Episode 105: Behavioral Bridges—Increasing Employee Engagement While Driving For Results

Is it possible to be a high-standards, results-driven leader while at the same time building an engaged, fun-to-work-with team? Many people would contend that doing either of these things well makes it almost impossible to succeed at the other. And yet our examination of 360-degree assessment data from more than 60,000 leaders showed us that leaders who were rated in the top quartile of both skills ranked in the 91st percentile of all leaders. It seems that not only is it possible to do both things well, but the best leaders are the very ones who manage to do both. In this episode, we are talking about the balance of managing employee engagement and driving for results.

Key Points

• We isolated leaders who ranked in the top quartile on both driving for results and people skills. We found that only 13% of leaders in our data set fit this profile. Still, this left us with a data set of 7,800 leaders to analyze

• Leaders who were under 30 years of age were two to three times as likely to be effective at both results and engagement than their older compatriots.

• Around age 40, it seems, leaders appear to have made their choice between being results driven or interpersonally strong. From there forward, only 10% of leaders in any age group would do both things well.

• Young people do seem more interested in having close, personal friendships with their colleagues
• Supervisors are much more likely to carry both capabilities than senior managers, we found.
• Having the ability to simultaneously drive for results and practice excellent people skills is a powerful combination that has a dramatic impact on a leader’s effectiveness

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