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O P I N I O N
Employee engagement (Part 3)
W e generally know and accept that managers have the greatest day-to-day impact on employee engagement. Yet, even our best managers are increasingly pressed and finding it harder to navigate and do right by their clients, their people, their organizations, and themselves. Strong emotional intelligence, empathy, and the ability and capacity to engage the ‘whole person’ move teams and projects forward.
Peter Atherton GUEST SPEAKER
For most, workloads continue to rise. Budget, schedule, and resource constraints continue to consume. Employee engagement is down. Overwhelm and burnout is up. Career pivoting is more common. Hoping for better, while adding more “doer” and “seller” goals is not the ideal strategy for ongoing success. As top managers become more scarce, high- potentials demand more, and we realize that our current approach doesn’t scale, we must take inventory of what we really need to succeed and what we’re up against so that we can design pathways to win. WHAT WE NEED. We expect managers to do a lot. In most organizations, managers are at the cross- roads of our business success day-in and day-out
in terms of: profit and loss, client satisfaction, risk mitigation, and employee engagement. If we are honest, we know there are gaps. We know there is often little training to understand and practice the art and science of business and functional management. We also know there is even less in terms of people and mission management – the “liquid” that moves us forward, and the “mortar” that holds us all together. Not fully acknowledging and filling these gaps is what results in overload, ineffectiveness, and frustration. WHAT WE’RE UP AGAINST. Management is messy by its
See PETER ATHERTON, page 12
THE ZWEIG LETTER March 11, 2019, ISSUE 1287
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