Published:

07/16/2012 08:56pm

Master Employee Engagement (Part I) - The Most Important Strategy For Revitalizing Your Organization

Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for. —Victor Frankl

Psychiatrist, Neurologist and Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl wrote Man's Search For Meaning - one of the 10 most influential books in the United States history (according to the Library of Congress). With gripping experiences and insights on how few Holocaust victims survived, his experience taught him that our main drive in life is neither pleasure (as Freud thought), nor power (as Adler thought), but instead meaning. After his release, Frankl founded the school of logotherapy ("Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy" - after Freud and Adler). The goal of a logotherapist is to carry out an existential analysis of the person, and help him discover meaning for his life.

When contemplating the notion of employee engagement, it occurred to me that the systemic cause of low engagement is a crisis of meaning. And the highest calling of a leader is to be an organizational logotherapist. To carry out an analysis of himself, and his organization - discover the meaning - the core purpose - bring that purpose alive, live that purpose, model that purpose, and watch that purpose become a magnet for creating a winning, fulfilling culture.

Business Leader as Logotherapist

The way industry has been dealing with this "crisis of meaning" is to define a new buzzword - "employee engagement" give it lip service, and make half baked attempts to measure and manage it. It seems little real progress is being made (despite over 2 million results in google, over 4,000 news articles and the ubiquitous employee satisfaction survey).

The New York Conference Board, a century-old research firm that began studying employee satisfaction and engagement 25 years ago, reports that worker happiness has fallen every year since - in good economic times and bad. Today, according to their research, over half of American workers effectively hate their jobs.

Further, seventy percent of HR professionals confirm employee engagement is an issue. A lack of engagement results in dysfunctional relationships, lower productivity and an unwillingness to go beyond the job description. Some studies have found that the majority of disengaged employees don't even quit, they stay, collect their pay check, and damage productivity and relationships.

Unfortunately many leaders and their constituencies continue to suffer from the post-industrial revolution, draconian corporate belief that employees are to be used as tools to optimize profit. Yet with increasing attention on corporate social responsibility and employee engagement, we are beginning to understand that there is a direct correlation between the positive emotions an employee feels - and his performance, productivity, creativity, innovation, loyalty, commitment - all leading to profit.

The Vital Strategy for Creating Meaning and Connection at Work:

Take on The Function of the Chief Purposologist. Core Purpose is the meaning your organization yearns for. If man can find meaning in work, through the broader context of organizational purpose, his or her level of inspiration will rise. And the extent to which that purpose is imbedded in the DNA of his culture, is the extent to which the people in the organization will feel connected to themselves, and a higher cause. This factor has proven itself in Jim Collins's seminal research at Stanford University, where he found that connection to a core purpose was a key factor in 'building a company to last'. For CEO's who believe that employee engagement matters, internalizing core purpose as the organizational reason for being should transcend all else. And not just because it creates more financial value - which it does - but because helping people find meaning in their work is a key component to helping people find happiness in their lives. And the ripple effect of living happier more inspired lives translates to happier spouses, kids, friends, relatives, and community. We live in a state of interconnection, and Delivering Happiness to worke