, “Remember this, without engagement you will never cross the border of mediocrity.”

 

 

In closing

After working with talented, driven, and accomplished leaders for more than thirty five years, I know, first-hand, that it’s not easy to find a topic on which they have common agreement across diverse industries and companies of various sizes.  This topic, however, is an exception. Everyone on our panel agreed that an investment of time and financial resources in engagement was one with proven, tangible returns, including increased profits.

Our panel of leaders also told us that engagement is, in fact, the “secret sauce” for creativity and innovation and it is the clear competitive differentiator today. We have heard from our panel that empowerment and autonomy fuel an environment of engagement and that engagement is absolutely contagious.  It’s the kind of contagion that not only spreads to individuals and teams inside the company, but, as important, it spreads to customers—it’s an energy that creates energy.  It’s an energy that invites association—you want to be part of it.

 Our panel challenged leaders to accept a new way of thinking:  That to succeed in business today culture is the number one priority, period. You can have a great strategy and a wonderful product or service, but without a culture of engagement, you, as a leader, will be fighting an uphill battle every day.

Further, there were admonishments: Engagement cannot be taken for granted, it’s not a static achievement –it’s an ongoing effort, and, as leaders, we must realize that senior management generally has a different, more optimistic view of the level of engagement of the workforce than what the reality really is on the front line.

In addition, this is something from which leaders cannot isolate themselves.  Everyone in the organization, down to the lowest level, will look to the leader to see if their support for the creation of an engaged culture is authentic and genuine. Every word spoken, every action taken by a leader will support, or call into question, their commitment to being personally engaged and to creating an environment which empowers and engages others.  This is not a project for HR—a project from which the leader can step back and monitor progress—it requires a direct, daily hands-on approach and the realization that alignment of values and actions—authenticity—is what truly inspires others.  So, if you don’t believe it, don’t do it, because people will quickly see through it and it will backfire.

Another interesting point, which may be counter-intuitive to many, is that creating an environment of engagement is a two way street.  It’s not something that is driven entirely from the top, or the sole responsibility of management.  Employees must also accept responsibility in this effort by actively doing things like asking supervisors for growth experiences, volunteering for key projects, and looking for ways in which they can add value beyond just what is expected of them.  Engagement, in this sense, looks more like a contract between employee and employer—a mutually beneficial agreement, or win-win.

Make no mistake; leaders are facing more challenges of more different types, from more different places than ever before.  They also are facing more opportunities than ever before, so there is a very real, existential need for leaders to lead their workforces beyond threshold performance.  A number of studies show the alarmingly high rate—as high as 80%--of the global workforce that are disengaged from their jobs.  This number becomes even more alarming when put into context: Facing an increasingly complex world, leaders must rely on input from others in order to make critical, timely, and effective decisions.  And, if the others to whom the leader must look are not engaged, chances are the organization will likely be the one that is disrupted, rather the more desirable position of being the disruptor.

Engagement of a workforce is the competitive advantage of the 21st century.  Studies show that engaged workforces are more creative, resilient, actually energized by problem solving, and produce up to three times the returns of threshold performing workforces.  Engaged workforces actually drive a company forward and free up the CEO to be the visionary—to be the leader who creates sustained value in the 21st century.  Given the choice, where would you rather work, at an organization that has a culture of engagement, or a traditional top-down management style? More and more of your top talent are asking themselves the same question today.

One thing is clear. The leaders who can crack the code to employee engagement—the ones who understand that what they used to think as soft stuff, really has hard consequences—will be in demand and gather the spoils of success while the others will be competing for what’s left over.

 

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De Callier is an executive coach and author and can be reached at pepper@pragueleadershipinstitute.com