The greatest threat in the workplace today, fueled by the Great Resignation & Quiet Quitting phenomena, are the Three Plagues of Leaders: Overwhelm, Stress, & Exhuastion.
These modern plagues, stemming from immense workloads due to staffing shortages, relentless stress from juggling the diverse needs of senior management, front-line staff, and customers, and the fatigue of long working hours, have left leaders struggling to bring about meaningful change. These issues not only compromise the quality of customer service, but also have profound effects on the operational and financial health of organizations, as well as the personal and professional well-being of the leaders themselves. The primary cause of these plagues is employee disengagement.
Employee Engagement
According to Gallup's State of the Global Workplace: 2023 Report, 77% of employees globally are not engaged. Because employee engagement is the degree to which employees are emotionally connected to their leader, their team, and the work they do, the reason the grand majority of them are disengaged is because they are lacking these emotional connections. Emotional connections are important because they create emotional energy. And emotional energy is important because the overwhelming majority of peoples' energy is emotional, not physical.
Think about your cell phone. When you see the low battery alert, you plug it into a charger. If you don't have access to a charger for a period of time, you may want to conserve its energy to extend the battery life. To do this, you may want to put it on low power mode. And if you plug your phone into a charger and it doesn't provide any energy, you need to get a different charger.
Just like a cell phone needs battery energy to operate, employees need emotional energy to operate...to be engaged. If their emotional energy tanks are drained, they will need to conserve their energy, which results in them being labeled as "Quiet Quitters." If their emotional energy tanks are not being refilled, they will need to find a different source of energy, which leads to employee turnover.
Emotional Connections
The root cause of leaders feeling overwhelmed, stressed, and exhausted is because their employees lack sufficient emotional energy. Just like a cell phone's battery energy comes from its charger, through electrical connections, employees' energy comes from their leader, through emotional connections. Thus, in order to conquer the three plagues of overwhelm, stress, and , leaders must create emotional connections with their people in order to fill their emotional energy tanks.
The 3 C's of Emotional Energy
The most powerful ways for leaders to fill their employees' emotional energy tanks are by connecting, collaborating, and celebrating with them on a regular basis.