For my monthly podcast, Becoming a Sage, I interviewed Mark C. Crowley, and we discussed employee engagement. Crowley is the author of the second edition of “Lead from the Heart: Transformational Leadership for the 21st Century.” In preparation, he shared some facts from his book:
- Approximately 120 million American workers quit their jobs in record numbers between January 2021 and June 2023.
- Money is not the main reason for “The Great Resignation.” Many people leave jobs related to their engagement and overall well-being.
- People are more likely to quit when they feel they aren’t valued, respected, appreciated, coached, or cared about by their direct manager and organization.
- The pandemic gave people time to pause and reflect about what matters most to their lives. Employees were empowered to change the “employee contract”—what they wanted and needed in exchange for their work.
Crowley talked about leading from the heart in 2011 when it was not the norm for leaders to use words such as heart, love, caring, and compassion. But his conclusions remain the same: “The remedy to the Great Resignation is to adopt more humane ways of managing people knowing it will inherently lead to infinitely greater engagement, not to mention optimal employee performance.”
Focus More on Well-Being
When Gallup first released its State of The American Workplace study in June 2013, only 30 percent of the nation’s workers were fully engaged in their jobs. In the 2023 State of the Global Workforce Study by Gallup, the majority of the world’s employees were “quiet quitting” (doing the minimum required to keep their jobs). From this study, only 23 percent are thriving at work (engaged), 59 percent are quiet quitting (not engaged), and 18 percent are loud quitting (actively disengaged).
Crowley told me that “organizations would be wise to focus more on employee well-being instead of engagement. The impact of well-being extends beyond how people feel. It affects the number of sick days employees take and their job performance, odds of burnout and likelihood of leaving their organization. Leaders who wish to attract and retain star talent should prioritize well-being and take steps to create a thriving culture.
According to Crowley, the way leaders have been managing people is “misaligned with human nature. Science indicates that about 95 percent of our behaviors are driven by how we feel, not what we think. People are making decisions based on feelings and emotions.” Crowley emphasized that if feelings and emotions drive human behavior, then leaders need to give people experiences where they experience positive feelings and emotions.
“Human beings are hardwired to thrive in the experience of positive emotion,” Crowley noted. Drs. John and Julie Gottman of The Gottman Institute are authorities on relationships and developed a magic ratio of 5 to 1. They believe “for every one negative feeling or interaction between partners, there must be five positive feelings or interactions.” Regardless if the relationship is a marriage or between a leader and direct reports, the Gottmans say there has to be a disproportionate ratio of positive emotions to negative emotions for the relationship to be considered stable and happy.
In Crowley’s interview with Barbara Frederickson from the University of North Carolina, she told him that feelings such as joy, excitement, awe, attention, appreciation all boil down to love. Frederickson defines love as when people feel valued, connected, opportunities for growth, and psychologically safe. These positive emotions help people feel loved.
Frederickson concluded that “Love, as our ‘supreme emotion,’ affects everything human beings feel, think, do, and become.”
Before and After the Pandemic
During the COVID pandemic, Crowley shared how leaders went out of their way to make people feel connected and cared about—to experience positive emotions. When organizations started bringing people back to the offices, leaders went back to their old behaviors and stopped providing many of those positive experiences. Crowley said that according to a Gallup study released in April 2024, employee engagement in the United States is at an 11-year low.
After COVID, Crowley’s research found leaders focusing on recruitment, training, and development rather than continuing to provide positive experiences for employees. There are horror stories from the tech industry of leaders treating workers inhumanely. The classic story being of Better.com CEO Vishal Garg. Part of his legacy is firing of hundreds of staff on a Zoom call in 2021. Garg now says he has “worked really, really hard” to be a kinder boss.
Another perspective supporting why leaders should be paying attention to how employees feel is provided by Microsoft Chief People Officer Kathleen Hogan. She says we are experiencing a human energy crisis that is negatively affecting the productivity and satisfaction of employees. Hogan cites the Microsoft Work Trend Index, a global survey of 20,000 workers, in which 48 percent of employees and 53 percent of managers report that they’re burned out at work. According to Gallup, 7 in 10 people are dealing with mental health issues.
Based on this research, the heart and the mind are clearly connected. Crowley told me that if leaders don’t change how they lead, The Great Resignation will continue. “The decision to be engaged is made in worker’s hearts—not minds.”