Engagement Exchange: Causes of disengagement that are typically overlooked (Part 4 of 8)

Sometimes the most common causes of low employee engagement aren't actually what is causing it on your team. Over 8 episodes we'll cover some of the less-obvious causes so you can take steps to mitigate them.

Welcome to the Engagement Exchange.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, this is Chris with Hacking Your Leadership. On today's
discussion on employee engagement. We're continuing this conversation that we
started about three weeks ago on insidious or maybe lesser
known causes of a decline in employee engagement that if
you're a leader of people and you're trying to solve
on your team, there might be places you can look
if the employee experience and the benefits and the time,
if those things have all been taken care of, these

(00:21):
might be the place where the low employee engagement is lying.
On this episode, the fourth item on this list that
we're talking about is a shortage of growth opportunities. You know,
and this is a really big one because if you
look at employee engagement surveys and exit interviews from a
lot of organizations, one of the largest causes of low
employee engagement and one of the most given reasons for

(00:45):
why a person is leaving an organization is that they
don't feel like there are opportunities for advancement. And you know,
I think in a lot of organizations, they a lot
of organizations kind of handcuff themselves in this because they think, well,
the organization isn't giving me the positions open, or I

(01:05):
have a lot of people with a lot of tenure
who are in their role for a long time and
they're not going away or getting promoted, So how do
I move my people up? They they kind of pigeonhole
themselves into this thing of like, well, if I can't
get my person promoted, then I can't give them a
growth opportunity. And I think that's where a lot of
leadership fails in this and where the employee engagement decline happens.

(01:26):
Because you can give your employees' growth opportunities that don't
involve permanently promoting them into the next role. But a
lot of leaders I don't think take advantage of that
or even know how to do it.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
I think it's such a truth thing I've been I've
been assigning Simon sinek Infinite Game to a lot of
people from a reading standpoint, just because of this exact
concept that in this conversation I want to have with them,
which is like growth is an ongoing journey forever, and
the next job is a mile marker on a journey

(01:58):
of the work that you're doing. I think you have
to you have to you have to see the You
have to see things that way if you're going to
be serious about growth outside of promotion. But I also
will say at the same times of people, but I
also understand like promotions matter, Like I had the same
the same conversation I have with you is like, how
do you how do you continue to build wealth or income?

(02:22):
You know, putting forth the same amount of time. Maybe
you know in a job, well, you get that by
not just getting a couple percentage every year for a
small raise. You do that by changing jobs and advancing
your career. So both of them matter. You want to
look at promotions and you want to look at opportunities
as a means of taking on additional responsibility and continuing

(02:46):
to level up your professional growth. But the idea of
how you're learning and growing has to be a longer
term view of what are you getting out of every
job that you have, What are you learning? How are
you gaining things? Because when ends up happening If you
don't take the time to really consider growth in this way,

(03:06):
you move too fast and you find yourself with a
whole lot of responsibility that you're not prepared to take on,
and that leads us down a really tough path because
then you're struggling to keep up with a job that
you have, and that only goes one of two ways.
Typically it either is with you leaving or you stepping
back into another role because you simply did not have
enough time to get what you need to get out

(03:29):
of that role. So anyway, I share all of that
because that, to me is the foundational conversation when you
start to talk about how do you create growth when
you don't have the open positions or the progress or
their promotions. And then also then as a leader, how
do you create those promotions in a positive, good way?

(03:51):
You know, how do you make sure that you're conscious
of creating space for your people that are growing and
developing and have the ability to do more, And how
are you making sure that people in roles and in
jobs aren't in them for a long time just doing
bare minimum of the expectation, because that just slows down
all of the work that you want to do from

(04:11):
building a culture of development, right for sure.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
So you know, there are definitely organizations I've been involved
at where where there were leaders who were not bad people, right,
Like I could see myself, you know, sitting at a
bar and having a beer with them and having a
great conversation. We had a lot in common. But were
they great developers of people? No, And because of that,

(04:33):
they probably shouldn't have been in a leadership role. However,
because the way that organization scorecards or performance manages or
gives annual reviews to those leaders, the things that are
on those reviews are not how well do you develop
and grow people? They're basically how well did you meet

(04:53):
the expectations of the organization of whatever scorecards or metrics
or things that we say important to us as a whole.
They're meeting those things just fine, and they're meeting it
not because of them being a good leader. They're meeting
it in spite of them not being a good leader,
because maybe they have great people on their team, or
you know, maybe people are trying hard for them because
they like them as a person, but that doesn't mean

(05:15):
they belong in a leadership role, and a person who
takes that spot for a long period of time because
their leader doesn't place a high enough importance on whether
or not they are growing and developing people, and they
just put the importance on the scorecard piece or you know,
the revenue piece or whatever it is, that they are
creating a disservice to all the people who want to

(05:36):
move up, and that leads to a huge opportunity when
it comes to solving this issue of a perceived shortage
of growth opportunities, because if people perceive that happening, believe me,
if all of their leaders are are doing great and
they develop and growth people well, having a person in

(05:56):
a role like that for several years isn't going to
be looked at as a negati thing. But by definition,
if you're in a role like that for several years,
you're probably going to start getting promoted here and there.
If a person's been in the same role for ten
or fifteen years or more without getting promoted, I'm not
saying they don't do the rest of their job well,
but it's very unlikely that they are growing and developing
people well if they've stagnated it in their own career.

(06:19):
So I want to go over some of the things
that you can do as a leader if you are
committed to giving your people more growth opportunities, But maybe
you don't have as much of an opportunity to fix
the How many open positions are there, how many people
can I promote, but I still want to show my
commitment to growing and develop my people. What you can

(06:39):
do to kind of solve that issue. Let's talk about that,
but first let's give it up towards to one of
our sponsors. All Right, if you're a leader of people
and you're trying to give growth and development opportunities to
your people in lieu of being able to promote them
because the spots just aren't available, you have to keep
in mind one really important thing, and that's that employees
view whatever their job is, whatever the core responsibilities of

(07:02):
their job, as reciprocal to whatever is on their paycheck.
So they get money they do this job, and anything
that they do above and beyond that is not considered reciprocal.
It's considered something almost out of their own pocket that
they're doing unless they get something in return for it.

(07:25):
They don't get something in return out of a growth
opportunity if that opportunity is something they cannot take with
them elsewhere. So, if you are a leader of people
and you're trying to stretch somebody or give them an
assignment they can do, if the skill set required to
do that assignment is not something they can take with
them to other places, or even in the same organization

(07:47):
that you're in now, but to a different position or
a different role. That's not going to be viewed as
a growth opportunity. It's going to be viewed as an
opportunity to not do their day job right. They could
do something else for a few minutes. And maybe that's fine,
everyone's in a while too, But it's if it's truly
about growth, it needs to be about teaching them a
skill set that isn't just about how can I do

(08:07):
my own job better? It's how can I get better
as a person, as an employee, as a citizen of
the workforce, whether it's in this organization or any organization.
How can I expose myself to things that I can
take with me in those promotions or even to the organizations.
And a lot of leaders are hesitant to do that

(08:28):
because it's almost like, you know, poking the bear. It's like,
if I give you the skills to leave and then
you do, now I've lost you. And my response to
that is the cliche, well, if you don't give me
the skills and I stay, is not even worse, Like
what am I doing for you? If I'm just sitting
here doing nothing. So so if you're a leader, people
make sure that you think about that when it comes
to giving growth opportunities. What skill set are you actually

(08:51):
helping them learn that they can take with them, not
just what can you delegate to them to do that
you take off your own plate.

Speaker 2 (08:56):
Yeah, and I think communicate that skill set and how
it ties to the work that they're doing. I talk
about it all the time around, like how you better
in yourself as a person, What are you building skill
in for both personal and professional growth? And then like
what do you take to your point? Like what are
you taking with you? Like like if I can help
people understand that what they're learning are skills that are

(09:17):
not just like stuck in the space that they're in,
but these are skills that can help them be applied
to other parts of their life and other parts of
their profession. And whether you maintain a career in the
same organization, you can use those skills to better yourself
here or you take those skills with you somewhere to
be more successful. That's a win for me either way
as a leader, you know, and I tell people like,

(09:38):
but I'm selfish, I want all the best talent to
stay with me. But also I want you to be
successful and I want you, know, you to take whatever
you're gaining here to be able to see that and
to then apply that to be at the best of
what you want to be wherever you want to be
and whatever that might be. And I think that that
focus on skill building and then connecting those dots for

(09:58):
people to understand, I think is is absolutely critical. Yeah,
there are some jobs in some industries where like the
thing that you're learning how to do is only for
that thing that that that that is a thing. But
for most people in a lot of industries, you're learning
skills that have to do with just larger elements of life,
whether it's communication or or just how to work through conflict,

(10:24):
how to problem solve, how to strategize, Like these are
all things that are applicable in a lot of places
in life, but can be very valuable once you understand
what you are learning in the skills that you are getting,
and then you have a leader that helps you to
connect those dots. Like I said, that's that's to be
super critical if you're if you're looking to say, hey,
there's more to this than just the next job. That

(10:46):
the next job is an important thing and promotions are important,
and I understand that, but what are you doing in
between that time? And how are you making sure that
you're building the skill to make you the most you know,
competitive candidate for when that job does open, or its
skills that you're continuing to build that you can apply
to other things in your life that will also take

(11:07):
you down the path that you want to go down.

Speaker 1 (11:08):
Yeah, I think you're spot on with that. I love
that you talked about connecting the dots because you know,
we've all seen the Karate Kid, and we've all seen
the you know, mister Miyagi tells Daniel to paint the
fence and wax the car, and and the and the Indians.
What happens? What happens? He gets frustrated, right, he gets
frustrated because after weeks of essentially fixing this guy's house
and having no idea what he's doing it for, then

(11:29):
all of a sudden, there's that light bulb moment where
it's like, oh, the same motions to do these things
are also the blocks for the the karate moves, And
it's like, yeah, that works great in a movie. It
doesn't work great. In real life, and in real life
you have to connect the dots going forward, not just
looking backward. There. There isn't gonna be this aha moment
of Oh, all these things that I was telling you
to do, now you're seeing what I was doing here.
That's that's ridiculous and it's not good leadership. Good leadership

(11:51):
is to say, this is what I'm going to try
to teach you, and this is how we're going to
do it. And I want you to be bought into
this process because you're gonna get better. And if you're
not bought in or if you're having issues with it,
we're gonna talk about this. We're going to continue talking
about it because my goal is to grow and develop you,
not to get credit for growing and developing you. And
that's a very different mindset going forward with us. Thank
you all for joining us in this discussion on employee engagement.

(12:13):
We'll see you next Thursday as we continue the conversation
on you know, insidious ways that employee engagement can drop.
You have a great day,