Identify a manager you think leads a highly engaged team, then seek out that manager for a conversation. It can be a person within your organization, within another organization, or ev

[Type text] [Type text] [Type text]

ILRDI001: Improving Engagement

Cornell University ILR School

Interview an Effective Leader

As you continue to think about the drivers of engagement and the conditions that allow people to become fully engaged in their work, consider the following questions:

· Think about the people you know who are not highly engaged at work. Why aren’t they? What’s holding them back?

· Where do you see a lack of alignment between where people spend their time and effort and where you think they should be directing their effort? Why do you think that is?

These are engagement questions; for the answers, look to the team managers. Wherever you find a highly engaged team, there’s a strong chance the team has a leader who is setting clear goals, empowering employees, providing open and honest feedback, and treating employees fairly and with respect.

Employees are engaged when their managers help them to meet their basic needs. These include:

· Being emotionally connected to others

· Perceiving that they are part of something significant with coworkers they trust

· Being cognitively engaged with their work

· Knowing what is expected of them and having what they need to do their work

· Having opportunities to feel an impact and fulfillment in their work

· Having chances to improve and develop

The goal of this project is to identify what's being done well by others and to look for strategies and behaviors that are repeatable, both by other managers and team leaders.

Instructions:

1. Identify a manager you think leads a highly engaged team, then seek out that manager for a conversation. It can be a person within your organization, within another organization, or even a friend or colleague working in another industry.

2. Ask the manager or leader the questions in the grid below, and note the answers.

Complete the following grid:
1. How do you foster an emotional connection within your team?
2. How do you foster trust?
3. What are some strategies you use to ensure that your team maintains high levels of motivation to do good work?
4. How do you help your team become cognitively engaged with their work?
5. Are there steps you take to help ensure that the members of your team don’t get burned out?
After your conversation has ended, complete the following on your own:
Reflect on your conversation. What did you learn? What are your key takeaways from this conversation?

Save your work and submit it according to the instructions in the course.

1

© 2018 eCornell. All rights reserved. All other copyrights, trademarks, trade names, and logos are the sole property of their respective owners.

,

As you continue to think about the drivers of engagement and the conditions that allow people to become fully engaged in their work, consider the following questions:

1. Think about people you know who are not highly engaged at work. Why aren’t they?

2. What’s holding them back?

3. Where do you see a lack of alignment between where people spend their time and effort and where you think they should be directing their effort?

4. Why do you think that is?

These are engagement questions; for the answers, look to the team managers. Wherever you find a highly engaged team, there’s a strong chance that the team has a leader who is setting clear goals, empowering employees, providing open and honest feedback, and treating employees fairly and with respect.

Employees are engaged when their managers help them to meet their basic needs. These include:

· Being emotionally connected to others.

· Perceiving that they are part of something significant with coworkers whom they trust.

· Being cognitively engaged with their work.

· Knowing what is expected of them and having what they need to do their work.

· Having opportunities to feel an impact and fulfillment in their work.

· Have chances to develop and improve.

You will now interview an effective leader about questions related to engagement. The goal here is to identify what's being done well by someone else and to look for strategies and behaviors that are repeatable.

Instructions:

1. Complete “Worksheet – Interview an Effective Leader” – See attachment

2. Identify a manager you feel leads a highly engaged team, then seek out that manager for a conversation. It can be a person within your organization, within another organization, or even a friend or colleague working in another industry.

3. Ask the manager the questions listed above

4. When you are finished with your interview, and complete worksheet with exhaustive answer

5. Answer all questions with In-depth detailed response

6. No plagiarism

7. 200 words minimum – 400 maximum to answer all questions

,

Examine the Drivers of Engagement

In this module, you will have an opportunity to examine the conditions that must be in place for employees to be highly engaged. Professor Nishii will present the key psychological drivers that are necessary for engagement. You will examine these drivers and explore how their presence in the workplace can be enhanced through effective management strategies. You will also apply the framework of engagement drivers to diagnose root causes of suboptimal levels of engagement within the workplace and begin to identify hypotheses about appropriate solutions. You will conduct an interview of an effective manager or leader so you can identify effective engagement strategies in action. You will also examine great examples of companies that are fostering engagement within their organizations.

The Three Engagement Drivers

There are three key drivers of engagement, as Professor Nishii explains. They are psychological meaningfulness (having a reason to engage), psychological safety (experiencing the freedom and safety to engage), and psychological availability (having the capacity to engage). These are the conditions that must be met in order for employees to be engaged, and each has significant implications, as you will see.

Video Transcript:

Okay, there are three primary dimensions of drivers of engagement. The first is psychological meaningfulness. And this has to do whether or not people feel that they have a reason to engage in their work. And this really has a lot to do with the characteristics of one's job. And it involves structuring jobs so that they have what we call high motivating potential. Jobs that have high motivating potential tend to be challenging, they're experienced as being meaningful by employees, they provide opportunities for autonomy and impact, and they involve specific and difficult goals. People tend to get feedback about how they're doing so that they know how to adjust their efforts in order to be able to perform well, right. So they overall feel like the job is set up so that if they do pour themselves into their work, it is a meaningful experience. The underlying principal is referred to as social exchange. The idea is that if you give people challenging and meaningful work, and you set them up for success, then they will reciprocate by pouring themselves into their work. The second dimension is called psychological safety. And that has to do with whether or not people experience the freedom and the safety to engage in their work rather than feeling like they have to protect themselves in some way. We've probably all encountered situations in which we feel like we shouldn't dare speak up with suggestions about how something maybe could be done differently. And if that's how we feel it's because we don't experience complete psychological safety. But it also means that by withholding that idea, we're not fully engaged in the work. Right? And nor is the organization able to potentially leverage the great ideas that we might have, because we don't feel safe to share them. So this dimension of psychological safety is primarily influenced by social elements. Things like experiencing trust, high trust relationships. Employees who feel that they're treated fairly by management tend to experience higher levels of psychological safety. They need to basically feel like they're supported by management and that they're not vulnerable in the face of management. In order to really fully engage. Employees need to feel like its safe to bring their full selves, their true selves to work. That there won't be some risk associated with doing so. The third dimension is psychological availability. And it has to do with having the capacity to engage. Do I have what it takes to engage fully in my job? It has to do with someone's individual circumstances. In particular with someone's kind of physical energy or physical resources. So, when people don't have the opportunity to renew as much as they need to outside of work. Or they're experiencing too much strain on the job, and experiencing burnout as a result. It ends up influencing how much they really can engage in the job. But that's not the only thing that impacts availability. The other thing that impacts availability is a person's confidence in their ability to do the job. In order for people to be really engaged in their work, they have to feel like, they're confident that if they invest themselves in their work, they're likely to succeed. And so this highlights the importance of providing kind of continual training, and reskilling, and developmental opportunities and feedback, so that employees can feel confident about their ability to do the job.

Examine the Three Drivers in Detail

Key Points

Psychological meaningfulness: having a reason to engage

Psychological safety: having the freedom and safety to engage

Psychological availability: having the capacity to engage

Now you will examine in detail the three drivers for engagement. These drivers, or conditions, need to be met in order for employees to be able to fully engage in their work. Each of them has elements that can be influenced by line managers.

Psychological Meaningfulness

Psychological meaningfulness is described as "having a reason to engage." This dimension is about work elements. It involves structuring jobs so that they have high motivating potential, or are challenging, meaningful, and provide opportunities for autonomy and involve specific and difficult goals. It also involves treating employees in a way that reinforces their natural tendency to reciprocate (i.e., principles of social exchange). If you give people challenging and meaningful work and set them up for success, they will reciprocate.

Two key sets of work factors are influential here:

1. The motivating potential of one’s job, as determined by job characteristics:

· Challenge and variety: When jobs fail to provide both challenge and variety in the tasks involved, it is easier for employees to become bored and/or robotic in the ways they approach their work.

· Significance: Jobs are more motivating when people are able to see the significance or impact of their work for others (or for the company at large). When people can see how others depend on their efforts, they tend to be more motivated in their work.

· Autonomy and control: The more latitude people have to channel their energies productively to continuously improve the way they do their work, the more they will actually do so.

· Clarity: Being unclear about performance expectations is frustrating and can make it difficult for employees to know whether an investment of their energies will lead to desired outcomes.

· Feedback and rewards: Feedback about the specific behaviors that are highly valued helps people to direct their energy more meaningfully. When combined with formal and informal recognition for good work, employees are more likely to feel that their investment in doing good work is worthwhile.

· Fit and identification: People tend to experience greater pleasure and fulfillment from what they do if they are in jobs or roles that match their interests, values, strengths, and skills.

2. Meaningful work interactions:

· Rewarding and meaningful interpersonal connections: The quality of one’s relationships with coworkers determines whether they feel they can contribute meaningfully to the group’s work (versus feeling taken for granted).

· Being seen as a person, not merely as a job incumbent: Does one feel worthwhile, useful, and valuable? Does one feel that their efforts are noticed and appreciated?

· Coworker coordination and support: Poor coordination with, and a lack of support from, coworkers can thwart the outcomes associated with people’s efforts to do their jobs well, thereby making it less meaningful for people to invest their energy.

Keep in mind that when people are matched to tasks based on assumptions that others have about what they can and cannot do (stereotypes), they may experience lower levels of fit because stereotype-based assumptions are often incorrect. We often see, for example, that employees with disabilities, and sometimes older workers and women, report experiencing lower levels of fit.

Psychological Safety

Psychological safety involves people experiencing the freedom and safety to engage (rather than being focused on protecting themselves). This dimension is about social elements. It involves developing high-trust relationships.

Simply put, without trust and fair treatment, engagement cannot exist. A lack of trust in management, the “system,” or coworkers — or, conversely, a sense of not feeling trusted by management — can erode engagement. Employees need to be able to trust that the way decisions are made within their organization is transparent and fair. Employees must feel that managers seem human, and moreover, managers must build trust with their employees by doing what they say they will do. Managers can also influence psychological safety by seeking feedback from employees about how well they, as managers, are doing. Doing so communicates that they trust and value employee input. Also, when leaders admit to their own mistakes, they help to promote a climate where employees experience psychological safety.

Employees look for clues about whether it’s safer for them to be silent or whether they can really speak up. Is management (or a specific manager) actually listening to understand what employees have to say, recognizing the possibility that they might learn something by listening to employees? If the answer is yes and employees feel like they are treated as “content providers,” then they tend to feel much more energized about engaging themselves in these conversations and in crafting their work. They are less likely to be distracted by fear of punishment.

Diversity and inclusion issues are particularly relevant for experiences of psychological safety. Members of historically marginalized groups often feel pressure to assimilate (in other words, to limit the expression of how they may be different from the dominant ingroup in order to fit in) and may also feel that they are judged in stereotypic ways. If they also lack role models in senior levels of the organization, they may conclude that there is a liability associated with their membership in a minority group and feel more guarded about fully expressing and engaging themselves at work.

Psychological Availability

Psychological availability involves having the capacity to engage. This dimension has to do with an employee’s individual circumstances. Individual distractions may leave people with more or fewer resources with which to engage. Research by Sonnentag (2003) has shown that there are daily fluctuations in one’s engagement at work, with evidence that engagement is related both to engagement experienced during the prior day but also to the opportunities one has for recovery in the non-work domain. However, psychological availability involves not just protecting employees’ efforts to renew personal energy through work-life balance but also providing employees with the kind of learning opportunities and feedback that allows them to feel confident about investing themselves in their work. Insecurity creates anxiety, which consumes energy that could otherwise be used for engagement. Instead of spending energy worrying about it, they can just do it.

Collepals.com Plagiarism Free Papers

Are you looking for custom essay writing service or even dissertation writing services? Just request for our write my paper service, and we'll match you with the best essay writer in your subject! With an exceptional team of professional academic experts in a wide range of subjects, we can guarantee you an unrivaled quality of custom-written papers.

Get ZERO PLAGIARISM, HUMAN WRITTEN ESSAYS

Why Hire Collepals.com writers to do your paper?

Quality- We are experienced and have access to ample research materials.

We write plagiarism Free Content

Confidential- We never share or sell your personal information to third parties.

Support-Chat with us today! We are always waiting to answer all your questions.