It’s a good question. Our belief is we all need to re-evaluate our direction and life to ensure that we make the most of life’s opportunities and have no regrets. After all, you could spend your life doing many different things – but what is truly the best way of living your life?

In today’s increasingly busy world, you may feel that you’d like more control over your life. Let’s face it, most people do. Lifestyle planning will help you feel more in charge of your destiny: it will assist you to make more informed decisions and inspiring choices about your future.

There are those who are simply travelling through life and those who are going somewhere. They are the same, and yet they are different. The difference is usually successful people have this over their rivals: they know where they are going in their life.

In this current environment, we are all being asked to ‘do more with less’. As such, many of us are becoming battle fatigued by ordinary life and, in many instances, stressed and frustrated that we are not getting where we really want to get. More time isn’t the solution as we all only get 168 hours a week no matter who we are.

We Want More Control

Like 80% of the population we are finding it increasingly difficult to get control. Psychologically we all want more control of our lives, our work and our finances. The real reason that most people don’t get control is CLARITY (a lack of) !  It’s understandable, as we are all busy keeping our heads above water in the day to day. We rarely have the time or the tools to get the clarity on strategies that will give us more control.

More Clarity is Key

A lot of people think they are clear on their vision, but aren’t really. You see most people know what they don’t want and what doesn’t motivate them (that’s the easy part), but fewer know with real clarity what they really do want and therefore what engages them.

We never have enough time to do everything we want, but we always have enough time to do the most important things. The key, and first step in Self-Leadership, is taking out a little bit of time to work out what the most important things really are.

The New Motivational Renaissance!

What are the most important things in the world of business? Well the main business mantra over the centuries has been “The customer is Number One”. Let’s get clear about one thing – the next major shift in business management is realising that any organisation’s number one customer should be their employees. So helping people achieve maximum productivity and performance using the missing link – employee-activated engagement – is the key.

However, the majority of companies continue to treat the serious issue of balancing competing work pressures and employees’ personal life needs, with a ‘band-aid’ effect by offering more benefits or ‘perks’ to win their loyalty.

Self-Leadership Win-Win

True control is achieved when employees have greater clarity around what is important to them, so they can put themselves in the drivers seat of their own future. Through Self-Leadership initiatives employees are then empowered, thus creating a personal and corporate win/win relationship.

Innovative companies are sponsoring ‘self-leadership’ programs so that individuals can take personal responsibility and make more informed decisions around work, life balance, job fulfillment and personal financial management, rather than look to employers to always provide solutions.

Employee engagement may be an over-used management ‘buzz phrase’ at the moment, but the underlying social issue which created this concept remains valid: people are working harder and longer than at any other time in our industrial history and want to get back some personal balance and control of their work – and this first comes with clarity via self-leadership.

Add to the discussion!

Please leave your comments, thoughts and questions below

 Are we still trying to solve engagement by doing more of the wrong things?

From our recent ‘Obstacles to Engagement’ Research Study we identified six key challenges to effective employee engagement. You may recognise some of them:

1. Ineffective Solutions

“The engagement initiatives we have put in place aren’t getting the results we had hoped for. In fact the more we give our employees the more it seems to create a whinge entitlement culture”

2. Employee Clarity

“Most employees know what they don’t want; fewer know what really motivates and engages them.  If employees don’t know what motivates them – how am I, as their people leader, going to have any chance?”

3. Skills, Tools & Resources

“Our people leaders/managers aren’t psychologists, counsellors & coaches. They don’t have the confidence, skills or tools to have a meaningful discussion (Stay Interview) with their employees around motivation and engagement”

4. Time Poor

“We pay our people. That should motivate them. Also I’m too busy…engagement isn’t part of my KPI’s … anyway it’s a human resources issue isn’t it?”

5. Inaction

“We are not sure what the ideal engagement solutions are for our organisation. We keep procrastinating and our indecision means we haven’t really committed to any engagement initiatives yet. Yikes – it’s almost time to do our next staff engagement survey!”

6. Buy In

“We haven’t been able to get full support for employee engagement from the most important areas of the business yet”

Source: LifebyDesign.com.au “Obstacles to Engagement” Research Study 2011

Solution = Employee Activated Engagement (EAE)

The solution to all of the above engagement challenges is Employee Activated Engagement (EAE): The self-responsibility approach to engagement. 

More on EAE in future posts. But in the meantime, lets get the conversation going – so please leave a reply and your thoughts below.

Employee engagement (EE) increases performance (P), productivity (P) and profitability ($)  in organisations. EE=P+P+$

Engagement utopia would be having 100% of our employees, 100% motivated and engaged 100% of the time.  Sure, unrealistic, but the ideal goal!

Generally speaking, there is a 20:60:20 engagement distribution across the average organisation. For example:

• 20% of employees are ‘toxic’ or actively disengaged.  In fact many organisations would probably be better off if these employees didn’t even turn up at work each day

• 60% of employees are ‘retained’, the complacent coaster, they haven’t yet been given a good enough reason to leave yet

• 20% of employees are ‘actively engaged’, the eager beavers, they love working in the organisation to the point where they’d probably like to buy shares in the company given the opportunity

The Underestimated Soft Skill

Employee engagement and motivation are seen as a soft skill by many people upstairs at the big table, so to make it harder and more tangible (for the bean counters) we have researched the hell out of it. Arhhh… do we all feel better now? NO!

More Research Than Implementation

Many organisations spend the majority of their time and effort (some up to 80%) on employee engagement research, but only 20% on effective engagement strategies.

Organisations are challenged and getting frustrated as many of the engagement solutions they are trying to implement to improve staff retention aren’t getting effective ‘cut through’ and improving employee engagement scores.

So why aren’t many organisations getting the improved engagement results they were hoping for?

It’s a key question …

So, please let us know which future topics are of most interest to you and we will attempt to make them a priority for you in upcoming posts.

More Insightful Issues?

Perhaps we need to uncover the answers to some probing questions such as:

• What REALLY engages individual employees? [Now answered]
• What are the top 6 barriers to effectively engaging employees? [Now answered]
• Who is really responsible for employee engagement? [Now answered]
• Why is the current traditional employee engagement research flawed? [Now answered]
• What works best – general Organisational Engagement Plans (OEP) or specific Personal Engagement Plans (PEP)? [Now answered]
• How do we make performance reviews engaging and motivational? [Now answered]
• Should we forget exit interviews and just focus on stay interviews?  [Now answered]
• Is inexperienced leadership killing our cultures’ engagement & motivation?  [Coming in May]
• How do we reverse the whinge entitlement culture and create a self-responsible workforce?

So please post your comments and thoughts below.