Employee engagement -How do great leaders do it?

In straightforward words, employee engagement means keeping employees engaged. Engaged in what? Not just in birthday parties, picnics, and other social activities. Most employees are social enough to do these themselves. Of course, support by their organization helps. Your HR people would do that anyways.

There is another meaning of the words 'employee engagement'. It means keeping people truly engaged in their work. Why? Disconnect with work is one of the biggest reasons for loosing people -particularly good people. Talented people have much higher expectations about their own achievements and also from those around them. Great leaders spot talent and sense these needs of talented people. They engage people in challenging tasks, taking care to nurture them. How do they do this?

Leaders rally talent around great, exciting ideas. It is in human nature to look for larger meaning in whatever one is doing. Ideas and overarching vision provide this higher meaning. Leaders champion ideas with passion. They paint a big picture and mobilize resources -they walk the talk. This is the biggest positive trigger for talented people who are hungry for good, meaningful, and worthwhile work. Giving out meaningless parcels of work is dehumanizing and is sure to disengage people. If your software developers know about only a fraction of the overall project that they are working on, then all the fun parties, picnics and other events will not engage them.

Great leaders set worthwhile goals and champion exciting ideas. They create 'meaningful' work for their people. These are the hallmarks of great leaders. Such leaders keep their people engaged.