Organizations like Gallup have been studying how to unlock employee engagement for decades now.
It turns out a French aristocrat figured it out about two centuries ago. The answer lies in determining if you have citizens … or subjects.
Democracy in America
![By Théodore Chassériau - [1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=87145391](https://www.hipsocket.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/534px-Alexis_de_Tocqueville_Theodore_Chasseriau_-_Versailles-222x300.jpg)
Alexis de Tocqueville toured the United States in the 1830s. He then published “Democracy in America.” Its outside-the-fishbowl insights provide a penetrating analysis of what made (and makes) the USA distinct.
I vaguely remember learning about him in history classes and have always attributed this sentence to him:
America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.
It turns out he probably never said that, although it’s a good summary of some of his thoughts.
But there are many other passages just as stirring and insightful. For instance:
Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom.
I wonder what he would have thought of social media.
The following quotation is also attributed to him:
There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle.
He hadn’t even experienced a modern political campaign. Downright prophetic!
Citizens vs. Subjects
Other passages are simply chilling. This one, about a country’s inhabitants, has been ringing in my ears. It is worth your time. I’ve put some phrases in bold and invite you to read the word “inhabitants” as “employees.”
There are some nations in Europe whose inhabitants think of themselves in a sense as colonists, indifferent to the fate of the place they live in. The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called “the government.” They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved. They are so divorced from their own interests that even when their own security and that of their children is finally compromised, they do not seek to avert the danger themselves but cross their arms and wait for the nation as a whole to come to their aid. Yet as utterly as they sacrifice their own free will, they are no fonder of obedience than anyone else. They submit, it is true, to the whims of a clerk, but no sooner is force removed than they are glad to defy the law as a defeated enemy. Thus one finds them ever wavering between servitude and license.
When a nation has reached this point, it must either change its laws and mores or perish, for the well of public virtue has run dry: in such a place one no longer finds citizens but only subjects.
I see it as a list of symptoms for an unhealthy organization.
Your organization’s responsibility
Consider the list a self-diagnostic. Are the members of your organization …
- indifferent to the organization’s fate?
- lacking a sense of ownership (reactive instead of proactive)?
- uninterested in the growth of the organization (only thinking about their role, not the big picture)?
- defiant of policies and processes unless forced (by pay, threats, etc.) to follow them?
I’ll leave it up to you to decide how many times you answer “yes” before deciding you have “subjects, not citizens.”
… in such a place one no longer finds citizens but only subjects.
When I observe this lack of engagement in employees, I encourage them to follow their better impulses and take some ownership, be proactive.
But often they will express to me the things the organization has done to disengage them. There are hints of them in Tocqueville’s passage. He mentions changes occurring without the cooperation of or even awareness of the inhabitants.
It is worth noting that the subheading of this passage includes “the political effects of administrative decentralization.”
Again, modern scholars have been studying this for decades. How can we decentralize? Where can we push decision-making down the org chart? What will empower our people?
Tocqueville had the answer all along.
Earlier in the same section he described how centralized, authoritarian governments in Europe often found their localities “unenlightened,” “inert” and “obedient”–“incapable,” in fact. And then:
I deny that this is so, however, when, as in America, the people are enlightened, alert to their own interests, and accustomed to thinking about them.
There is the answer.
Your organization’s plan
I submit that organizations have tools to impact all three of these items. Let’s take them in reverse.
Accustomed to thinking about them.
- Regularly scheduled coaching, where you ask questions to get the employee thinking.
- Cross-functional teams, where you invite ideas on and investment in growing the organization.
- Input-gathering sessions, whether they be town hall meetings, employee surveys or managers in the habit of funneling up feedback.
“Accustomed” is another way of saying “habits.” You are trying to get them to constantly engage in thinking.
Alert to their own interests.
- New hire orientations, where you explain why you do what you do, and how that impacts the team, the employee, the client.
- Communications from leadership, where you explain where the organization is going and why–and how the employee impacts that, and how the change impacts the employee.
- Scoreboards that track not just team goals but the impact on staff.
- Pay plans that reflect these proactive behaviors.
You are trying to get them to be so engaged they have their “radar up.”
Enlightened.
- Well.
- … This is difficult.
- How much time do you have?
Tocqueville goes so far as to say that this part is an “arduous enterprise … it would be less difficult to interest them in the details of court etiquette than in the repair of their town hall.”
How many people vote vs. how many people follow a celebrity on social media is perhaps a modern equivalent.
(Is your team more interested in the work or in the internal politics and drama?)
For the company, enlightenment is foundational. For the nation, too.
I have a sense that America’s best hope right now is for companies to invest in their employees in a way governments, schools and even many families have not. To educate them to be not just good citizens of the company but good citizens of the nation.
If this intrigues you, I encourage you to investigate this blog, especially entries for my upcoming book, “The Lost Tools of Business.” And if you are interested in trying this out with your team, let’s talk.
