Some of you may know that I have started my doctoral program in Organizational and Brain-based Leadership.  I’ve had the pleasure of attending a 4-day seminar with the best minds (students and faculty alike) from around the world.  While there, I came across the synopsis of a gem of a dissertation by Dr. Meg Johnson.  The author studied the difference in drivers of engagement between leaders of an organization and the organization’s employees.  I had always thought engagement was engagement.  Well, I was right and I was wrong.  Engagement is engagement, but what drives it varies dramatically between our leaders and our employees.

What exactly is engagement?  We use the term, but it helps to dig down into its meaning.  Engagement is, according to Dr. Johnson, “an individual’s sense of purpose and focused energy, evident to others in the display of personal initiative, adaptability, effort, and persistence directed toward organizational goals.” The study clearly demonstrated that there are key differences between what drives engagement in organizational leadership as opposed to the organization’s employees.  Perhaps that explains the huge disconnect that I have personally noticed of the misconceptions of satisfaction between leaders and employees.  This misunderstanding leads to assumptions about what the other thinks and knows.  And – many times, as I was, we are dead wrong.  If we rely on bad information, then our actions just multiply the issues and frustrations created by misled presumptions.  Make sense?

The study also underscores the concept that engagement is driven from the top.  So, if leaders are disengaged and interventions are build around the assumptions that “one size engagement activities fits all,” then the effort is likely to fail.  If we don’t try to assess and build engagement of our senior leadership, then, according to the researcher, “building higher levels of engagement across the organization will be highly unlikely.”

Lessons learned – pay attention to what your leaders want and need to be engaged.  Make sure you aren’t falling into the trap of assuming that leaders are engaged or that they even know what it is that engages them.  Don’t take for granted that if an intervention worked for employees, the same intervention will work for senior leaders.  Remember, it flows downhill, so if leaders are engaged and satisfied, then employees are likely to benefit tremendously.

To read the study yourself, visit http://gradworks.umi.com/3452769.pdf