The debate raised far more questions than answers, so does this mean we don’t have a way forward?

Can employers prescribe meaning when it is such a personal concept?

Should Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs be turned upside down in times of hardship; will security and safety follow meaning?

Can you really say that you’re engaging with your staff and giving them a place of work that has meaning when you’re stripping away benefits that play a crucial role in their lives?

Do people want meaning at work, or do they – above all else – just want to do their job well, be rewarded accordingly and treated with respect? After all, stories abound of people turning up to work at the worthiest of charities for a higher purpose, getting treated terribly, and leaving…so how much can meaning really carry you through a 60-hour week?

There was a mix of passion for engagement countered with just as much cynicism about whether employee engagement is just the PR of HR. Even more cynicism surrounded the question of whether organisations really did walk the talk on engagement, or should they be preparing for huge attrition rates as soon as the recovery opens up new avenues to greener pastures?

A great line-up of speakers, including John Philpott from the CIPD and Matthew Jeffery from Electronic Arts, was topped off by barrister and poet, David Neita, who amongst all these complex issues proposed that it is simply about staff taking responsibility for those things beyond their job description.

You may recall the story of President Kennedy asking a janitor at NASA what he was doing, to be told: “I’m helping put a man on the moon”, you will understand what David Neita means.

We all know an engaged employee when we see one – is it more complex than that?

David’s final act was to draw the metaphor of employee engagement as a romance drawing on the beautiful prose in Paul Laurence Dunbar’s ‘Passion & Love’. This highlighted the idea that romantic engagement can’t be forced any more than finding meaning at work.

- Oliver Mack is Head of Learning & Development at Common Purpose and chaired the Common Purpose and Changeboard event on 16 September 2010.

Common Purpose

Common Purpose gives leaders the inspiration, the knowledge and the connections they need to produce real change. Through our unique leadership development courses, a growing number of people around the world are making a difference in the industries and places where they work, in the communities where they live and in wider society.

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Twenty years ago a friend gave me the Tao Of Leadership. By reading it again and again I got more used to the idea that it’s ok to approach tough issues in apparently contradictory ways. Sometimes being tough and resilient and at other times letting go. Leaders I come across though find this extremely difficult.

They want to reduce things to a solution, to take the behaviours they have just used and apply them to the next scenario. Instead take time to consider the role of being patient, being determined, to see what is happening. The nature of change means it is already happening, it’s something beyond you that you are also part of. You need to see what’s driving it, notice how you are interacting with it and from all these signals then decide on where you act. Do things in this way and you may help things evolve quicker. Act against what is happening and you’ll be tough when you should have been soft and vice versa.

Oliver Mack

With appraisals looming this opening paragraph in a Management Today article ‘Death of the Bollocking’ got me thinking about whether I’m brave enough to find a way to give critical feedback. I worry about whether I’ve become too soft, too worried about being too harsh, about de-motivating staff, about making sure any critical feedback is offered in a praise sandwich. I’ve had it drummed into me for years that praise is the thing we don’t do well, that we need to do better. 

“You need to tell people where they stand,” says Deborah Meaden, entrepreneur and Dragons’ Den dragon. “If someone’s done a good job, you should tell them they’ve done damn well. But if they haven’t, you should take the same attitude. Tell them: ‘That wasn’t good enough.’ It creates an environment where everyone understands where they are.” One of the dangers of not pulling people up when they underperform, she adds, is that they’re genuinely surprised when things don’t turn out well for them, or the project they’re working on isn’t a success.

It’s so unusual for leaders to speak out about what’s wrong. Zenna Atkins, a recent speaker on the Common Purpose Masterclass on Leading Beyond Authority, was recently quoted in an Observer article giving a critical report on the civil service:

“A damning assessment of the civil service as a ‘desperately overpopulated’, ‘broken’ institution which is stuck in the 19th century has been made by one of its most prominent figures. In an astonishing attack, Zenna Atkins, a director of the Royal Navy Fleet Executive Board, chair of its audit committee and also chair of Ofsted, the schools inspectorate, described the practices of central government as ‘utterly antiquated’. ‘I could say without doubt that significant parts of the civil service are broken,’ she told The Observer. ‘The machinery of government is not even in the 20th century, never mind the 21st century.’”

Does that mean she doesn’t care, or doesn’t think the civil service is doing a good job in many areas? I doubt it - would she spend so much of her time dedicated to working with it otherwise? Maybe we need more leaders like this. But as the Management Today article points out it’s harder for these people to operate in this way if those of us who are parents, teachers, managers don’t show our own leadership and practice being bold, speaking up and giving critical feedback. I’m sure it doesn’t mean we need to kick boots at people, or get the proverbial hairdryer out, just remember that we want things to improve

So what will I do differently? Try and notice when I’m cushioning every piece of negative feedback, make a few attempts to deliver only critical feedback (after so many years of offering the praise sandwich). How will it go? I’ve no idea, but I know I need to try and to learn, if I don’t I’m not being fair to anyone.

Oliver Mack

But I did start thinking that women may be more likely to learn the skills of leadership because of the positions and situations they find themselves in through life. I don’t think it’s innate. Our life experiences are our dominant learning ground for our leadership. Are the challenges and opportunities women face in life more likely to develop them as leaders?

Being in a minority (as women often find themselves in business) women have to learn the hard way how to bring about change. They can’t rely on their positions of authority, their technical expertise and education. It just won’t get them as far. They learn how the system really works, where the power really lies and how to use it. They learn to be patient, how to get people on side, and avoid the blocks. They have to become much more sophisticated, and more aware of themselves in the process.

In a male dominated business men can be led to think all the male bonding, the games of golf and the chats about football and rugby are enough for us to be successful. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against this kind of male activity! On the contrary I miss it, having worked in a female dominated environment for my whole career. But unless it is balanced with a focus on leadership development men may be left facing a very painful change process when asked to lead, perhaps too painful, and in many cases a significant personal crisis rather than a learning breakthrough that we can grow from.

Oliver Mack

This provides us more of an end game for our programme delivery. I feel it will enable us to state more clearly up-front what leadership development we are heading for. The recent book by Julia has allowed us to describe the attitudes a leader has to show, some of the attributes and beliefs of a strong leader but not to signpost clearly the piece about what abilities and behaviours they have. e.g. we know it is important to be aware that change can take time, sometimes be slower than we think, however the attibutes of a leader in this situation are patience and the behaviours are…… willing to listen, ability to see all sides of a situation etc.

These competencies will allow us to signpost upfront what participants are heading for. They may not get this on our programmes, but they could do multiple programmes.

Practically we need a written list with explanation, pointers to which elements of our programmes help a person to identify and then develop these.

Oliver Mack

Anyone who abuses the relationships they build with others, or indeed with a place will eventually weaken their ability to lead in the future, without increasing the use of force of course. I suppose that means you could reach tipping point and once you have a certain amount of resources to support your authority you will be safe (maybe for your lifetime, or a considerable part of it).

Anyway I’m not so concerned with that, I’m more interested in how a person becomes a leader? I’m not talking about a conventional leader i.e. getting to be Chief Executive. I’m talking about a person who can lead change, someone who can make things happen.

Oliver Mack

I’ve never thought of leadership as not being linked to change. Is it the sum of your interactions with other entities? Whether we like it or not things change by the fact we interact with them (or if we choose not to they are changed by our absence).

At the heart of this is a twist in perception. Are we actors in society or passive recipients of what goes on around us? This argument comes up in so many guises. Stephen Covey talks about proactivity as the first stage of becoming an effective person. Within his concept he talks of the need to become aware of the relationship between stimulus and response. Once a person has done this they can begin to exercise choice. Hence they become active (and in Covey’s eyes, effective). By default this means those who don’t recognise this space they have for choice are passive and not as effective in making things happen.

The ability a person has to respond to any given situation could also be seen as their ability to lead. The greater their ability to respond then the better a leader they are. i.e. the more able they are to exercise choice over their future and the future of people and other entities around them, the better they are at leading.

Much work in leadership development works on developing people’s self-awareness, ability to become more aware of their prejudices, raise awareness of how they are too reactive, or give them any number of strategies for developing new ideas, businesses and managing projects. I think this misses the heart of leadership. The heart of leadership is this very idea that we are part of something bigger than just ourselves, that we have a connection to something beyond ourselves and therefore the personal will or desire to act on and effect more than just our immediate surroundings.

Eventually everyone can accept they have some choice over things around them, that they can improve how they communicate, how they bring people together to get things done etc. What is harder is to connect to the very society they are part of. This is what compels a person to become more active and create change.

What I’m getting at is that individuals play a role in making society the way it is. We always have done and always will do, hence you can’t separate leadership from change.

The extent of our connection to society around us makes this anxiety greater or lesser. The more connected, the more we understand it, the more we realise we are part of a system. In realising this we can figure out the role we play and how we can effect change. Either to better ourselves, our family, our community our organisation or any part of the wider system. It’s this realisation that is the first step to becoming a leader.

Some people would talk about this as a sense of belonging, feeling connected, part of something bigger. I always remember someone telling me that inspiration was about connecting to something beyond yourself, or your immediate known surroundings. It can inspire you to new heights, to make new things happen. I notice it happens with me. Whenever I’m taken into new surroundings that make me see something different, that challenge how I saw things before I am more motivated, interested, inclined to be involved.

Of course this often gets placed in the arena of social and political education, or more recently education for sustainable development. This of course can produce lots of people who are just angry about what they see and connect to. They become unhappy with it and start to blame others, or organisation and people out side of their immediate circle of influence. If the connections are complete and leaders see the two way interaction between themselves and the system and vice versa though leaders can begin to accept they are part of the whole, that there is no inside or outside the system. Not distance themselves from it as though there is a set of good and bad, a part they can blame. This is the secret to being motivated towards positive change within a system.

The leadership phrase of keeping your eyes on the hills and feet on the ground speaks well to this. Keeping your eyes on the hills keeps you inspired, connected to the bigger picture. Keeping your feet on the ground prevents the disconnect and stress that can be created by aiming too high. It is what helps you translate the dream to realistic actions and steps.

The best model I’ve come across to explain this is that of creative tension, used by Peter Senge and others. It’s the description of the creative tension that I believe to be crucial in the design of a leadership programme. Many will grasp what I’ve written above and use it as the basis for fantastic awareness raising programmes. But can they turn the new found tension into something more than frustration with the system?

Oliver Mack