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Take Away Line
Loving work and higher productivity go hand in hand. We know the link but in stressed times the tendency is for leaders to drive harder not love more. As a leader, how can you put the love back in to leadership? For good! One way is to consider a really great new leadership development intervention Heart of Leadership to put the heart back into your leadership in 2012. Get in touch to find out more.
Love and work
Love and work are words that often sit uncomfortably together. Yet, the recent national happiness survey, conducted by the Office for National Statistics, shows the link between greater happiness and being in work. So, we love it when we’re in work and we hate it when we’re not, but do we really love the work we’re in?
And whether you’re in or out of work, stress levels have risen and are set to rise further, according to academics. The consequences of high stress levels are considerable for longer term health outcomes. So, at such a busy time of year, what can we think about doing as we enter 2012?
So many organisations measure employee engagement levels. We know that engagement levels, themselves perhaps a way of thinking about how our love of work and our workplace, as well as ‘productive engagement,’ predict higher performance. Indeed, the UK’s Department of Business Innovation and Skills commissioned a study into the link. To quote their website: ‘The independent reviewers’ answer is an unequivocal yes… performance and profitability have been transformed by employee engagement.’ According to Business Link, the Hay Group ‘identified that engaged employees generate 43% more revenue than disengaged ones’. Quite a margin!
Engaging engagement
Business Link goes on to suggest the employee engagement is enabled by:
- Leaders communicating the leadership story and how their staff are part of this story
- Developing engaging managers who motivate, challenge and support employees skilfully
- Providing employees with a voice in their organisations
- Acting with integrity, which means practising what you preach. There shouldn’t be a gap between what the people in your business say and what they do.
And engagement levels are promoted by such things as:
- Job design
- Involvement
- Autonomy
- Relationships
- Creativity/innovation
- Commitment to the cause
So, when it comes to work at least, love is good for all: for ourselves and for our organisations. Not love without boundaries perhaps, love is certainly in the mix. And this is a key leadership role.
Reigniting the Heart of Leadership©
Engagement is a result of a number of things as we saw, but it is also a proxy indicator for leadership itself. How we as leaders ‘show up’ each day at work makes a critical different to how our people feel and how they engage.
A great new one-day leadership intervention, the ’Heart of Leadership©’, aims to help leaders make a real difference to how they engage their people. Briskly but drawing on the wisdom in the room, it:
- Helps participants master their own story as a leader
- looks at how they influence their people and their environment
- Considers how they present themselves as a person
- Commits them to their own leadership development journey for the future
Having just undergone an accreditation programme in this brilliant intervention, I can tell you it’s a real cracker! Get in touch and I’ll send you a brochure of the programme and the benefits it can bring you and your organisation.
Debating Points
- How do you ‘show up’ each day as a leader?
- Do you know what engagement levels are in your organisation? How do you know?
- What does your organisation do to engage its people more?
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