{"id":2751,"date":"2017-09-21T20:41:24","date_gmt":"2017-09-21T20:41:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/situational.com\/situational-leadership-employee-engagement\/"},"modified":"2025-07-09T09:50:51","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T09:50:51","slug":"situational-leadership-employee-engagement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/situational.com\/podcast\/situational-leadership-employee-engagement\/","title":{"rendered":"Situational Leadership\u00ae<\/sup> and Employee Engagement"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In This Episode<\/h2>\n

Dr. Marshall Goldsmith discusses Situational Leadership\u00ae<\/sup> and a variety of other topics based on his vast leadership experience.<\/p>\n

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Episode Transcript<\/h2>\n

Introduction<\/h3>\n

Welcome to The Center for Leadership Studies podcast, an exploration of contemporary leadership issues with experts from a variety of fields and leadership backgrounds. In this episode, Dr. Marshall Goldsmith discusses Situational Leadership\u00ae and a variety of other topics based on his vast leadership experience. For The Center for Leadership Studies, here’s your host, Sam Shriver.\u00a0<\/span>
\nSam Shriver<\/strong><\/p>\n

We have a program called Taking Charge. It really is a focused program for individual contributors. And the whole idea is that they can contract for a leadership style with their boss. They learn the language of Situational Leadership\u00ae. They can go to their supervisor and say, I don’t know what I’m doing here or get out of my way. A lot of stuff gets in the way of that, though, in organizations at the base of an organization. And clearly, the higher you go, what’s your experience?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Dr. Marshall Goldsmith<\/strong><\/p>\n

I love what you guys are doing with that approach, because what happens, I’m going to share some new stuff that I’ve been doing and how it connects. If you look at the idea of employee engagement, so I listened to three of the top HR people in the world do a presentation on employee engagement, and they talked about everything they knew about employee engagement. It was all good. They talked about training programs and fair compensation. And these are smart people, so it’s all common sense. Then, they said global employee engagement was an all-time low. I’m sitting here thinking, well, if you all are so smart, this doesn’t seem to be working very well. Then I realized that 100% of the dialogue goes what can the company do to engage you, and 0% is what you can do to engage yourself.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Well, I thought you’re missing half of an equation. I’m on a typical airline flight. There are two flight attendants, one’s positive, motivated, upbeat, and enthusiastic. One’s negative, bitter, angry, and cynical. Have you been on that flight? <\/span><\/p>\n

Sam Shriver<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah.<\/p>\n

Dr. Marshall Goldsmith<\/strong><\/p>\n

You’ve been on that flight. Same pay, same uniform, same everything. What’s the difference? Well, it’s not on the outside; it’s on the inside. And there’s been very little about getting people to take responsibility. What I love about what you’re doing is, and what I’m doing in our employee engagement, I get people to start being responsible for their own engagement. I have people every day testing themselves on did I do my best too? It’s in my book, Triggers. What I love about what you’re doing is the same philosophy, though. It’s rather than being a victim, my boss is not giving me what I need. Poor me, I’m a victim.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It’s the antivictim serum that’s saying, take some responsibility for your life. Work with your boss, contract for style. You have what you need is what you need. You need to be able to communicate with your boss and take responsibility. So that way, your boss is not being left and blind either. Because a boss may be a boss, but they can’t read your mind.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sam Shriver<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Dr. Marshall Goldsmith<\/strong><\/p>\n

So let’s say you’re my boss, and I need help. Well, maybe you don’t know I need help, but if I come to you and say, on this particular topic, I need help, I need leadership style, too, perhaps coaching, I want to learn. I just need to learn more. Well, there’s nothing wrong with that. Well, in fact, it’s a very healthy dialogue. What you guys are doing, which I really like, though, is you’re teaching people to take responsibility for their own lives, not to be victims, and also not to blame your boss. Poor me. Blame the boss. I’m a victim. I’ve never been very big on that. So I think I really love what you’re doing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sam Shriver<\/p>\n

Oh, I appreciate that. It’s not like I personally can take a lot of credit for it. Matter of fact, very little. But if you get back to the genius of the doc, right, and how he defined leadership. Leadership, very simply, is an attempt to influence. It’s a multidirectional thing. So it’s like you down, which is where most people think of it, but it’s you laterally, and it’s you up. And there really is an inherent responsibility that you have if you’re seeing something and you want to change it, and you want to influence it to take action. And that’s not dependent upon where you sit in a hierarchy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Dr. Marshall Goldsmith<\/strong><\/p>\n

Right.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sa<\/strong>m Shriver<\/strong><\/p>\n

Matter of fact, the more you get really healthy cultures, where you’ve got individuals that feel comfortable going to someone in a position of power and saying, here’s what I need. That’s the speed of trust, as Stephen Covey would say. But you’re right. It’s a two-way street.<\/p>\n

Dr. Marshall Goldsmith<\/strong><\/p>\n

And I love what you guys are doing because also, you’re giving the person some tools. If they don’t have the tools, they may be hesitant to do it. They don’t know how to do it. It seems awkward and uncomfortable. If you give them a tool, they can come back and use, and also they get over the shame. This feeling of I have to be ashamed to need help. And I think it’s very positive and very healthy what you’re doing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sa<\/strong>m Shriver<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah, it’s kind of like, you know, boy, I’m going to be at risk if my boss knows that I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s like, you’re going to be at risk if you don’t come clean with that information pretty soon. There’s only so long you can hide that.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/h3>\n

Dr. Marshall Goldsmith is one of the world’s leading executive educators, coaches, and authors. He’s a pioneer in helping successful leaders get even better. His books, Triggers Mojo and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, are New York Times bestsellers. Marshall has been ranked by Thinkers 50 as the number one leadership thinker in the world and the number one executive coach in the world. Thank you for listening to The Center for Leadership Studies podcast. Through its innovative leadership development programs, The Center for Leadership Studies has helped millions of individuals across the globe become more effective leaders and has helped thousands of organizations build more productive and engaged workforces. For additional information on our services and products, please visit Situational.com<\/a> or call 919-335-8763<\/a>. The Center for Leadership Studies. The global home of Situational Leadership\u00ae.<\/span><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/section>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr. Marshall Goldsmith discusses Situational Leadership\u00ae and a variety of other topics based on his vast leadership experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9914,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-podcast"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nSituational Leadership\u00ae and Employee Engagement | CLS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Elevate your leadership skills with Situational Leadership\u00ae insights shared by Dr. Marshall Goldsmith and tap into his vast experience. 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