Manage to Engage

CHAPTER 12Freedom: The Great Facilitator

Build a world that is different from the … one they've always known… but if you use them (dragons) to melt castles and burn cities, you're not different, you're just more of the same.

—Kit Harington, actor in Game of Thrones

Imagine how people would feel if they could control their own destiny.

Freedom. Wars are fought over it; countries are built on it, and people die for it. We strive for market freedom, political freedom, freedom of speech, and freedom through democracy. One of life's bitter stressors is feeling you are not free – to think, to speak, to act. The question for leaders is, do our people feel they relinquish their freedom each day they enter our workspaces or work hours? Do our teams feel they leave their true selves locked away? Do we free people up to create remarkable results or tie them down to tradition and the way things have always been?

Whoever said that when we come to work, we should leave ourselves – our hopes, dreams, desires, and who we really are – at home? No one. And yet people feel this is what's expected; but what if you could become a better version of yourself through what you do for a living? What if your managers inspired that?

Freedom Comes from Being Empowered

It's disappointing when the only way people think they can have free rein at work is if they go off and set up their own business, but that's what the surveys show. It is the entrepreneurs who feel the most engaged, not even management ...