Exec engagement low in Thailand: study

This is the only way to drive and sustain engagement in the entire organisation because engagement, the way it is seen and lived at the top, gets cascaded down the line.

Recently, research-based consulting agency Gallup studied 10 organisations across different industries in Thailand and found that engagement among top executives (the so-called C-suite), up to but not including CEOs, was significantly lower than the engagement of the overall organisation. 

When comparing executives’ engagement on their respective benchmarks (organisation with organisation database and executives with executive database), we see an even bigger gap.

There seem to be plenty of reasons for this: Only six out of 10 senior executives strongly agree that they are aware of what is expected of them at work, and the same proportion strongly agree that the mission or purpose of their company makes them feel that their job is important. 

Those two issues are the foundation for engagement and performance in any organisation. Consider a head of sales or operations chief who is not 100 per cent sure about what is expected of him at work or does not connect strongly to the mission and purpose of the organisation and imagine how little clarity everybody down the line will have about their respective roles. 

Then think how that finally translates into what they’re trying to achieve as an organisation. 

 

Low-role clarity 

Worse, the Gallup study found that only one-third of Thai leaders strongly agreed that their co-workers were committed to doing quality work and that they themselves were learning and growing along with their organisation.

 That means there are a lot of senior executives with low role clarity and connection to the mission, stalled development, and doubts about each other’s quality of contribution. 

 

So why do we see this trend? Gallup research suggests the following:

 

1  Many organisations in Thailand have been going through some form of change – in management, vision, mission performance goals, among others – in the last few years. Such changes require realignment, including structural changes, roles and responsibility changes, from the top down. 

With these changing scenarios, organisations often end up having a few people in the leadership team who don’t fit the new direction easily.

 

2  Some of the organisations have highly controlling leaders who get very specific about how things should work. In these kinds of environments, there is limited communication/empowerment at the management level, which leads to engagement/motivational issues among leaders.

 

3 In many Thai companies, leaders rise through the ranks pretty quickly because of their role performance, but without enough developmental opportunities to support their growth as effective leaders – particularly, Gallup found, development programmes that enhance his/her self-awareness and offer ongoing coaching.