'Engaged' employees aren't enough

Until yesterday, I thought that having 'engaged' employees was sufficient as the first step in making customers – and 'shareholders' – happy (i.e., enduring organizational success).

But then I began reading Hundred Percenters: Challenge your employees to give it their all, and they'll give you even more, by Mark Murphy.

In the book, he argues that the real goal of leaders is not simply to create a workplace where employees are happy or satisfied (i.e., engaged), but rather to make work "fulfilling and enriching and ultimately to position people to achieve great results."

Murphy, who is chairman and CEO of consulting company Leadership IQ, says the two differentiating factors that result in 100% Leadership are 'connection' and 'challenge.' Connection is the strength of the emotional connection that leaders build with their employees, while challenge is how far leaders push their people to achieve greatness.

If you construct a matrix of this factors, you get Avoider leaders (low emotional connection, low challenge); Intimidators  (low connection, high challenge); Appeasers (high connection, low challenge); and 100% leaders (high connection, high challenge).

He suggests that Appeasers are satisfied with employee engagement, but that 100% leaders "...push us hard. But when they do, they teach us something about ourselves. They help us achieve extraordinary things. And they give us real opportunities for deep and lasting fulfillment." 

To me, most employees indeed want to work in an organization where they can make a tangible contribution, and where they can feel excited and proud about this contribution.

So, I'm going to think about 'energized employees' instead of simply 'engaged employees' as the real objective, with 'being energized' meaning being personally connected to the challenge of achieving great things on the job.