CRESSWELL WALKER Being an Active Self-Leader
A new route to personal success and organizational engagement
Good people in the modern workplace work very long hours, but
not, it seems, with high levels of job satisfaction. Business metrics
reveal high employee turnover, high employee absenteeism and
low employee satisfaction. Low employee engagement tells the
real story.In an international study of employee engagement, the Gallop Organization polled
employee engagement levels in 10 modern economies around the world. (See Figure 1)
Why, after four decades of leadership development, organizational re-engineering,
and book after book by high profile leaders and leadership
development experts, does employee engagement remain
at such a dismal level?
Why are more than 60% to 80% of employees only partially engaged or actively disengaged?
Why does generation Y baulk at buying in? Why are the majority of individual contributors
idle through the day?
Albert Einstein once said, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness
that created it.” We agree. We believe leadership technologies have reached saturation: It
will take more than 'just good leadership' to create a breakthrough in workplace
engagement levels. Let us start with how we think about relationships inside organizations.
Most of us see a linear, one-way relationship between the organization, leaders and
followers. (See Figure 2) When an organization launches a new initiative, the leaders are
called upon by the organization to implement the initiative through the ranks of followers:
Leaders demand, followers comply. As tail-end-Charlie', is it surprising that follower's exhibit
lack lustre commitment?
Paradigm of the “Engaged Organization” – Relationships and Roles – Figure 3Breaking through the organizational engagement barrier requires us to adopt a new mental model for organizational
relationships. This new mental model will be the engagement lens through which we view how people in roles and
functions interact in the organizations. Like the Hubble telescope, when we look through this new lens, we see things
previously outside our range of view. Let's take a look!
Suppose we started to re-think the workplace in terms of an interdependent, three-way relationship between the
organization, leaders and its followers? Let us 'swing' the role of the follower up into relationship with the
organization as shown in Figure 3. Here we see the follower as a partner in success alongside leaders and
representatives of the organizations. In this utterly transformed role and relationship, individual contributors are no
longer 'followers'.
We give this changed role a new name: Active self-leaders.
As active self-leaders, followers now share responsibility equally for the success
of leadership initiatives and organizational engagement. Active followers now
work in reciprocating, interdependent relationships to their organization and to
their leaders. They are called upon to exhibit the same high level of
commitment, initiative and responsibility as leaders, but they work in support of
leadership's key functions.To organisational success, they now have a direct stake. In return, the value of
each active self-leader is finally recognized in proportion to their contribution to
business success. The autonomy, alignment and responsibility accorded active
self-leaders in this mental model of organisational relationships naturally foster
engagement. The contribution bar is higher but so are the opportunities to
influence, to contribute and to be challenged.Cresswell Walker works as an executive coach and leadership trainer across SE Asia and the Middle East. An
international speaker, author and adventurer Creswell’s results rest upon an extraordinary educational background
and first career as an award winning Professional Planner. [email protected] | http://www.cresswellwalker.com