Engagement is an emotional response to group process and leadership behavior. When leaders foster trust, provide recognition, communicate transparently, offer support and empathy, inspire with a compelling vision, and prioritize personal development, they evoke positive emotions in employees. These emotional responses fuel higher levels of engagement, as employees feel connected, valued, and motivated to contribute their best to the organization’s success.
How do you pinpoint behavior from a 360 framework to identify areas of engagement breakdown?
The first step is identifying what is impacting engagement in group process and leadership. It is a TIGERS 6 Principles 360 TIGERS Workforce Behavioral Profile™ approach to identify group process behavior and the resulting employee-leadership connection that is correctable. The research-based and twice independently validated TIGERS 6 Principles are trust, interdependence, genuineness, empathy, risk resolution and success.
Once you identify the least functioning principle in the culture or department, you have focused direction for interventions rather than generalities. This helps you shake out and reuse many of the leadership training and development tools you already use and have found to be effective in a way that is targeted and focused for measurable outcomes based on shoring up the Principle.
For example, leadership behavior and performance impacts engagement for formally motivated employees and can be corrected through training and development as follows:
Trust
Unskilled leadership often surfaces lack of trust between leaders and their team members. The TIGERS 6 Principles emphasize building trust through open and transparent communication, active listening, and demonstrating reliability. By fostering trust, leaders can rebuild relationships, establish credibility, and inspire greater confidence and cooperation within their teams. The TIGERS 6 Principles course, Leadership Fundamentals, provides skill building in this area along with the remaining 5 Principles.
Interdependence
Leadership development often promotes a hierarchical and top-down approach that disregards the contributions and perspectives of team members. The TIGERS 6 Principles emphasize interdependence, encouraging leaders to recognize and leverage the diverse strengths and talents within their teams. By fostering a culture of collaboration and shared responsibility, leaders can correct disengagement by promoting inclusivity and valuing the input of their team members.
Genuineness
Unskilled leaders can be characterized by insincerity, lack of authenticity, and self-serving behaviors. The TIGERS 6 Principles emphasize genuineness, urging leaders to cultivate authenticity, honesty, and respectfully sincere, frank and forthright interactions. By embracing genuineness, leaders can correct disengagement by building stronger connections with their teams, fostering trust, and inspiring greater engagement and loyalty.
Empathy
Leadership in top down, command and control organizations often neglect the importance of empathy and understanding the needs and concerns of team members. The TIGERS 6 Principles stress the value of empathy, encouraging leaders to listen to understand, and show respect and kindness towards their team members. By practicing empathy, leaders can correct disengagement by fostering a supportive and inclusive environment where individuals feel valued, respected, and motivated to perform their best.
Risk
Unskilled leaders may be characterized by a fear of taking risks or stifling innovation and creativity within the team. The TIGERS 6 Principles promote a healthy approach to risk-taking. Workforce environment that embraces a healthy approach to risk-taking encourages the following behaviors:
- Encouraging leaders to create an environment that supports decision-making, facilitated planning, and accountable plan execution;
- Experimentation; and,
- Learning from failures, and embracing new ideas.
By encouraging calculated risk-taking, leaders can correct disengagement by widening their decision-making to embrace employee ideas, fostering innovation, boosting morale, and inspiring their teams to reach new levels of success.
Success
Unskilled leadership often focuses solely on individual success or short-term results, neglecting the holistic success of the team and the organization. The TIGERS 6 Principles redefine success to encompass both individual achievements and collective accomplishments. By aligning leadership practices with this broader definition of success, leaders can correct engagement by fostering the following:
- A work environment that celebrates collaboration;
- Provides recognition for work well done and successful behavior demonstrations;
- Recognizes contributions; and,
- Promotes the long-term growth and prosperity of the entire team.
Then goals and metrics make sense because a role, goal and relationship focus is measurable. The TIGERS Workforce Behavioral Profile shows you behavior improvements so you can the track ROI of your interventions.
Engagement is indeed an emotional response to leadership behavior. Effective leadership has a significant impact on the emotional well-being of employees, which in turn influences their level of engagement.
Care to dig deeper into this conversation?
- A good article that explains learning circles for training transference can be found here: A system approach to training that sticks
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Copyright TIGERS Success Series, Inc. by Dianne Crampton
The TIGERS 6 Principles empower Executives and Consultants with a comprehensive collaborative work culture and leadership system to resolve avoidable talent, engagement and work community problems that stunt growth.
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About the TIGERS 6 Principles
The TIGERS 6 Principles emerged from Business, Education and Psychology Group Dynamic Research. Independently evaluated twice for reliability and validity, the TIGERS 6 Principles offer a comprehensive system and framework for collaborative workforce and leadership development. Visit TIGERS Learning Center here. Visit our website here
