A book review of Employee Confidence – the New Rules of Engagement by Karen J. Hewitt.

 

 

Keeping team members engaged during the pandemic might have been on the back burner for some organisations. After all, many were just trying to survive! 

While others worked hard to keep their teams motivated remotely. Not an easy task while we were all learning. Now many are in the phase of rebuilding. 

 

With so many sources of information out there, I dived into Employee Confidence – the new rules of Engagement. And fished out some tips to share. 

 

Now this book wasn’t written around a world pandemic or remote working. In fact, it was published in 2018. Still, it focuses on employees as the heart of the organisation. And shares in a very structured way how to use employee confidence to boost engagement. 

The author Karen J Hewitt is the CEO of Leaderlike, which delivers training and coaching in the technical and safety world. Still, the essence of her message can be embraced by anyone. 

Karen J Hewitt presents employee confidence as a new way of working. A methodology that goes beyond standard engagement tools like the yearly staff engagement survey! 

 

To be clear, it’s not about abandoning current engagement methods but saying more needs to be done for sustainable growth and employee retention.

 

 

Businesses need a workforce of leaders. The suggestion is not to go crazy and give everyone a token title of manager. 

It’s about shifting your culture to one where every individual is seen as having the potential to lead. 

Equipping everyone with the tools and training to have the qualities of a leader. PLUS creating an environment that allows for the genuine belief that you are a leader and can enact change.

There are obvious challenges to implementing this, but I’m on board with the concept. Do you think this is realistic? 

My Highlights

 

I honed in on some of the themes in this book, such as promoting a coaching culture and having an environment that respects leadership without position power. 

Leadership without position power, in particular, feels to me like a critical component of the employee confidence framework.

 

Without the manager title some people often don’t feel empowered to speak up or to do more when they can. In other circumstances, it’s a new project manager working across the organisation trying to steer, at times, more senior colleagues. 

What about those who just started in a role before we all went into lockdown, not having time to cultivate relationships in the usual ways? Whatever category you fall into, this book is a champion for real culture change. It will lead you to want, believe and know that you can make a difference.

 

The rules

 

Throughout the book, there are several rules that you as a leader can use for guidance to implement the author’s methodology. There are also some key themes that you can explore within your organisation to build confidence and ensure it sticks. These are a couple that jumped out at me.

• Discovering an employee’s values – here we’re talking about personal values. Would your organisation support adding a personal objective to the annual performance review? Do you think team members would be more engaged and have a higher level of commitment if the business truly supported their personal growth?
• The safety net of culture change leadership – If you’re in a supervisory or management position, I think this is a key area to explore. Really think about the environment you’re creating for your team. Do you see potential in your high performers and push them to excel, or do you see potential in all of your team members and lead on that basis?

Due to the author’s background, as I mentioned earlier, most examples are very much from a health and safety angle. Still, it doesn’t overwhelm the core message, which is very transferable

The book is written very much from the perspective of the business leaders. So if you’re newer in your career or not in a formal position of authority, you may want to look into practical examples of leading without position power or authority. There’s a lot of content out there, but here are two articles to get you going by Forbes and Harvard Business School Online.

Comment below!

 

(Previously posted on Linkedin)