Did you see the recent research report from Capgemini? It’s called ‘People Experience Advantage: how companies can make life better for their most important assets‘. And while I might take umbrage with referring to people as assets, the report is still well worth a look.
For me, one of the most shocking findings in the report is the huge gap between what leaders think is going on with their people, and the reality. For example while 92% of leaders believe the employees they manage are happy at work, the report finds that only 30% of employees feel the same way. What is going on?!
Now, I don’t want this to turn into a ‘leader’ bashing blog. I think leaders are often given a hard time when it comes to employee experience and employee engagement. And by the way, just to clarify, when I use the word leader, I’m talking about anybody that has line management responsibility for other people. Let’s save the ‘leaders versus managers’ debate for another day. But in my experience most leaders (and/or managers) want to come to work and do a good job. Of course they want their teams to have a great experience at work. Of course they want their teams to be engaged. Why wouldn’t they? It makes their job easier and who doesn’t want a happy team?
The problem is that most leaders are promoted because they’re technically good, not because they are necessarily great at leading and managing others. We just somehow expect them to know how to do this stuff.
When I reflect on my own experience all those years ago as a first time leader, honestly, I didn’t have a clue. I got some stuff right by luck, and some stuff right by judgement. But yes, I made loads of mistakes. And of course we offer leadership development in its many guises, but looking at these findings it’s not really working.
So what’s going on? Could it be that employees are good at masking? Pretending everything is great when in fact they are having a miserable time? Maybe… But far more likely is that we are not setting our leaders up for success.
I have often joked that when I was in-house I was given more support and guidance on how to sit correctly at my desk to avoid back problems, than I was on how to be a great leader. So how can we help our leaders to get good at this and facilitate a great employee experiences that delivers engagement?
The Capgemini finding alone hints strongly at the need to help leaders develop their emotional intelligence, so that they can empathise more readily. Better understanding of, and empathy with the people we work with and lead, would seem like a solid place to start.
But it is a great question and one we are currently researching. So I would love to know what you think – what do we need to do differently with our leaders to close this gap? What skills and behaviours to those leaders who facilitate great experiences exhibit? And most importantly what can we do to better support our leaders?
Let me know your thoughts on this and if you would like to get involved in our research.
