An interesting study with 17 executives sought to discover how these leaders engaged their staff and inspired employees to go above and beyond in their work (Yanchus, Brower, & Osatuke, 2020). The interviews yielded specific, actionable best practices. Most salient among these actions were

  • leaders’ visibility and accessibility to staff,
  • supporting supervisors
  • sponsoring employee leadership development
  • emphasizing the importance of employee input.

Based on the leaders’ insights and practices, the researchers also provided best practice suggestions for other organizational members.

Managers: Engage employees by listening to their ideas, promoting action planning at the workgroup level, and creating a safe atmosphere for employee voice. Be open to executives’ ideas and actions around engagement.

Supervisors: Listen to staff ideas. Support staff projects. Fully involve staff in all action planning. Create a psychologically safe environment. Communicate the vision or mission of the organization and executive leader and tie staff improvement efforts and ideas into this.

Employees: Be willing to engage in your work. Be an active player in how the organization moves forward and improves. Get involved in professional growth opportunities.

References

Yanchus, N. J., Brower, C. K., & Osatuke, K. (2020). The Role of Executives in Driving Engagement. Organization Development Journal38(3), 87–99.