Development and Engagement: Casual Friends or Joined at the Hip?

It’s more than sad; it’s a missed opportunity.

In my experience, less than one in 10 large organizations make a concerted effort to fully align their leadership development and employee engagement initiatives. Those of us who work in talent management can cite many reasons why these initiatives lead separate lives:

Leadership Development Initiatives	Employee Engagement Initiatives
take place throughout the year, with small cohorts getting trained at all times	·often consist of the annual or biennial survey, with organization-wide action planning taking place shortly thereafter
·often have consistent themes, and train people in an agreed-upon set of skills or competencies	almost always ask leaders to pick one or two areas on which to focus and develop action plans.
are carried out by experienced trainers or facilitators.	·often provide very little guidance for leaders in sharing and discussing survey results, and deciding how to take action.

 

And yet, the people who lead these initiatives often work in close proximity to one another. They may even report to the same leader. Are these initiatives really that different in what they are trying to accomplish? No!

In many ways, leadership development and employee engagement initiatives are two sides of the same coin. Leadership development initiatives focus on equipping leaders with the right skills to be as effective and inspiring as possible. These skills include coaching, delegating, resolving conflict, managing change, and influencing—in short, they’re all skills that engage employees!

Employee engagement initiatives identify work environments that are not as engaging as they could or should be, and then try to address these areas and take action. But, what causes work environments to be less than engaging? The phrase, “People join companies, but leave (bad) bosses,” comes to mind. Most people I meet believe that 50 percent or more of a work group’s level of engagement is directly related to the skills, abilities, and motivations of their immediate supervisor. “Taking action” often involves leaders (and possibly others) changing their behaviors, and in doing so, developing new skills.

Are there real benefits from joining these employee engagement and leadership development initiatives at the hip? Absolutely! When we repeatedly support, model, and reinforce the same skills and behaviors, the likelihood they will become engrained increases dramatically.

Will there be additional costs to more tightly integrating these initiatives? No! In fact, the closer these initiatives work, the more they reinforce each other. It simply requires cooperation and collaboration, which also happen to be important skills leaders need to create the most engaging work environments!

If you are interested in hearing concrete ways leadership development and employee engagement can easily be joined at the hip, register for the upcoming webcast, Shift Your Leadership Development and Engagement Initiatives Into High Gear, Monday, July 11, at 2 p.m. ET.