Engaged employees go beyond the mediocre, they go beyond the expected and have a highly driven expectation of the company’s goals and how their own efforts fit into the bigger picture.

Being Goal Orientated

Managing your boss well is a particular trait that will always work in your favor. Understand their communication preferences, anticipate their needs, prepare them for the unexpected, and don’t bother them with the small stuff.

Being Able to Manage up

Engagement is a multifactorial dynamic that should be considered both in ourselves as well as within management. Very few people lose their jobs because of lack of skills or education, the cause is usually related to deficiencies in behaviors—the intangibles—that are not consistent with the company's culture.Understanding your personal intrinsic motivators acts as a personal compass to locate and maintain the ideal job that enhances and leverages your skills, interests, and talents. It is an important step in order to reach high levels of engagement as an employee.

Engagement At Work

"If you don't have these strengths to differentiate yourself from the next ​job applicant, it's time to work on them. Some will come easily to you; some will require purposeful, intentional changes to your default way of reacting to circumstances."

Having a job is not simply turning up for work and doing your job well.Other qualities that are highly desirable to any manager will help differentiate you from others and allow you to grow up the corporate ladder.

Quality And Potential

Even if you are just starting in a low position, take a managerial role in your job and see that things are done as they are supposed to be done, hold people to account, even your superiors. <ul><li>Stick to timelines and follow up with agendas. </li><li>Treat people with respect, don’t “suck up” to your superiors and never condescend. </li><li>This includes managing yourself: know your roles and responsibilities, but also know how to step up and take on work outside of your immediate responsibilities.</li></ul>

The Potential To Be Managerial

Learn time management well and always work towards efficiency and high quality.Great employees manage their time well, have daily action plans, and don’t procrastinate especially on group projects.

Being Productive and Driven

"A simple yet revolutionary concept...it’s impossible to fully separate life from work."

Engagement is not a static thing, it’s a revolving process and at least 50% of engagement lies within ourselves. <ul><li>The first pitfall is deciding that what you know now is enough. Given the state of technological changes, this belief is extremely self-limiting.</li><li>The second pitfall is becoming too reliant on your wage to survive. If you are disengaged, make sure you have the funds to survive being let go.</li><li>The third pitfall is being complacent, if you are disengaged don’t become the victim and blame the boss, the company, or the situation, you need to take action for your own engagement. </li></ul>

Pitfalls to Avoid

The seven recognized intrinsic motivators are:<ul><li>Achievement: an inherent desire to succeed.</li><li>Authority: an inherent desire to lead and persuade.</li><li>Camaraderie: the desire to interact with others.</li><li>Independence: an inherent desire for freedom.</li><li>Esteem: an inherent desire for recognition and praise.</li><li>Safety: a desire for a steady income and benefits and a safe work environment.</li><li>Fairness: concerned with equity, compares themselves to others.</li></ul>

Intrinsic Motivators

"It seems obvious that an honest and searching awareness of who we are can serve as an indispensable inner compass."

A great employee takes responsibility for problem-solving, they have a can-do attitude and only approach management with problems after they have spent time coming up with potential solutions. They don’t complain and remain accountable for their mistakes.

Having A Positive Attitude

<ul><li>Achievement: Challenge with work assignments.</li><li>Authority: Give work assignments that offer opportunities to lead or make decisions.</li><li>Camaraderie: Create interaction with teamwork projects, group meetings, etc.</li><li>Independence: Give tasks to allow their own decisions</li><li>Esteem: Give ample feedback</li><li>Safety: Predictable work with little risk or uncertainty.</li><li>Fairness: Maintain fairness as perceived inequities will discourage these individuals.</li></ul>The aim as an employee is to position yourself in a job where your some of these intrinsic motivators are satisfied.

How Management Can Work With Intrinsic Motivators

Cultivating strong relationships across the company’s departments is one of the most important traits to develop. It does not mean introverts will not rate; this is more about understanding what your co-workers want and working in a collaborative and productive way to achieve that.

Being Social

Despite landmark investments in employee engagement over the past decade and significant economic recovery, even the "best places to work" don't have anything approaching 100% engagement. Why? Because engagement efforts to date have been focused on only half of the individual: who they are as employees. Engagement is dependent on a variety of factors that we can't leave behind when we leave home: our health and wellbeing and that of our children, partners, and elders; our personal values; our intrinsic motivators. These deeply personal factors, as well as fixed traits about us, affect engagement at least as much as work-only factors such as salary and benefits. In this timely and thought-provoking volume, author and engagement expert Bob Kelleher invites individuals and managers alike to expand the conversation about what it means to be truly engaged... as a whole person.

BOB KELLEHER

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