Leadership in the 21st Century - … · Leadership in the 21st Century Course Overview Nancy...

Leadership in the 21st CenturyCourse Overview

Nancy Rothbard, Professor of Management

Engaging Hearts and MindsModule Overview


Module Overview

• Why engagement is important

• Definition of engagement

• The role of energy in engagement

• Encouraging engagement

• How to turn it on

• How to turn distractions off

• Creating conditions for engagement

• The role of social media

• Promoting group engagement

• Practical steps for creating an engaging work environment

Engaging Hearts and MindsWhy Engagement is Important


The Problem: 70% of people are not engaged at work

Source: Gallup Daily Engagement Poll, January 8, 2017

Disengaged Employees Lost Productivity

$450 billion to $550 billion per year

Why bother engaging hearts and minds?

We know that when employees are engaged they are:

• Better performers

• Meta-analyses show that engaged workers are better at:

• In role task performance

• Extra-role performance

• e.g., Fast food workers & financial returns

• e.g., Info tech firm & creativity

Why bother engaging hearts and minds?

We know that when employees are engaged they are:

• More vocal

• More prosocial/proactive

• Go the extra mile

• More committed

• More satisfied

• Less likely to leave

Engaging Hearts and MindsDefinition of Engagement


Definition of Engagement

When you are engaged in your work, you give your full attention to the task

that you are working on, and you are fully immersed in your work.

Two aspects to engagement:

1. Attention: Focus of attention, concentration (mind)

2. Absorption: Immersion, nothing can distract you (heart)

Definition of Engagement: Paying Attention

• Attention refers to cognitive availability

• Are you focusing on the task?

• Not paying attention for multiple reasons

• Thinking about other aspects of work, kids, vacation, dinner tonight,

etc.

Definition of Engagement: Absorption

Absorption lots going on but laser focused

• Immersion

• Nothing can distract me

• Can involve either positive or negative

emotions

Definition of Engagement: Attention & Absorption

• While attention and absorption are similar, they are separate

• Leaders can miscode absorption

• Can you spot attention and absorption?

Multi-tasking

• Multitasking reduces the ability to engage

• Creates attention residue

• Opposite of deep work

• Task can take longer…slows you down

Technology Can Both Help and Hurt

• Technology is both a helper

and an obstacle to

engagement

• Helps when technology

improves focus such as

video conferencing

• Hurts when it provides us

with distractions such as

social media during a

meeting

http://www.cartoonaday.com/

Ask Yourself

• What consistently causes me to lose focus?

• What helps me focus?

• False consensus effect

• What helps you might help others, but it may not be exactly the same

Engaging Hearts and MindsThe Role of Energy in Engagement


ENERGY: The Necessary Ingredient for Engagement


• Physical energy

• Physical health and well-being affects engagement and performance

• Sleep affects the ability to engage

• Emotional energy

• How you feel about your work and yourself matters

• What you bring to the workplace affects engagement


• If a leader comes to work sleep deprived, they tend to be more abrupt and

have a harder time inspiring people

• Employees who come to work without enough sleep have a harder time

being inspired

Emotional Energy Influences Engagement and Performance

Emotional energy plays a role in engagement

• Did you wake up on the right side or the wrong side of the bed?

• When people come to work in a positive mood, it spills over into their

work

• When people come to work in a negative mood, it makes them less

productive

Engaging Hearts and MindsCreating Conditions for Engagement: Promotion


How can we help people to become more engaged?

Leaders can engage people by getting them to focus on their core tasks

• Promote Engagement: Motivate & Inspire

• Prevent Disengagement: Remove distractions

Turning Engagement On

• Provide autonomy

• Discretion increases interest and forces you to pay attention

• If you are not told what to do exactly, you need to work to figure it out

• Keep it interesting

• Boredom leads people to seek distraction to fragment their attention

• Keeping it interesting involves introducing novelty and challenge

Turning Engagement On

• Get people to care

• Speaking optimistically about the future

• Emphasizing a purpose and mission

• Seeking diverse perspectives for solving problems

• Challenging them to think differently

• Get them to care about YOU

• Treating people as individuals, not just members of groups

• Make sure they care about EACH OTHER

• Competition among employees can be motivating but if too high,

ultimately distracting

Predictors of Engagement: Leadership & Disposition

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TransformationalLeadership

Leader–member exchange

Conscientiousness Positive affect Proactive personality

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Leadership and Dispositional Characteristics

Engagement

High Quality

Leader-Follower

Relationships

Conscientiousness Proactive

Personality

Positive

Affect

Transformationa

l Leadership

Leadership & Dispositional Characteristics

Engaging Hearts and MindsCreating Conditions for Engagement: Prevention


Turning Distractions off

• Help people reduce the obstacles in their way

• Reduce stress

• When we are stressed we don’t have the

mindshare or cognitive availability to

engage

• Negative affect leads people to need more

recovery time

• Confront exhaustion / fatigue

• TV before bed is okay but devices before bed are not

• Banning email after work hours (VW & BMW)

• Build in recovery

Turning Distractions Off

• Integrators & Segmentors

• Integrators like to blur boundaries

• Blend professional and personal life

• Segmentors like to keep things separate

• Flexplace helps integrators- artifacts, tsotzkes,

making work home and home work

• Flextime helps segmentors - when you are at

work you are fully present

Turning Distractions Off

• Interpersonal and technology distractions

• Reduce interruptions in the workplace from people and devices

• Friends at work are important for engagement until they become

distracting

• Devices can keep you in touch until they fragment your attention

Creating Conditions for Engagement

• Promote engagement as well as prevent disengagement

• Need to provide motivation: can’t just get rid of the obstacles

• Job satisfaction can provide motivation, but eliminating job

dissatisfaction doesn’t ensure motivation

• Emotion matters

• Call center study

• Positive emotion leads to high quality focus and performance

• Negative emotion leads to disengagement

Creating Conditions for Engagement

• Entrepreneurship study

• Hopeful employees engage

• Fearful employees disengage

• Hope trumps fear when both are present in the workplace

Engaging Hearts and MindsImportant Challenges and Opportunities: Part 1 - Online Social Media


Social Media – to engage or disengage?

Important challenges and opportunities

• Social media

• Group engagement

Social Media – to engage or disengage?

Positives:

• Personal disclosure as a way of getting closer

• Makes people more invested in each other

• Helps with engaging with the group and the company as a whole

Virtual Social Media Interactions

Negatives:

• Distraction & inadvertent disclosure

• Interactions on online social networks dramatically differ from those offline

• Open disclosure to broad audiences; often invisible audiences

• Information persistent in time

• Lack of control

Virtual Social Media Interactions

• Challenges and opportunities

• Identity construction

• Authenticity

• Too much information “TMI”

Strategies for Social Media

• Create some boundaries

• Segmentation can help

• Understand your own and your colleagues social media preferences as well

as that of your organization

• Social media policy

• Be consistent

• Check your Privacy Settings

Engaging Hearts and MindsImportant Challenges and Opportunities: Part 2 - Group Engagement


Group Engagement

• For leaders, the ideal scenario would be for

groups to be self-directed and engaged without a

lot of hand holding

• How do you enable it?

• Group engagement is both mutual focus of

attention as well as shared group emotion

Engaging Hearts and MindsImportant Challenges and Opportunities: Interaction Episode


Individual

Engagement

Task Bubble:

Barriers to

Outsiders

Compelling

Direction

Mutual

Focus of

Attention

Shared

Emotion

Task-Related

Artifacts

Frequency of

InteractionsProblem-

Solving

Interaction Episode

Informality of

Interactions

Enabling

Conditions

Group Engagement

Source: Metiu and Rothbard (2013)

Engaging Hearts and MindsPractical Steps for Creating an Engaging Work Environment


Encouraging Engagement

• Get people to care about what they do

• Remove the obstacles in their way

• Remember that what people bring with them carries over

• Think carefully about the use of social media

• It can be a source of cohesion or distraction

• Don’t pop the task bubble

• Take a break…

Don’t Pop the Task Bubble

Emotions are Contagious

Take a Break

Summary

• Engagement is important

• Engagement is cognitive and emotional

• We must both promote engagement and prevent disengagement

Leadership in the 21st Century - … · Leadership in the 21st Century Course Overview Nancy...

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