Your Leadership Cheat Sheet

Happy Friday,

When people first join your company, they're enthusiastic about the opportunity, motivated to give it their all, and close to 100% engaged. Highly engaged employees care more about the organization's success, so they try harder and willingly sacrifice more on its behalf. Less engaged employees care less, and unengaged employees couldn't care less. Business success correlates directly to employee engagement.

An organization's engagement score is the employees' reaction to the work experience their leaders, especially immediate supervisors, present to them.

So, an organization’s employee engagement score is its leadership score. A high score shows effective leadership. A mediocre score, mediocre leadership. Leaders own employee engagement.

So, what exactly drives employee engagement? The Gallup organization studied over 2.7 million people across 100,000+ teams in all kinds of workplaces to find out. Their research culminated in a list of twelve employee needs that, when smartly addressed by leaders, resulted in the highest employee engagement and, thus, the best business outcomes. Those twelve needs also comprise the twelve critical questions employees are asked to score their engagement and the effectiveness of the organization's leaders:

1.   I know what is expected of me at work. 

2.   I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right. 

3.   At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day. 

4.   In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work. 

5.   My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person.

6.   There is someone at work who encourages my development. 

7.   At work, my opinions seem to count. 

8.   The mission or purpose of my organization makes me feel my job is important. 

9.   My associates and fellow employees are committed to doing quality work. 

10.  I have a best friend at work. 

11.  Someone at work has talked to me in the last six months about my progress. 

12.  This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow.

Employee engagement is a test of your leadership. These are the answers to the test. 

So, every leader has two clear choices: 1) Do your own thing, lead your own way, and wait until the end of the year to find out how you scored as a leader of people. Or 2) Read the test questions in advance, adjust your leadership approach now, and aim to get an ‘A’ in Leadership at year end. 

If you’re the CEO of an organization, you might not want this to be every leader’s choice. Make the decision. Deploy a simple Leadership Framework, set minimum expectations, stop tolerating mediocrity, and deliver a more motivating work experience so your people want to deliver better business results. Leaders are that throttle lever—the one with dust on it.

Have a great weekend!

Dave

Your feedback and blowback are always welcome here: dave@goodnewsfriday.com

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Written by me not ChatGPT: valuable speed assist and blunder avoidance by Grammarly