CHAPTER 1

Who Owns Your Engagement?

"Life leaps like a geyser for those willing to drill through the rock ofinertia".

Alexis Carrel

In first grade she woke up in the morning, dressed in stretch pants and a brightpaisley shirt, gave her hair a quick run-through with the comb, and then stoodfor inspection before her older siblings. On the way to school, she rolled downthe hill, gathering up grass, leaves, and burrs. After dusting off, she walkedinto the classroom and found her desk. No one said anything until the reportcard came. "I always got an unsatisfactory mark for 'comes to school neat andclean,'" she points out. "It drove my mother crazy."

That's not a remarkable story until you learn that Lois Collins's parents wereboth blind. They knew people would cut their children slack if they didn'tperform to a socially acceptable standard. There would always be an out if theyneeded it. But her parents emphatically rejected that idea. "They taught us justthe opposite. We had no hired help at home. My parents lived very independentlives, so I learned that if Mom and Dad could go through life blind, what's myexcuse?"

Today, Lois is a widely respected journalist and senior writer for theDeseret News, the leading daily newspaper in Salt Lake City, Utah. Overa 30-year career, she has experienced all of the turbulence and dislocation ofthe print journalism world. And like everyone else, she has her own set of real-worldchallenges, including a husband who is awaiting a liver transplant.

And yet Lois is an engagement outlier. Her patterns of commitment, performance,and adaptability are strikingly different from those of the vast majority of thepopulation. Her work is of exceptional quality, and her productivity isstaggering. In her midfifties, she outworks and outproduces cub reporters halfher age. "Journalism is a calling," she says. "It's a privilege to tell otherpeople's stories. I give voice to people who don't have voice."

In Lois's case, we suspect that some of her high engagement comes from hersocialization. She developed a work ethic and learned self-reliance at a veryyoung age. She also gained a mindset to find joy and gratitude in her work, someof which has grown out of the kind of work she does. "I cover people in crisisand poverty. I tell the stories of the abused and the disabled, and I recognizethat I have a really good life."

The question is whether you can become highly engaged without the benefit ofsuch defining experiences. Can you become like Lois without being Lois? That'sthe question. Dr. Seuss said, "Sometimes the questions are complicated and theanswers are simple."

How to become highly engaged is such a question.

The Benevolent Organization

Imagine that you work for the most benevolent organization on earth—anorganization that believes in and practices fanatical employee support. Theorganization has anointed you with a big title, a big office, and a big salary.It assigns people to clean your house, do your laundry, and file your taxreturns. There are piano lessons for your kids, personal trainers and homedecorators, a pet photo contest every year, unlimited spa treatments, extendedfamily cruises, and ice cream socials. Not least, you have a great boss. In thehistory of the world, there has never been a more successful organization, andyou are exquisitely blessed to be right in the middle of it.

So let's ask: Are you engaged? Are you passionately connected and activelyparticipating in the organization and the work you do? Do you bring your bestgame to work every day?

Answer: even in these circumstances, you have only a 25 percent chance of beinghighly engaged.

The organization may lavish you with perks, but those perks don't hold the keyto engagement. Feeding the pleasure center of the brain through extrinsicrewards doesn't engage a person and bring real, lasting fulfillment. At best, itcreates security and short-term pleasure or hedonic well-being. This is a verydifferent thing from true and sustained engagement.

Most employees are either bored or burned out. We know that because that's whatthey tell us in survey after survey. Most are disengaged. Even whenorganizations practice fanatical employee support, they still have huge numbersof disengaged employees. Why? That's what we wanted to know. But instead ofasking disengaged employees why they're disengaged, we asked highly engagedemployees why they're engaged.

We studied deeply motivated and committed employees across industries,continents, cultures, and demographics. We interviewed them and observed them inall sorts of situations, organizations, and environments. What is absolutelyclear is that highly engaged employees think and behave differently. They have adifferent mindset. They may work in different organizations and do verydifferent jobs, but there's a consistent theme among them: They take primaryresponsibility for their careers, their success, and their fulfillment. They owntheir own engagement. They are the driving force. With very few exceptions, theybelieve that the burden of employee engagement falls on their shoulders, not theorganization's.

The highly engaged employees we studied seemed almost puzzled when we asked themwhy they feel this way. "What's the alternative?" they would ask in response. Torely on the organization, they said, is unrealistic. It might be nice to shiftthe burden to the organization, and certainly it has a support role to play, butto depend on the organization doesn't make any sense at all. The speed,complexity, and volatility of the twenty-first century make it utterly foolish.That's what they said—again and again.

What startled us was the consistency of this pattern. It cuts across culture,age, industry, gender, and any other demographic you may want to consider. Theproblem is this: many people don't seem to understand this principle, and wedare say that many do not believe it. In our research, two facts hit us rightbetween the eyes. First, engagement levels are static. In the averageorganization, only 25 percent of employees are highly engaged. In many cases,engagement levels have actually fallen, and they certainly haven't increased, atleast not in the aggregate. Many individuals and organizations have reached thepoint of diminishing returns; they can't seem to move the engagement needle anyfurther. The second fact is that among employees there is an abundance of whatwe call an "engage-me mindset." Employees are waiting expectantly for apaternalistic organization to engage them.

We consider this supremely dangerous.

In most cases, the single biggest obstacle to employee engagement is theemployee. Employees get in their own way by not taking charge of...