Get 4X Employee Engagement With Expectations (Engagement Part 2) - S5E2

Jason talks more about Gallup's latest on employee engagement, with a focus on how a clear understanding of exceptional can lead to 4X more engagement.

Things to try as a manager:

1. Ask your employees for their Top 3 priorities and compare them to your answer
2. Objectively write down what you're judging your people on (hours worked? calls made?), and then write "Exceptional" and start to list the quantifiable things that define it
3. Use the GROW (Goal-Reality-Options-Way Forward) model in your 1:1s
4. Ask what "great" looks like, converse about it, and document it as a behavioral north star for your employees

Leadership Voyage is brought to you by Golden Mean Consulting Group, specializing in the training of new managers.

Leadership Voyage
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Transcript

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Wherever you are on your leadership voyage, it starts here. All right, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Leadership Voyage, the podcast dedicated to your pursuit of becoming a great leader. My name is Jason Wick, your host. You can contact me at startyouvoyaggmail.com if you have any questions, comments, opinions, thoughts, recipes. I don't I don't know. Uh you can contact me anytime uh at that Gmail address. Please do not hesitate. I love hearing from you with thoughts for episodes or opinions about guests or topics, what we need right now, anything that we should be hearing about um as a as a working society. Any thoughts like that? Happy to hear it. Uh let's see what's the stuff to get out of the way. First of all, Instacart, right? If you have never tried grocery delivery, I encourage you to give it a try. It's kind of a gamecher as far as getting groceries quickly and handpicked by a trusted shopper. I'm talking about Instacart. If you click on the link in the show notes, you can get a free delivery on your first order uh of $35. And you can get that delivery in as quick as an hour. Super Bowl party. Well, yeah, they just that just happened. But great example of needing something. You forgot those last minute items for uh for the dip or the chili or whatever it is you're making for that Super Bowl party, having folks over for any type of gathering. It's a great opportunity to try something new when you're in a pinch. get it quickly and uh free delivery on that first order of uh$35 or more. We are here today in February of 2026 uh second part of a threepart series about employee engagement. And this is going to be a fun one. After the last episode, which was kind of going over Gallup's most uh recent information about employee engagement, I decided parts two and three around this topic are going to be about two distinct areas that were called out in that study. Um, let's see, where do we begin? How do I capture this? I don't want to alienate folks who didn't listen to part one. So I guess what I'll do is a quick quick highle recap of the work from Gallup in the last episode. 8 million fewer people are engaged at work since 2020. So about the equivalent of 8 million folks, the size of New York City roughly. 24 and 25 were stuck at 31% engagement uh in the United States. And I did look into it last time. I said this study was about the United States. Most parts of the world engagement is even lower actually. So just thought I'd throw that little detail in. Um what else was important? Gen Z and millennials. Uh definitely hit hard in terms of not feeling cared about at work or um not having opportunities to learn and grow. And one of the really important things that I talked about at the end of the last episode from this information from Gallup was around um understanding what great looks like. Only 22% of folks who are not in a leadership role think they have a clear understanding of what exceptional performance is. So, I asked you all to try something and it'll have been about two weeks between these two episodes depending on how you know quickly you listen. But I asked you all to try something and that was reinter your boss as far as what their expectations for you are and ask your team members that you manage and lead what they think great looks like. And what we're going to do is explore this area today. It could be one of the most impactful questions and pursuits I should say that you take on at work as a manager because remember the huge stat from last time, hugely impactful stat. If someone understands what great looks like, clear understanding of exceptional performance, understands those expectations, they are four times more likely to be engaged and engaged uh engaged workforces lead to satisfied customers lead to profit. It's shown over and over again that that is kind of the cascade if that makes sense. So let's dig into that idea a little bit. Okay, let's dig into that idea because if there's something out there, I'm not going to say it's easy. I'm not saying it's easy. None of this is easy. But if if it's relatively simple, you just have to prioritize it. If it's relatively simple to figure out, then you're in good shape. You're in good shape. If you can help set the expectation for your employees around what's expected of them and what great looks like, they're four times more likely to be engaged, which kicks off that whole cascade. Let's do it. Right. Part three will be a little more soft skill stuff. Part two here about this engagement topic topic is really about really specific tangible things to do to help people understand what it looks like to do a great job, be engaged, and find more satisfaction in work and therefore provide more value to your customers, whoever those might be. So let's dig into it. So first off, why do you think it's so rare for people to have clarity around what great looks like? I've been thinking about this question. I think managers probably have a feeling about what great looks like, but I bet they just don't take the time to be intentional and systematic around having the conversations. So if an employee falls short, maybe that leads to a difficult feedback conversation. But the the bummer about that is while the manager is trying to help the employee become better and it is coming from the right place, the employee maybe didn't understand the expectation or standard in the first place. And I think that's happening far more than we would like to admit. I think about processes versus outcomes and it makes me wonder if we are saying our employees performance is related to the outcome of whatever their job is. If a customer is happy, the employee performed well. That's flawed, right? Think about this, folks. Just because you get a good outcome doesn't mean you did it right. And just because you get a bad outcome doesn't mean you did it wrong. We want KPIs, OKRs, leading indicators, whatever the heck it is you all measure. We want those revenue, profit, IBIDA. We want to measure those things. We want to understand them, but they're not the beall endall that is a straight line to someone's performance. So let's say that you manage a customer service team and the customer is happy. They might just be a happy person. It doesn't mean that your employee provided them great customer service at the level that you will have defined as exceptional. Also, let's say maybe that a customer churns for whatever reason. That doesn't automatically mean that your customer service person didn't provide exceptional service. They might have walked them through the progression of trying to help them find the right I don't know what the example I'm thinking of in my head is right now, the right troubleshooting or the right uh plan for them or the right approach to a problem that they're finding with the product or whatever the heck it might be. They might have gone through that and acted professionally and talked to them on the phone and provided responses in email or whatever it might have been. They might have done all these things and their standard of communication and eloquence and timeliness and all of this stuff might have been exceptional in the process but the outcome sucked. So why am I saying all this? Because I think as managers, maybe we just aren't prioritizing the behaviors and the how when we're so focused on the urgency of the outcomes or the what. Now, I've got another theory about this maybe. Why is clarity so rare when it comes to understanding what exceptional looks like for a role? And remember only 22% of folks say that they understand that or feel like they have clear expectations and understanding of those uh expectations. I would say this a lot of industries are moving so quickly we might be hesitant to clarify what's expected. We use quote unquote chaotic quote unquote rapid change, quote unquote customers needs are rapidly evolving. We might use that as a crutch and as an excuse to not recclarify expectations continually. I was so fortunate three seasons ago to speak to Liz Wisman, the off author of Multipliers, Impact Players, and Other Things. Rookie Smarts, I think the name of the book was, or rookie mode. Can't remember right now. Sorry. She had something really great to say about the ORC chart, job descriptions. This was in the context of talking about impact players, people who do more without having to be asked or go outside of the job description and do what needs to be done, particularly when things are unclear or ambiguous. I wanted to bring this quote into the conversation because I think it is perhaps an example of how things change quickly and we don't take the time to continue talking about that and set new expectations for our people. The organization is a snapshot in time. It's like an org chart and job descriptions. We need it to avoid total chaos in large organizations. But what it's done, we organize for like work that's been important in the past, but work that's important today tends to be what's new, what's um still illdefined, it's liinal, and and that we haven't yet organized for. And that's what's important. It's kind of like um every time I go through TSA security in the airport, I always think this is such a perfectly designed system for last year's security threats. Okay. Right. So there you hear it from Did you know that up to 82% of new managers are left completely in the dark, untrained and searching for answers? That lack of preparation doesn't just hurt your new leaders, it holds your entire business back, draining morale and costing you productivity. Stop the clock on bad management. Golden Mean Consulting offers a proven no fluff approach to help your new managers build the right habits from day one. Our co-founders, Sonia and Jason, have over 20 years of experience in the trenches so you can trust they know what works. To learn more, visit goldenmean consultinggroup.com. That's g o ldemeultinggroup.com. Is we spend all this time putting together job descriptions. We put all this time into it, right? And it's important and it's necessary. But at the end of the day, what's probably more important is continually staying in sync with your people around what's important and what exceptional looks like. You might have taken all this time to write the job description, but it just says kind of like what they're supposed to do. It doesn't define what exceptional looks like for how to do it, and it doesn't revise and continually update for what the new needs of the organization might be. That's really important to acknowledge. So I think that might be part of it too is we put the job description down, you know, rub our hands together and say mission accomplished. But in this case, I think we're talking about something that needs to happen continually. Kind of like feedback and performance management. What does great look like? The last piece I want to throw in here around like why is it so rare to find clarity? I want to kind of put a little emphasis on this for you all because you might be thinking, oh, whatever. listen. So, they're not as engaged as I wish they were. Okay, fine. So, maybe I'm not in the top 10% of organizations. I'm getting by. My people are doing the work. We're getting stuff done. But I want to put a little human element here and it's around stress. And there was an episode that I had uh also season two, oddly enough uh season 2 episode 13, which was called psychosocial hazards at work. I'd never heard of the term psychosocial hazards. This was about an article that came up in Australia. Australia was sent passing legislation or requirements for businesses to businesses to um explicitly manage psychosocial hazards in the workplace. Now, if you're not familiar with this, you might be thinking about some really like clearly obvious physical problems, but no, I'm talking about psychosocial hazards. One of the three things in this article was lack of role clarity. Lack of role clarity provides stress provides a lot of stress for people. The brain says I don't know what's expected of me and can perceive that as a threat. We can't clarify everything, right? Let's rewind back to Liz Winesman's last clip. Things emerge. It's not the old stuff we had to do. It's new, which means the manager is going to have to put a little effort into this to reduce that threat for their people continually and ongoing. How can I help my people feel safer? You can actually do that by providing clear expectations and telling them what exceptional looks like. I don't think even a couple of weeks ago I would have naturally connected these two things. Okay, let's talk about what we can do. Okay, that's why we're here. We're not here to complain and whine about all the stuff going on in business around the country or around the world. I mean, yeah, that feels good for a couple of minutes, but what we're here for is as managers or leaders or both, supervisors, team leads, um, experienced peers. We are here to help make the cultures around us better. And I'm telling you in this case, specifically for folks who manage others, there are things you can do to help with this issue of not understanding what great or exceptional look like. Because if you can define that and keep it defined in an ongoing way with your people, remember the cherry on top of all this, folks. People who understand what a great job looks like are four times more likely to be engaged. And that sounds fantastic. So, I've got a few things for you, a few tips. Okay. First, take an audit around the definition of success. Ask your employees to write down two or three priorities for them for the next month. Okay? Just ask them, hey, over the next four to six weeks, what are the three top priorities for you? And then you as the manager do the same thing and have a conversation about it in the next one-on-one. If you think this is weird or out of the blue or inconsistent with what you normally show up with in one-on- ons, that's great. Explain that. Say, "Hey, you know, honestly, I was listening to this podcast. I was learning about this article from Gallup and I got this idea and I'd like to try it with you. If you could take five to 10 minutes, employee and write down your top three priorities for the next four to six weeks, I'm going to do the same and we're going to talk about it next oneonone. And by the way, tell your employee this isn't a test. It's not a test to see if you've got it right. It's a test to see if we're aligned and if I am communicating right as the manager. This is all about developing management skills which is which enable performance out of the employees. That's why we're talking about this. So that's the first idea. Definition of success uh auditing kind of what the priorities are I think maybe is a better way to say it. So uh priorities audit number one idea. Okay. What's another thing you could do? Second one is thinking back on this clip from Liz Wiseman about a job description telling you kind of about the tasks that someone might do, but it doesn't really address the true value creation of the job. It might, but it also probably doesn't fully. So, as a manager, take 15 minutes. If you work in person, close your door. If you use Slack or Teams or Google Meet or whatever you use, close it. Take 15 minutes and be honest with yourself about the rubric that you are using to determine whether or not your employees are doing a good job. If it's a service job, is it about hours in their seat? If it's a sales job, is it about number of calls? If it's an engineering job, is it about number of lines of code written? Really be honest and think about the metrics that you are using, perhaps even unaware or subconsciously. to determine whether or not somebody is doing a good job. Then write down exceptional and start brainstorming what is exceptional. What is exceptional? So that second one is really challenging yourself with the metrics that you are valuing perhaps not even aware of it. Are you unconsciously praising the person who works late but actually aren't aware of how productive they are? Does that make sense? So things to define exceptional. Number one, ask your employee what are they focused on. You do the same thing. Get together and meet. that makes sure you're aligned that your employee is working on the highest value ad and highest priority activities for the organization. Second, what are you measuring and be honest about it and then reimagine what you should be measuring or could be measuring to define exceptional. Okay. Three. Three. There is an episode I did last season about the grow model. I cannot take credit for it. Uh it's a uh season 4 episode 16. Grow your one-on-one process with goals. It's a good article in Forbes. Uh I think it was Forbes. Yeah. And the grow framework is goals, reality, options, and way forward. This sounds so simple, it's crazy. Use your one-on-one to talk about what are the goals, what's the reality about those, what are the options for moving forward, and how do we choose to move forward, what's the way forward, that's the W in the acronym. Implement grow as a recurring system in your one-on ones. You can do that next week, folks. And again, if people are like, "This is coming out of the blue or uh yeah, out of left field, so to speak, then you explain it. I've really been thinking and reflecting about my management approach and I think we could be a little more purposeful. I could be a little more purposeful as your manager to make sure that you're focused on the right goals. for this organization and that we are facing the realities about the goals in front of us, the options we have to proceed and then agree on a way forward and check on that regularly whether it's every month or every couple weeks whatever it is. Grow framework systematic recurring fits into your one-on- ones really well. And then the fourth thing, the final one. Okay, remember we're trying to define exceptional for people so that they're more engaged. That's the goal. That's what we're talking about here, folks. That's what we're shooting for. And each of these are tangible. They take a little effort, but they're actually actually pretty simple to try. So number four, ask the question. Ask your employees what do they think great looks like? And after they answer, write it down. And I don't mean just copy and paste. I mean, have a conversation, find a little agreement, maybe negotiate in a little nuance there. What does great look like? Dig into their answer and then write it down when they're done. Afterwards, send them a Slack or a Teams message, send them an email, whatever it looks like. Write it down so that you both see it. Keep it in your shared one-on-one document. Write it on the whiteboard. Whatever the heck it is, that's your north star. Even just one behavior about what great is that's written down and shared between manager and employee, I have to say that I bet that skews the odds significantly in the favor of understanding clear expectations around what it looks like to do a good job. how great looks as well and that we keep that shared vision together as manager employee is worth everything. It's worth everything. So that's what I've got for you folks. The problem almost 80% of people do not know what it looks like to be exceptional at their job. If you can help them see that better as their manager, they are four times more likely to be engaged. Engaged workforces lead to a tremendous cascade of customer and revenue results. So what are the four things that you could try? Just pick one of them. Four things you could try. Number one, do this priorities audit. What are the top three things you're focused on for the month? I will also answer it as your manager and we'll have a conversation about it. It's not a test for them. It's an alignment conversation. Two, think about what you're measuring. Is it how many hours you work or is it what how many outcomes you find? Write that down as the manager. Take some time alone to objectively analyze that and then define exceptional. What makes exceptional exceptional? Three, use the grow model goal reality uh options way forward. Wedge that into your one-on- ons. Use it as an opportunity to stay in touch on the most important goals and focusing on those. And then finally, ask the question about what is great. negotiate that conversation, navigate it with the employee, and then write down the shared version, which essentially becomes your behavioral north star on what it looks like to be great at at least one thing. Oftentimes, we don't start something because it seems daunting, one thing. Maybe it's how they interact with customers. What does great look like for that, right? So, that's all I've got for you folks. This is part two of a three-part series around employee engagement, inspired by some of the latest from Gallup with our lowest engagement scores in over a decade. And we're here trying to do something about it. Let me know. Start your voyaggmail.com. Tell me what you're doing about it. I'd love to hear about it. We will be coming back soon with part three and that will be around how to communicate in a way that um helps your people feel more valued and cared about. Okay, but until next time, reach out to me. Let me know what you think. Let me know what you're doing. And everybody, take care.