Have you ever been at a social event where you felt ignored? When you feel unimportant, your energy goes down. Now think of a time when you were greeted by a dear friend who you have not been able to see in a long time. Your energy immediately sky rockets. Now think about being in a room full of people with that same energy. This is the power of engagement.
What is Being Engaged?
1. Being Engaged is Emotional Energy.
Ryan Scholz, states that there are 2 types of energy, physical and emotional. Endocrinologist, nutritionist and sport medicine specialists state that physical energy supplies at most 30% of a person’s energy. Enthusiasm, drive, and resilience come from emotional energy, and it is abundant and limitless.
In your life have you ever tried to work harder out of obligation? There is a project at work that uses none of your talents and passions, but it has to be done, so you do it. How do you feel ? – Exhausted, tired?
When management tries to get people to improve productivity by working harder, this spends physical energy and can backfire. This brings us to the second point.
2. The Most Powerful Form of Being Engaged is Discretionary Effort.
This is where we feel compelled to put forth extra effort to complete a task, to work beyond the minimum. This effort is voluntary, not forced. It comes from emotional energy. According to one study, businesses could increase employee performance by as much as 40% by unlocking this potential.
The only way to get discretionary effort is to create an environment where people are emotionally engaged.
According to a Gallup pole, 29% of employees are actively engaged in their jobs, 54% are not engaged, and 17% are actively not engaged. Actively disengaged workers cost the American economy $350 billion per year in lost productivity.
Then if you have actively disengaged employees on your management team, it is devastating to think about the ripple effect they have on the people they supervise.
There are 3 levels of motivation – compliance (have to), obligation (should do) and engaged (like to). We are only fully engaged when we do things we like to do.
Picture this story in your mind: The look of exhilaration when he crossed that finish line was inspiring. He had trained for 16 weeks to complete the half-marathon. This included days of heat, days when he was tired from other activities like yard work or keeping up with his kids. He remembered one run where he felt nauseated because of the effort involved to run that day. But it was all worth it when he crossed the finish line with the crowds cheering and his family congratulating him after the race.
This story is about my husband. He doesn’t run because he has to or should but for the emotional satisfaction of running the race and meeting his goals.
The key to an engaged workplace, where people put in discretionary effort, is to get them emotionally involved and enjoying what they do.
How engaged are you in your professional and personal life? How engaged is your team? Please contact me to learn about how you can assess your own motivation or other’s on your team.