facebook, employee engagement, wrong, Toby Elwin, blog

What’s wrong with employee engagement? Ask Facebook

Praise in public, scold in private. Many are coached on this. But what happens when a single manager’s lack of self-awareness meets the level of the Facebook video a father posted to his daughter? See video below?

What, you ask, can the paternal bond of a father and a daughter offer management? The situation, I witness far too often, is a manager’s tough love, just as a father hides behind, will snap an employee or co-worker back into line. The father in this video uses tough love and tough love seems a viable option in a far too many manager tool kits, as well.

3 performance review politics that always trump merit

Politics trumps those who have shown reliable, merit-based performance.

When rewards are given to those with little merit, but through a host of politics such as cronyism, parochialism, and kleptocracy engagement is sabotagued and have little hope to achieve true engagement.

Merit-based performance would focus on the employee’s behavior that exemplifies excellence or the employee’s behavior that needs attention or improvement. When cronyism, kleptocracy, and parochialism gang up meritocracy has no chance.

Engagement needs both context and perspective

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet … “, iambic pentameter aside, I appreciate Mr. Shakespeare’s point.

However, when I look at a word that is recently trending in a lot of companies and organizations, a word such as … oh, engagement, it seems to stink of some fetid cesspool, not quite the rose implied.

The value of context relies on engagement. Context without perspective is an allusion. Without context what is said rarely meets what is delivered.

The final frontier of competitive advantage

If your company and my company recruit the same person and your company can not motivate that person, but my company can keep that person motivated: I win.

I’ll take an employee with half the technical skills who is motivated, over an employee with more technical skills who is unmotivated. We maximize resources to survive and motivation management is resources management.

If your company and my company need a series of projects to roll out a new strategic plan and your company can not deliver on those projects, but my company can: I win.