Andy Lowe provides an exploration of the kind of qualities HR need to cultivate to harvest a crop of great leaders of the future.

When it comes to leadership, there are so many questions to be answered. Test yourself: what criteria do you use to decide how to you invest in tomorrow’s leaders? Do you know who the people are who will deliver what your organisation needs in five, 10 or even 20 years? How do you predict what kind of skill sets and attitudes your leaders will need to meet a constantly shifting set of business priorities? How do you achieve that on reduced budgets?

One constant that is likely to remain throughout the shifting sands of time is the need for leaders to keep their teams and employees engaged. Over the last five years, there has been a growing base of research to prove the case that engagement does have a measurable impact on productivity. Engage your employees and your organisation is sure to prosper; fail to engage them and it is likely to languish.

A Right Management study of engagement involving nearly 30,000 employees in 15 countries suggests that an organisation’s culture can play a special role in driving engagement and that leaders can take many concrete steps to create a culture of engagement.

It is engaged people who are more likely to stay with an organisation – whether they are from Generation Y, X or Z. Investments in training and development could therefore be argued to have much more impact long-term in developing leaders if people are operating in an engaged organisation. In this way engagement is doubly important.  

So what do HR professionals need to look for in identifying people with the range of skills needed to keep their organisations engaged? Leaders can take any number of overt measures to enhance engagement, the most obvious being to offer material inducements. However, among the survey’s more than 90 statements*, the one that showed the highest correlation with engagement is ‘I am committed to my organisation’s core values.’

Potential leaders therefore need a strong focus on both developing and demonstrating the values of the business. They need to ‘live’ the values in what they say and how they behave internally and externally. They also need consistency – in both good and bad times – and the ability to instil those values in the people around them.

They also need to have a strong focus on the service provided to customers. The second statement with the highest correlation with engagement is ‘Our customers think highly of our products and services.’ It is individuals with a track record of working with customers, and of focusing on quality delivery, who are likely to generate sustained engagement from their teams.

Unsurprisingly, the third highest statement from the Right Management survey is ‘My opinion counts’. It is people who actively listen to the people around them and also act on what people tell them who will encourage the listening culture within their companies. It is, however, often difficult to teach people to listen – such skills tend to be inherent in people’s personalities.

Statement four is ‘I have a clear understanding of what is expected of me at work.’ Clarity and consistency are the key drivers of this – potential leaders need to be able to articulate expectations to their direct reports and to encourage those reports to communicate in a similar way. It is unfair to expect any individual to have an intuitive grasp of what their manager wants – if they haven’t had it clearly spelled out.

The fifth statement with the highest correlation in Right Management’s survey again relates to the customer. ‘I understand how I can contribute to meeting the needs of our customers.’  This requires a clear understanding of what will work with the customers, an appreciation of the individual’s role and the ability to communicate both client and internal expectations. Not always an easy task.

It is only at number six that the statement ‘I have been fairly rewarded’ appears in the league table of top global engagement drivers. Throughout the top 20, it is the focus on value, respect, understanding the company’s mission, balance between work and personal interests and supporting the local community which are of priority in the engagement stakes. That’s not to say that leaders can afford to neglect the value of pay, benefits and incentives but evidently the priority should be given to establishing and communicating clear company values and culture.

HR professionals therefore need to focus on finding and developing potential leaders who understand the importance of values in their work life. No leader or group of leaders can control the culture entirely. However, leaders can influence a culture in ways that will drive engagement. 

They can do this by showing they value employees, making corporate social responsibility a strategic imperative and reviewing work processes and lines of communication to support the employee and his or her work/life balance. They certainly need to ensure compensation policies are fair, but they also need to ensure that customer focus is paramount and that individual’s understand their roles in servicing the customer.

The challenge for HR professionals is identifying and developing individuals who are prepared to operate within this framework; who recognise that engagement is one of the biggest drivers for the success of their business; and are prepared to invest in it personally.   

* The Right Management study asked respondents to indicate their level of agreement (or disagreement) with more than 90 specific statements addressing aspects of organisational effectiveness. Responses were then correlated with respondents’ self-reports on their level of engagement to reveal which statements highly engaged employees agreed with most strongly and most often. Right Management reasonably infers that responses to statements reveal actual causes of engagement.  

Andy Lowe is Practice Leader of Talent Management at Right Management UK