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An interesting article from Fast Company, “Marcus Buckingham Thinks Your Boss Has an Attitude Problem” by one of my favourite business researchers and authors Marcus Buckingham, he works at the Gallup Organization and his research focuses primarily on making the link between people, their performance, and business results. He the co-author of two best-selling books: “First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently“, with co-author Curt Coffman, and “Now, Discover Your Strengths“, with co-author Donald O. Clifton.

Buckingham’s research has involved sifting through 1 Million Gallup surveys seeking to answer the question “What does a strong and vibrant workplace look like?”, his research resulted in identifying 12 key questions, referred to as the Q12, represent the strength of an organisation or work unit.

The 12 Questions That Matter

Marcus Buckingham’s research revealed that a “vibrant workplace” requires that people within an organisation or work unit can provide compelling answer to the following 12 questions. These 12 questions are important in determining whether people are engaged, not engaged, or actively disengaged at work.

1. Do I know what is expected of me at work?
2. Do I have the materials and equipment that I need in order to do my work right?
3. At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?
4. In the past seven days, have I received recognition or praise for doing good work?
5. Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?
6. Is there someone at work who encourages my development?
7. At work, do my opinions seem to count?
8. Does the mission or purpose of my company make me feel that my job is important?
9. Are my coworkers committed to doing quality work?
10. Do I have a best friend at work?
11. In the past six months, has someone at work talked to me about my progress?
12. This past year, have I had opportunities at work to learn and grow?

_{(c) 1992-1999, The Gallup Organization, Princeton, NJ. All rights reserved.}

The research resulting from answering these 12 questions speaks for itself:

The link between people and performance was vivid. The most “engaged” workplaces (those in the top 25% of Q12 scores) were 50% more likely to have lower turnover, 56% more likely to have higher-than-average customer loyalty, 38% more likely to have above-average productivity, and 27% more likely to report higher profitability.

The research has also highlighted important “attitude adjustments” that management need to make to increase the levels of employee engagement.

Key Attitude Adjustments

Buckingham offered an overview of his research and identified five attitude adjustments that redefine the essence of leadership in business:

Attitude Adjustment #1: Measure what really matters. (By the way — the numbers you’re using now don’t matter.)

You can divide any working population into three categories: people who are engaged (loyal and productive), those who are not engaged (just putting in time), and those who are actively disengaged (unhappy and spreading their discontent). The U.S. working population is 26% engaged, 55% not engaged, and 19% actively disengaged.

In essence, then, the CEO’s job is to improve the ratio of engaged to actively disengaged workers. But here’s the problem: Few of the CEOs in our study could say which work units in their company were effectively engaged and which weren’t. They didn’t know where their culture was strong and where it was weak, whether it was getting better or getting worse.

Attitude Adjustment #2: Stop trying to change people. Start trying to help them become more of who they already are.

You can’t standardize human behavior. Of course, that’s precisely what most leaders attempt to do. That goal — standardizing human behavior — is the driving force behind most executive-training programs and leadership-development courses. What’s the quickest way to build a coherent culture? Get everyone to manage the same way…. The best managers don’t even try to fight that fight. We studied 80,000 of them from 400 different companies — people who excelled at getting great performance from their people. These managers followed the same basic set of principles: People don’t change that much, so don’t waste your time trying to rewire them or trying to put in what was left out. Instead, spend your time trying to draw out what was left in. When it comes to getting the best performance out of people, the most efficient route is to revel in their strengths, not to focus on their weaknesses.

Attitude Adjustment #3: You’re not the most important person in the company. (Believe it or not, your middle managers are.)

Our research tells us that the single most important determinant of individual performance is a person’s relationship with his or her immediate manager. It just doesn’t matter much if you work for one of the “100 Best Companies,” the world’s most respected brand, or the ultimate employee-focused organization. Without a robust relationship with a manager who sets clear expectations, knows you, trusts you, and invests in you, you’re less likely to stay and perform.

Attitude Adjustment #4: Stop looking to the outside for help. The solutions to your problems exist inside your company.

Talent is a multiplier. The more energy and attention you invest in it, the greater the yield will be. That’s why the best leaders are relentless at seeking out, shadowing, studying, and highlighting the lessons of their own top performers. The funny thing is that most CEOs spend their time benchmarking best practices in other companies. They want to know how they’re doing relative to their peers. I tell my clients, Don’t go on a tour of Disney, Southwest Airlines, or Discover Financial Services. You have some of the world’s best managers working inside your own company. Look to them first. Learn from your own people first.

Attitude Adjustment #5: Don’t assume that everyone wants your job — or that great people want to be promoted out of what they do best.

We say that we want to build world-class organizations. That’s meaningless if we don’t value world-class performance in every role. Yet the people who touch customers the most — hotel housekeepers, outbound telemarketers — get the least respect and the lowest paychecks. The assumption is that anyone can do that job and that nobody would want to do it if they were given a choice to do something else. Frontline talent has a prestige problem, and it’s turning into a corporate-performance problem…. Unfortunately, the only way we have to reward excellence on the front lines is to promote people out of the very roles that they do best. We turn great housekeepers into supervisors, virtuoso shelf stockers into salespeople, and managers into leaders.

Technorati Tags: Engagement, Research, Management, Leadership, Business, Human Resources, Strategy

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