Promotes an environment in which employees feel free to make suggestions and complaints.
Yes, the leadership skill, enable others to act does align with specific questions in the engagement
survey. These questions include: “I feel encouraged to come up with new and better ways of doing
things” and “Promotes an environment in which employees feel free to make suggestions and
complaints”. These questions convey the importance in enabling others to act because they are not
afraid to come up with better ideas than their own leader because they are a team and if one
individual is successful the whole team will be. Furthermore, being able to make suggestions and
complaints are actions that many employers do not allow to happen and when they are encouraged
the supportive work environment, the great work ethic and better outcomes for the team are all
positively reinforced.
Inspire a Shared Vision-
I am proud to be a part of this company.
Provides an inclusive environment where each employee is considered as an individual.
Yes, the leadership skill, inspire a shared vision does align with behaviors identified for improvement
in the engagement survey. For example, “I am proud to be a part of this company.”, inspires a healthy
work environment to be a strong shared vision for the company. In addition, when you are proud to
be a part of a company you choose to show it with others outside of the company because you
understand their morals and that they are supporting you within your work life and personal life and
this is what employers look for when job searching.
Furthermore, “Provides an inclusive environment where each employee is considered as an
individual”, is also a behaviour identified for improvement in the engagement survey and aligns with
the leadership skill of inspiring a shared vision. For example, an employee that is heard and
understood is more likely to have trust and better communication skills that a good team needs to be
successful. These correlate to each other strongly because if the vision of the company is not shared
for the simple purpose of bettering the work environment, then there will certainly be uncertainty in
the rest of the company’s vision and values.
Do the leadership skills and behaviors identified for improvement align with a specific question in the
engagement survey?
The areas I believe need to be improved are job satisfaction, recognition and praise and rewards and
recognitions. I have broken down in each for discussion as follows:
Job Satisfaction
Survey Questions:
“My job makes good use of my skills and abilities”
“My supervisor shows appreciate for the work that I do”
Team building and being able to listen effectively would be two skills needed to improve in this area.
Leadership would need to focus more on team building, which would encourage further engagement
with their employees and more support for their team. A good example of team building would be
just taking the team out for a day to play mini golf. I believe showing appreciation can jump start a
relationship as the employee would strive to do better knowing that they hard work is being
appreciated. When I was a manager at Enterprise-Rent-A-Car one of the ways that I showed
appreciation was buying lunch for my employees. We were a very busy branch and sometimes lunch
was put on the back burner. However, knowing that I valued all their hard work and willingness to
perform to be successful, just by buying lunch during the times the office was extremely busy for the
team made a world of difference in how they saw me as a leader. Bottom line, it made them want to
work even harder and go above and beyond knowing that I appreciated everything they did. As for
the listening aspect, I always gave them a sense that they can talk to me about anything that was on
their mind personally or pertaining to the job itself. My door was always open for all employees to
talk to me without fear and I would block out time, so they knew they had my full attention when
discussing any topic. I felt that this was a great way to let them know I was listening to their concerns
and would act as needed to help remedy the situation. I firmly believe that if an employee takes the
time to tell you about a problem and no action exists, how can we expect an employee to be satisfied
not only with the job but with the leader as well.
Recognition and Praise
Survey Questions:
“My work gives me a sense of personal accomplishment”
“I feel encouraged to come up with new and better ways of doing things”
Delegation and empowerment are two skills needed to improve this area. A happier employee will
always benefit a company. The happier employee is will most likely want to work that much harder.
Delegation combined with empowerment can be great tools to use. While I was working as a
manager for Enterprise Rent-A Car, there were issues with customer service and vendor management
that was affecting the business. I know that if these issues were going to be solved, I needed to get all
employees on board. The question is how do we do that? I decided to assign critical tasks for the
project to the employees which helped in two ways. One I was enhancing their skill set and secondly, I
wanted to give them a sense of pride knowing their hard work helped solve an issue for the office. It
made the employees feel valued that their opinions mattered and gave them a sense of
accomplishment. This also allowed me to create a team atmosphere where each employee
appreciates the other for their contributions to the success of the office. When I hold meetings, I
always preached “We” as way to get to them to realize our overall success depends on everyone
working as one. Finally, I consistently would lead the charge and give out small awards to the
employees for doing great work which in turn caused the other employees to follow suit and let their
fellow employees what a great job they were doing. f
Rewards and Recognition
Survey Questions:
“My supervisor takes the time to praise those who do an excellent job”
“When people work extra hard to meet our goals they are rewarded accordingly”
Having a positive attitude and sharing a vision for a team first mentality can be useful in addressing
this area. For me personally, just someone from management or a co-worker telling me I did a great
job really can drive performance up and increase satisfaction with the job. At my current company,
we established a rewards and recognition program. Employees have the option to award points for a
significant result or send an E-card to a co-worker or manager just to say thank you. This can be
contagious throughout a company as it usually reinforces commitment and sparks engagement
between all employees. It starts to put focus on employees recognizing their peers for doing great
work and special occasions, which creates a team first mentality. This same program can be utilized in
any company that needs to address this area. As I stated earlier, happier employees mean higher
production, increase in morale, increase in job satisfaction, and retention numbers.
How will improvement in the leadership skills and behaviors you have identified positively impact the
results in the next employee engagement survey?
If the leadership team decides to use the above skills, then they could not only be more effective
leaders, but they could also be more effective and efficient toward their teams. If an employee is
highly satisfied with the job itself, then that should translate into higher numbers across the board as
all three areas affect one another in some fashion. Employees would feel that management is
working with them to help promote future success, which could improve the results of the next
employee engagement survey and get the company to move in a more positive direction.
The leadership behaviors that have been identified are ‘Encourage the heart’, ‘Enable others to act’,
and ‘Inspire a shared vision’. The rationale behind selecting ‘Encourage the heart’ is that it focuses on
acknowledging the efforts put by the employees and appreciating even the small victories (Five
practices - Palmerston north boys' high school, 2015). f Encouraging the employees for their small and
big actions make it easier for them to achieve the goals of the organization. ‘Encourage the heart’
deals with how the leaders visibly reward the performances of the employees and motivate them to
achieve more. On the other hand, the rationale behind selecting ‘Enable others to act’ is that it
focuses on effective collaboration among the employees and helps in building trust relationships.
Collaboration is an essential skill that enables an organization to function effectively in the
competitive era (Five practices - Palmerston north boys' high school, 2015). f The ration behind
selecting ‘Inspire a shared vision’ is that it focuses on including everyone in the organization in a
common vision.
Yes, the identified leadership behaviour aligns with questions present in the engagement survey.
‘Encourage the heart’ aligns with the question ‘My supervisor shows appreciation for the work that I
do’ and ‘I feel encouraged to come up with new and better ways of doing things. ‘Enable others to
act’ aligns with the question ‘Provides an inclusive environment where each employee is considered
as an individual’ and ‘I have received the training I need to perform my job responsibilities’. ‘Inspire a
shared vision’ aligns with the question ‘My Supervisor talks with me to help me determine my
training and development goals.’
Improving the identified leadership skills will have a positive impact on the employee engagement
survey. It will encourage the employee and increase their level of satisfaction with the working
conditions of the organization. The increase in employee satisfaction will allow them to give a higher
rating to the various aspects relating to behaviour.
From the trends identified in the survey analysis, my focus honed in on rewards, recognition, praise,
development, and workplace conditions. f Across these focus areas, what stood out was the
challenges related to the relationship between team members and their supervisors. f Across the
three surveys, questions regarding supervisor leadership behaviors showed significant deterioration
and a clear sign of issues of trust, mutual respect, and collaboration when building reward systems,
synergistic goals, and shared value systems. f As a result, a breakdown in communication has left team
members feeling discouraged, unsupported, and unappreciated.
There are three key leadership behaviors that contribute to a turnaround: model the way, enable
others to act, and encourage the heart. f Kouzes and Posner (2021) say that Model the Way means
leaders should lead by example, aligning their workplace behaviors with their team, and making sure
their voice clearly reinforces the corporate mission. f Sherman (2016) says by modelling the way,
leaders should ask purposeful questions and seek feedback from their team. f They should take action
to show support and ensure their team feels like they understand challenges and will help overcome
obstacles. f This not only builds camaraderie, but helps reduce stress and anxiety. f With low scores
specifically regarding trust, support, and understanding, learning to model the way aligns with
improved scores.
The survey results also showed challenges specific to rewards and collaboration. f "My supervisor
takes time to praise those who do an excellent job," scored just thirty-five percent favourable,
dropping from forty-four in the first survey. f Kouzes and Posner (2021) define the Encourage the
Heart leadership behaviour through a recognition of success and personalized celebrations. In a
more recent chapter, they take it a step further and say that leaders should make celebrations a
common part of everyday workplace interaction (Kouzes & Posner, 2021). f When team members
have fun at work, they are more likely to keep their spirits up through daily work stressors and
contribute to team positivity. f Barry Chignell (2018) says that happy employees are literally healthier,
more creative, and more productive. f If supervisors can be more inclusive in their reward system
creation and improve workplace celebration, they should see significant score increases when they
encourage the heart.
Finally, in Enable Others to Act, Kouzes and Posner (2021) say that leaders should support each other
and create a cohesive team through collaboration and encouragement. While scores are high specific
to training skills, team members do not feel they are included in the training and development
processes. f There is a disconnect between training format creation and involving members of the
team. f By sitting down with team members to create new training materials together, leaders can
improve their enable others to act leadership behaviour to drive up scores related to a collaborative
effort.
References
Chignell, Barry. (2018). Six Reasons Why Fun in the Office is the Future of Work.
f f f f f CIPHR. https://www.ciphr.com/advice/fun-in-the-office/
Kouzes, J. & Posner, B. (2021). Leadership Challenge, 6th Edition for Southern
f f f f f New Hampshire University. Available from: Wiley PLUS, Wiley Global Education US.
Sherman, Rose. (2016). Modelling the Way as a Leader. Emerging RN Leader.
f f f f https://www.emergingrnleader.com/modeling-the-way-as-a-leader/
References
Five practices - Palmerston north boys' high school. (2015). Retrieved November 17, 2021, from
https://www.pnbhs.school.nz/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/The-Five-Practices-of-Exemplary-
Leadership.pdf.
