Some great research comes out of Gallup that is published through their Management Journal, but you do need a paid subscription to read all of the articles. A few are available for free, and you can read the summary or intro to others, but you otherwise gotta shell out. I finally did, because Gallup is one of the best places (in my opinion) for current research into positive psychology and the workplace that also examines the hard data of ROI and costs. Definitely worth my money. Of course, Gallup research is also limited to their tools, such as StrengthsFinder and Q12, but let’s suppose that their findings can be generalized to other strengths assessments and engagement questionnaires as well.
Positive Psychology, and its focus on what goes right in the workplace, has typically been pretty siloed in its investigations. We would expect this of a new discipline. This means that research to this point has predominantly been on strengths OR on employee engagement. Now, Gallup is wondering what happens when you put the two together – are there any booster effects? And it turns out that there are.
From the GMJ:
Gallup knew that companies with engaged employees outperform those with less engaged employees and that employees who use their strengths at work outperform those who don’t. What we didn’t know initially is what happens when companies nurture engagement and strengths simultaneously.
What did they find? That nurturing strengths increases engagement – managers who were given strengths-based feedback, “typically a one-hour coaching conversation focused on understanding one’s strengths”, had “significant” improvement in their engagement compared to managers who did not receive that coaching.
And here’s the real kicker: the positive effect in increased engagement scores rippled to those managers’ employees even though the employees never received strengths coaching at all.
This is incredibly powerful – one hour of strengths-based coaching increased engagement for a manager and that manager’s team.
What does increased engagement translated into?
Gallup research has shown that engagement creates a positive feedback loop: People who are engaged are more successful, and success helps people engage in their work. We have also seen that strengths-oriented teams improve engagement and team cohesion; thus, they have less turnover — creating conditions that improve the likelihood of success. So it seems that both engagement and strengths orientation create a culture that fosters performance.
What company wouldn’t want this for its bottom line? It is clearly time for strengths, engagement and other positive psychology findings to be applied in the workplace.
The Gallup article can be found at the GMJ.
This kind of research is very intuitive . . . we shouldn’t be suprised by it. And yet, the amazing thing is how many businesses do not engage their workforce in this way in spite of these kinds of outcomes. I’m hopeful that blogs like yours will help create a culture shift around this!